Wednesday was Cassie Ventura’s second day of testimony in the case against disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and it was, by all accounts, a grueling, emotional day on the stand. Among the biggest revelations was Ventura confirming that she had accepted a $20 million settlement from Combs in 2023 after she accused him of rape. The actual number had not previously been disclosed, but Combs’ lawyers had shared that he had paid her a “substantial eight-figure settlement,” according to The New York Times.
Ventura confirmed on the stand that her legal team had offered to sell Combs the rights to the memoir she had written in 2023 about their relationship. “I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain,” she said today. She wrote the book during and after a stay in rehab, and said on the stand, “I really wanted Sean to read the information. I wanted him to understand what I had to learn to understand over that period.” She said that she hadn’t done research when selecting the price, saying “I just picked a number.” Per Deadline, she said, “I agreed to settle 24 hours later for $20 million.” Combs’ team has previously accused Ventura of trying to extort him with the offer.
Elsewhere in today’s testimony, Ventura testified that about a 2018 rape by Combs and detailed addictions stemming from the sometimes days-long “freak offs.” Per Variety, Combs also threatened to “hurt” Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi) when Ventura dated the artist in 2011. “Ventura seemed blatantly overwhelmed with the horrors she was asked about and describing,” journalist Dominic Patten writes in Deadline. Ventura is currently eight-plus months pregnant; Jezebel points out that Combs’ lawyers requested unsuccessfully that Ventura be seated in the witness box before jurors entered the room because they described her visible pregnancy as a “source of potential sympathy.”
