Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: key takeaways from Cassie Ventura’s second day of testimony

1. Ventura says Combs raped her in 2018

Ventura testified on Wednesday that Combs raped her in her home in 2018 after their breakup. 

She said earlier in the day of the rape, she and Combs had a “closure” conversation over lunch at a restaurant in Malibu. Ventura was seeing Alex Fine, her now husband, at the time.

After lunch, Combs and Ventura returned to her home where Ventura said he raped her.

“And then he raped me in my living room,” she said, adding: “I just remember crying and saying ‘no,’ but it was very fast.” 

Ventura, who said she was not sure whether Combs noticed her crying, also said that Combs ejaculated inside her before getting up and leaving. 

After the alleged rape, Ventura said she had consensual sex with Combs one other time.

“We’d been together 10 years, you just don’t turn feelings off that way,” she said, adding that they had “a few check-ins” since their 2018 breakup. 

2. Ventura said Combs told her “he was going to hurt” her and Kid Cudi when he heard they were dating

Ventura also testified about her brief relationship with Scott Mescudi, also known as rapper Kid Cudi. She told the court that she dated Mescudi in 2011 during a period when she and Combs were “not in a good place”.

When Combs learned she was dating Kid Cudi during a “freak-off”, she said Combs told her that “he was going to hurt” both of them and that he was going to have Kid Cudi’s car blown up.

She later saw Mescudi during a meeting with her and Combs.

“What about my vehicle?” Mescudi asked at the time, per Ventura.

“What vehicle?” Combs said.

“And that was the end of the meeting,” Ventura said.

In January 2012, a Porsche owned by Mescudi was set on fire by an “incendiary device”.

3. Ventura recalls more details from the viral 2016 surveillance assault footage

The trial’s third day opened with Ventura being shown the hotel surveillance footage of her 2016 assault by Combs, who was seen throwing a vase at her at the InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles. The video showed Combs running down a hallway after Ventura before grabbing her neck and shoving her on to the floor near some elevators. 

“I didn’t get hit. I remember it hitting the wall. He was yelling at me and threw it at me,” she said of the vase. She added that Combs told her “that I wasn’t going to leave him there. That I couldn’t.” 

Following the assault, Ventura texted Combs in messages that were displayed to jurors, telling the music mogul that he was “sick for thinking it’s OK to do what you did to me”.

4. Combs was also violent towards his own employees and Cassie’s friends

Ventura testified that Combs was also violent towards those who worked for him.

He would assault some of his employees and attack her friends. In addition to punching people and slamming them into furniture, Ventura said that Combs once dangled one of her friends over a balcony. 

“There was an incident where I was asleep in my room and when I came out Sean was holding her and threw her on to the patio furniture,” she said. 

“I saw him bring her back over the railing of the balcony and then throw her on to the patio furniture.”

She also recalled an incident during a trip abroad where she saw Combs drag his assistant “Mia” out of her bed and on to the deck outside her room after she refused to hand her phone over to Combs. 

5. Combs and Ventura settled for $20m

In her bombshell 2023 lawsuit against Combs, Ventura accused him of physical and sexual abuse. That suit, which was settled for a previously undisclosed sum, prompted a federal investigation that led to Combs’s arrest in September 2024.

On Wednesday, Ventura revealed that the sum for the settlement was $20m.

6. Ventura says Combs would blackmail her with ‘freak-off’ videos

Ventura also said that Combs would regularly threaten to publicize videos of her participating in his “freak-offs”. 

She testified that once on her birthday, Combs reminded her of the videos after she refused to leave her friends and join him in a freak-off. 

“I feared for my career, my family … It is horrible and disgusting, no one should do that to anyone,” she said, adding: “It could ruin everything I worked for, make me look like a slut … I wasn’t supposed to be on those videos. I didn’t want to be in them.

“I felt trapped,” Ventura continued, saying:  “Whatever was going to not make him angry or threaten me I was going to do.”