Phil Houston
speaker
130 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard May 2025
Phil Houston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, it sounds like, Megan, they're finally getting into some of the meat of the matter, because up until now, we've heard a lot of emotionally charged testimony. We've heard about domestic violence. We've heard about third-rate burglaries and things like that, like you were just discussing. But we haven't heard much about how this was some type of criminal enterprise related to sex trafficking.
We're starting to hear now that who these people are that are the other racketeers. You've got other employees, security personnel. And so the government is starting to make its case. They've got a long way to go. But until today, I had a lot of reasonable doubt that things that I was thinking about because these witnesses all seem to have.
some degree of kind of affection for Combs or maybe had affection in the past. And it may be that they all had some kind of an angle, some incentive to testify against him, maybe sour grapes. So the defense has been doing a pretty good job on cross-examination. But let's see if they can sustain that momentum now that the prosecution is really getting into the heart of the matter.
Well, you know, this whole testimony from this particular witness is a head scratcher. I mean, first off, who lives like this? You know, I'm a former police officer, prosecutor, criminal lawyer. And I can tell you that when people are aware of a burglary in progress or when they get arrested, physically assaulted and thrown yards and yards down a football field or that length.
Anyway, people call the police. People complain in real time. And there's other things that a jury could look at to corroborate their testimony. This whole business about working... 20 hours a day straight with maybe four hours of sleep day in and day out without meal breaks or restroom breaks. That's just not the kind of thing that's really believable in my view.
And it strains credibility to believe that this has actually happened. So what it looks to me like is that she's exaggerating a little bit. Maybe because she's got some kind of sour grapes. Maybe because she is some victim in some capacity. I don't know. But when she's seen to be stretching some of it, a jury can disregard the entirety of her testimony.
Yeah, well, again, how are we going to corroborate and prove that other than accepting her and her work? Maybe we have the paper. If they have the paper and they can produce it, great. But if not, it's just another in the whole laundry list of things that just makes me wonder that if she's not just exaggerating a little bit.
I mean, it's obvious this was an abnormal workplace. I mean, this is not the kind of way that normal people live. And so I'm sure that where there's smoke, there's fire. I'm sure they did work long hours. But when you say that you only got four hours of sleep just all the time and that you never took a restroom break, I mean, come on.
That's just the kind of thing that makes it look to me like she's stretching the truth just a little bit. And what the problem is, if a jury... thinks that she's stretching the truth about one thing, the judge is going to tell them at the end of the trial they can be free to disregard the entirety of the testimony.
Well, he certainly has a beef with Combs. That's the problem.
And there's the beef. There's the beef right there.
If Viva tried to burn my car down or burn, let my car blow me up, I'd probably have a little bit of a heartburn that might linger through the years as well.
Yeah, and this is why I was saying earlier that, you know, the jury has plenty of reason not to believe this woman. Look, she's saying that Cassie was not good for Combs. I mean, my God, it's Combs that was not good for Cassie or anybody else, apparently. And yet she's saying that she would be, I guess, willing to go back to work as the chief of staff for this rapper.
I don't understand how the prosecution is expecting the jury to even... take this woman seriously.
My hope is that they're going to strengthen their case with some witnesses in the following days and maybe weeks that you cannot impeach in this way, because clearly this witness has some reason to have some kind of an emotional investment in Combs himself or in the overall enterprise, or maybe even in her testimony. And so the jury has plenty of reasons to question it. So
I really think that, yeah, like you said, there's plenty of smoke and maybe the jury can find a fire, but the prosecution, they must clean this up. They must get into some more hard, and I hate to even say this, hardcore criminal proof of crimes because otherwise the jury—
Look, I tend to agree that he probably is guilty of all these things. But my point simply is that from a trial tactics perspective, I think it's bad form for prosecutors to muddy up their case with witnesses that can be impeached this easily. And one thing that a good lawyer can do is at the end of the trial, they can go through this.
Look, I think they've done – look, whether or not they've proven each of these counts beyond a reasonable doubt, time will tell. I think they're going to have some chances to clean it up.
I think that two or three weeks from now, not only will the jury hate him, but I imagine they will have heard from some witnesses that don't have this type of, let's just call it colorful cross-examination that the defense can get into. And two weeks from now, if we come back and do this again, I think we're going to look at this trial in a completely different light.
But it's absolutely possible you could have inconsistent verdicts. It's possible you could have a mixed verdict. I don't think it's likely that he would walk on all counts, but it's certainly going to be interesting to do a retrospective look at what this jury was thinking about at each step of this particular trial.
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