When Sean “Diddy” Combs discovered his ex, R&B artist Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, was dating someone else, the multimillionaire hip-hop mogul grabbed an employee in the middle of the night for assistance hunting down and murdering the other man, a Manhattan jury heard in a bombshell opening statement from the feds on Monday.
“For years, the defendant physically abused Cassie. He also sexually exploited her, forcing her to have sex with male escorts while he watched and recorded it. But that night, the defendant learned he had lost control of Cassie,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson charged in Manhattan Federal Court.
“He took his gun and he took his bodyguard — one of his most loyal lieutenants — to wake up one of the defendant’s employees in the middle of the night. The defendant yelled that he was going to kill the man Cassie was with.”
The prosecutor said a crazed Combs couldn’t locate the man. But he did find his ex, 17 years his junior, whom Johnson said he habitually assaulted between 2006 and 2018 for reasons as simple as taking too long in the bathroom.
“He beat her brutally. Kicking her in the back and flinging her around like a ragdoll. All of that violence was not enough, though. The defendant had to make sure he had control over Cassie once again, so he threatened her — the defendant told Cassie that if she defied him again, he would publicly release the videos of her having sex with male escorts that he kept as blackmail. Souvenirs of the most humiliating nights of her life.”
Johnson said the disturbing account was just one night in 20 years of violence, abuse and depravity that jurors would hear about throughout the trial, expected to last eight weeks.
She said prosecutors would piece together the timeline of how Combs reached stratospheric success after founding Bad Boy Records, carefully cultivated his reputation, and used his wealth to force and manipulate women into sordid “freakoffs” — violent, “dayslong, drug-fueled,” sexual performances with male commercial sex workers — at hotels and properties across the country against their will.
She said evidence would show how victims were drugged for the perverted sessions in which Combs sometimes directed male escorts to urinate in their mouths and that they often needed IV fluids to recover from the exertion. The prosecution’s case will primarily focus on the abuse inflicted on three women, Johnson said: Ventura, Jane, a single mom whom Combs met in 2020, and Mia, Combs’ former personal assistant. Jane and Mia will be referred to under pseudonyms.
“He sometimes called himself the king, and he expected to be treated like one,” the prosecutor said. “This case is not about a celebrity’s private sexual preferences.”
Asking the jury to view the allegations from an entirely different perspective, Combs’ attorney, Teny Geragos, in her opener, told jurors they didn’t need to conclude her client was a gentleman, but they did need to find him not guilty. Calling Combs “complicated,” she acknowledged he committed domestic violence, “gets so angry, so jealous, he’s out of control,” and would appear to be a “jerk.”
“Had he been charged with domestic violence, had he been charged with assault, we would not be here right now,” the lawyer said. “Sex trafficking, prostitution, racketeering, these are federal crimes. … And he is simply not guilty of those crimes.”
The lawyer said the case was about “love, jealousy, infidelity, and money” and “capable adults in consensual relationships,” accusing Combs’ alleged victims of being motivated by money and jealousy. She said his accusers had agency within a “swingers lifestyle” and that nobody would testify about participating in a criminal enterprise or being forced to associate with Combs, describing the Harlem native as a self-made millionaire whose charisma was magnetic.
The attorney said videotapes of the “freakoffs” may be hard to watch but that they were “intimate” and never intended to be viewed by anyone, denying they were used as blackmail.
“This case is about Sean Combs’ private, personal sex life, which has nothing to do with his lawful businesses. The government has no place in his private bedrooms,” Geragos said. “You may know of his love of baby oil. Is that a federal crime? No.”
The prosecution promised that extensive evidence would leave no doubt that Combs’ victims were unwilling participants of his twisted sexual fantasies brought to life. She said the feds’ case would evince how his network of high-ranking employees helped him commit kidnapping, arson, narcotics offenses, sex crimes, bribery and obstruction.
The jury is also expected to hear about more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil recovered during searches at Combs’ lavish properties across the U.S., in addition to AR-15 semiautomatic rifles with defaced serial numbers.
“To the public, he was ‘Puff Daddy’ or ‘Diddy’ — a cultural icon, a businessman, larger than life,” Johnson said in court, looking over at Combs, who sat with a blank expression and his hands on his lap. “But there was another side to him.”
Opening statements at the highly anticipated trial began around 10:30 a.m. after Manhattan Federal Judge Arun Subramanian swore in an anonymous eight men and four women to serve on the jury. Combs’ mother and six children attended and declined to comment after the day’s testimony. Over 100 members of the public lined up hoping to attend the trial, with the line for Tuesday’s proceedings forming outside before testimony had wrapped for the day.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking charges, racketeering conspiracy, transporting victims and sex workers for prostitution, and related counts. He’s been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his September arrest and faces a potential life prison sentence if convicted.
Following opening arguments, prosecutors launched quickly into their case, playing footage of Combs beating Ventura on March 5, 2016, in a lobby at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles, during testimony from the first witness, a former security guard from the hotel. They then called a former male revue manager, who said Combs hired him to sleep with Ventura.
The 2016 beating saw domestic violence allegations against Combs explode into public view in May 2023 when the footage was published by CNN and led to Combs publicly apologizing. Before the trial, Combs’ lawyers sought to stop the jury from seeing the tape, which shows him wearing nothing but a towel, violently throwing Ventura to the ground, pummeling her, dragging her body across the floor, and shoving a vase at her.
Los Angeles Police Officer Israel Florez, the former assistant director of security at the hotel, verified the footage. He said Combs tried to bribe him with a brown bag of thousands of dollars to stay silent, which he said he refused. In the defense’s opener, Geragos said the money was offered to shield bad publicity, not evidence of criminality.
After Florez, Daniel Phillip, a former male revue performer, said Combs first enlisted him to have sex with Ventura at the Gramercy Park Hotel in 2012. He testified that he thought he’d been hired to perform for a bachelorette party, but when he arrived, he was met by only Ventura, holding $4,000 for a job he expected $200 for, and a man wearing a baseball cap, a white robe, and a bandana covering most of his face. Ventura told him that her “husband” wanted Phillip to massage her with baby oil.
Phillip, who said he’d never engaged in sex work before or after meeting the couple, said he recognized the man as Combs as soon as he opened his mouth, though Combs claimed to him he worked in “exporting and importing.” He said Combs sat in the corner masturbating while he had sex with Ventura. Two of Combs’ children exited the courtroom during graphic portions of the testimony.
Phillips said he’d be hired multiple times after that first day until late 2013, always in Manhattan, always with Combs present and masturbating in the corner, and always including baby oil. He said he was once directed to urinate on Ventura, that on another occasion, she was so heavily drugged that he could not sleep with her and that the only time he communicated with her alone, she was shaking and seemed “terrified.” He said Combs sometimes recorded the encounters.
Phillip said he stopped meeting the couple after he first witnessed Combs physically assault Ventura. He said that occurred after Combs called Ventura to come into another room, and she asked him to wait a second, prompting Combs to throw a liquor bottle at Ventura, grab her by the hair, drag her across the room, and begin beating her.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey asked why he never reported Combs to the police, and Phillip said he was scared and worried about the mogul’s arsenal and law enforcement connections.
“I was concerned for my life. By this point, he had taken my ID and taken a picture of it, and I felt threatened by what he said to me, and I felt that at the very least, I could try to get her to realize that she needed to leave and maybe try to help her that way.”
The trial continues Tuesday.
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