Witness: Enrique Santos

Enrique Santos’s Testimony in Sean 'Diddy' Combs’ Sex Trafficking and Racketeering Trial: Day 17 Highlights On June 5, 2025, during Day 17 of Sean 'Diddy' Combs’ federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial in Manhattan, digital forensics analyst Enrique Santos testified at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in New York. Santos, the prosecution’s 27th witness, provided technical testimony about data extracted from three iPhones belonging to Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, focusing on text messages expected to be introduced during the testimony of 'Jane,' an anonymous accuser using a pseudonym. His brief testimony aimed to lay the groundwork for Jane’s allegations of abuse by Combs, supporting the prosecution’s claims of a pattern of coercion central to the charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Santos began his testimony by explaining his role as a forensic analyst, detailing his process for extracting data from Ventura’s three iPhones. He told the jury that his analysis included recovering deleted records, a critical task since at least two-thirds of the messages on Jane’s phone had been deleted. Santos confirmed that investigators were able to recover most of the deleted messages, though some presented challenges. He noted that certain messages had lost their associated contact names, while others displayed strange characters in place of text, likely due to data corruption or the limitations of the WhatsApp application used for communication. Santos also clarified how WhatsApp stores data and at what point a cellphone deletes its underlying data, providing the jury with a technical foundation to understand the reliability of the text messages they would later see during Jane’s testimony. Prosecutor Maurene Comey led the direct examination, focusing on the specifics of Santos’s findings. He explained that the recovered messages included emojis, which he had extracted and preserved to maintain their context within the conversations. Santos emphasized that his role was to ensure the integrity of the data, allowing the jury to interpret the content of the messages in light of Jane’s upcoming testimony. His testimony was described as 'dry' by observers, reflecting its technical nature, but it was a necessary step to validate the evidence prosecutors planned to present through Jane, who began testifying later that day about her alleged experiences with Combs, including 'hotel nights' involving coerced sexual encounters. During cross-examination by defense attorney Teny Geragos, Santos faced brief questioning that aimed to probe the reliability of the extracted data. Geragos asked about the strange characters and missing contact names, suggesting potential inconsistencies in the recovered messages. Santos acknowledged these issues but maintained that they did not undermine the overall authenticity of the data, as the core content of the messages remained intact. The cross-examination was described as uneventful, with the defense unable to significantly challenge Santos’s findings. Posts on X from @genjustlaw noted that the defense’s efforts 'went nowhere,' highlighting the limited impact of their questioning on Santos’s testimony. Santos’s testimony concluded swiftly, as prosecutors had predicted, allowing the court to transition to Jane’s testimony later that day. On redirect, Comey briefly reaffirmed the reliability of the extracted data, asking Santos if the sources he used were accurate depictions of the iPhones’ contents. Santos agreed, solidifying the prosecution’s use of the text messages as evidence to support Jane’s claims of prolonged abuse by Combs from 2020 to 2023. His role was purely technical, setting the stage for the more emotionally charged testimony that followed, but it provided a critical link in the prosecution’s effort to demonstrate Combs’ alleged pattern of control and coercion through digital evidence.

Compiled from news sources and summarized by Grok.

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