“There were violent arguments that usually resulted in some form of physical abuse,” testified Cassie Ventura this morning at the sex trafficking trial of her former longtime boyfriend Sean Combs.
In the opening of her testimony, Ventura detailed to prosecutors how Combs “mashed in my head, dragged me along the floor, kicked me, stomped on my head,” adding that this happened “too frequently.”
The soft spoken eight months pregnant Ventura is by far the most anticipated witness of the Combs trial, and, in many ways, the flame that started this legal fire. Ventura took the stand today at approximately 11am Eastern Time.
The public downfall of Diddy truly started when Ventura ( a.k.a. Victim-1) went public with her tales of abuse and assaults in quickly settled ($30 million) civil suit in November 2023, As more and more women and men came forward with similar stories involving Combs, Ventura found herself back at the center of things in spring 2024 when CNN obtained and broadcast a seemingly damning and now defense disputed 2016 hotel security footage of a half-naked Combs beating Ventura in the hall and dragging her back to their room. For months now, the defense alleges the footage, which their client had previously apologized for the violence he is shown committing, was doctored and doesn’t tell the whole story.
Estimated by Judge Arun Subramanian to last eight to 10 weeks, the criminal trial of the much-accused Diddy follows his arrest last September on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and more. Charges that could see the 55-year-old behind bars for the rest of his life if found guilty. Repeatedly denied bail and incarcerated in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since last fall, Combs has insisted he is not guilty and everything he did in the so-called “freak offs” and otherwise was with consenting adults, however kinky and disturbing it became.
With the defense out of the gate in their opening statement Monday strategically acknowledging Combs led an unconventional sex life, used drugs and committed domestic violence, they hope to dull the dark litany of accusations and evidence the prosecution will present. To that, defense attorney Brian Steel’s slicing up of the testimony of former hotel security guard and current LAPD officer Israel Florez on Day 1 of the trial yesterday was the approach of the Combs’ team in microcosm — find the contradictions, and the leaps of faith and pound on them.
In that sense, the decade-long relationship between Combs and Ventura was definitely a tale of two very different realities in the May 12 opening statements. Facing the jury on Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily A. Johnson said “if Cassie didn’t do what the defendant wanted, the consequences were severe.” Along with persistent alleged violence and assaults, Ventura was forced to let a male prostitute urinate in her mouth, and live in fear of videos of the freak-offs being made public to destroy her career. “Her livelihood and safety depended on keeping him happy,” AUSA Johnson added of the ‘Me & U’ chart topper.
“This was a relationship, it was not based on coercion, it was not based on force,” defense lawyer Teny Geragos said in her own opening statement in court in Lower Manhattan on Monday. Hoping to undermine one of the government’s key pieces of evidence, the now infamous 2016 L.A. hotel security video, Geragos introduced a new tone. She told jurors: “the video is overwhelming evidence of domestic violence.” However, the defense says, “it is not evidence of sex trafficking,” claiming what the jury sees on screen is sadly “a fight over a phone” and the consequence of the “toxic relationship between two people who loved each other.”
The defense claim that Ventura finally broke up with Combs in 2018 around the time of the death from pneumonia of Kim Porter, the mother of four of Combs’ children. After Combs had publicly called Porter “my soulmate,” Ventura realized “for the first time ever … all the things she wouldn’t be” to him, Geragos told the jury. The feds’ version of events is that the now married mother of two Ventura escaped from Combs in fear of her life.
The jury was seated Tuesday at approximately 9:50 am Eastern Time, with cross examination of Daniel Phillips, the paid sex partner of Ventura and Combs, picking up from Monday. As he did previously, defense attorney Xavier Donaldson emphasized over and over that it was Ventura who was in control and command of their sexual relationships with Phillips, at least initially. Previous to that, Tuesday, saw a discussion among the lawyers and the judge of media access to the explicit, so called freak off videos that will be shown in court during this trial at present, given a partial unsealing of that material is TBD.
Additionally, the feds and the defense once again bickered over whether or not material of “prior bad acts”, by Ventura should be included in the trial. Specifically, they were speaking of an incident of violence at a birthday party for Ventura’s brother in Connecticut. Combs’ defense wanted to see this evidence introduced as emblematic of Ventura’s character and her substance abuse of her own outside of the admittedly toxic relationship with Combs. Prosecutors argued that the incidents are essentially irrelevant.
The judge decided that these text exchanges between Ventura and Combs on the evening of the Connecticut incident will be admissible in the trial.
