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Singer Cassie Ventura finished her fourth and final day of testimony in the trial of former lover Sean “Diddy” Combs today, answering defense questions about her relationship with Combs as part of her cross-examination. Per The Washington Post, the cross brought in little in the way of new information, as the defense “continued to suggest that she was more sexually mature and enthusiastic about Combs’s sex parties than she expressed in her testimony,” and questioned her recollections of her years-long relationship with Combs. That included addressing questions about the fact that she had consensual sex with Combs at least one time in the aftermath of a 2018 event in which Ventura alleges that Combs raped her. (Ventura had stated in previous testimony that “We’d been together 10 years; you just don’t turn feelings off that way.”)
After Ventura was dismissed from the witness stand (revealing shortly before she left that she’d reached a $10 million settlement with InterContinental Hotels Group, owners of the hotel where Combs was caught beating Ventura on-camera in 2016), the prosecution also called one of the Homeland Security agents who helped arrest Combs in 2024. Said agent testified to finding ketamine, MDMA, and “large zip-top bags filled with baby oil and lubricant” in the music mogul’s hotel room. Prosecutors also called Danity Kaye singer Dawn Richard, who testified that she witnessed Combs beat Ventura in 2009, and was then threatened by him to stay silent. Richard, who will return to the stand next week, detailed a 2009 instance (previously detailed in her own lawsuit against Combs) in which she says he attacked Ventura in the couple’s kitchen, hitting her in the head, beating her while she was on the floor, and then dragging her upstairs. Richard says Combs later tried to play the incident off as “passion,” before telling her that “where he comes from, people who say something can end up missing.”
The allegations in Richard’s testimony don’t reflect directly on the charges Combs is up on, which include sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution, linked to his infamous “freak off” parties; however, prosecutors hold that such actions created a culture of “violence and fear” that made it easier for Combs to carry out the crimes with which he’s being charged.
