NEW YORK — Tempers flared in the Puff Daddy-Shyne trial Wednesday afternoon as its focus turned to an FBI informant and escort-service owner who gave authorities a gun allegedly thrown out of Sean "Puffy" Combs' car.
Judge Charles Solomon temporarily halted Anthony Nastasi's testimony after Combs lawyer Benjamin Brafman fired a series of detailed questions at Nastasi focusing on his pending case on prostitution-related charges in Las Vegas and his cooperation with the FBI on a related case.
"Objection — this is atrocious," prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos said. "What you've done is atrocious, you are right," Brafman snapped back.
The FBI gave Nastasi $30,000 for travel and legal expenses in connection with his help on a case involving alleged collusion between Las Vegas police and organized crime figures.
After calling a recess and excusing the jury, Solomon told Brafman he would allow only limited questioning of Nastasi's past.
"I'm not going to turn this trial into a trial of this Las Vegas case," Solomon said.
The testimony of Nastasi and his friend and sometime employee George Pappas, who took the stand earlier Wednesday, is important in the Combs case because the rapper/entrepreneur is accused of possessing a gun that prosecutors say was thrown out of the Combs' Lincoln Navigator as police chased the car early in the morning of December 27, 1999. (Click HERE for a complete explanation of the charges in the case. Click HERE for our complete trial coverage.) Pappas told the jury he heard something hit his parked car as the Navigator drove by. He looked up to see a hand sticking out of the open rear-passenger side window of the Navigator, and later found a black 9-mm semiautomatic gun outside his car. Combs was sitting in the right-rear seat of the Navigator, several witnesses have testified.
Pappas wrapped the gun in a towel and put it in his car. After hearing news reports that morning indicating that Combs had been arrested following a shooting and that Combs had left the scene in a silver Navigator, he decided to get rid of the gun. Pappas, who said he "didn't want to get involved," turned it over to his boss at the escort agency, Nastasi, who gave it to the authorities.
Nastasi testified that he immediately called a friend at the FBI, who, along with a New York police detective, came to Pappas' house to collect the gun on December 29.
Brafman asked both Pappas and Nastasi about notes taken by an FBI agent that suggest Pappas initially said he saw a woman throw a gun out of the Navigator. Both said that Pappas never made that claim.
With the jury out of the courtroom, Brafman said that if Pappas could be shown to have claimed that it was Jennifer Lopez who threw the gun out the window, it would destroy the witness' credibility.
Lopez, whose break-up with Combs was officially announced on Wednesday, has never been charged with any crimes in connection with the Club New York incident, and Bogdanos has never suggested she had a gun that night. Lopez and Combs were at the club together, and left in the Navigator with bodyguard Anthony "Wolf" Jones and driver Wardel Fenderson.
Pappas told Brafman, during ferocious cross-examination, that it was possible the gun he found near his car had been thrown there by someone walking on the street. Brafman also questioned Pappas on how close the police car chasing the Navigator was when he saw it pass — a key point because the officer in the police car has never said he saw a gun thrown from the Navigator. Pappas said he couldn't measure the distance, but the police car was 10 to 20 seconds behind the Navigator.
Nastasi denied that his escort and entertainment businesses in New York and Las Vegas have anything to do with prostitution. Women he employs sometimes visit men in hotel rooms, but only to give dance performances, he said.
(This report was updated at 7:56 p.m. ET Wednesday, February 14, 2001.)
