The 5 biggest bombshells so far from the Diddy trial — from Cassie Ventura’s testimony to ‘freak offs’

On Ventura’s second day of testimony, she told jurors that Combs paid her $20 million to settle her civil suit against him in 2023.

Ventura testified to “spinning out” and suffering from “horrible flashbacks” in 2023, leading her to once try to walk out the door into traffic. Ventura said she was stopped by her husband and then went to trauma therapy and rehab for drug addiction, and began writing a book about her experiences.

Ventura said she wrote the book so Combs could read it and understand the pain he put her through, but it wasn’t taken seriously when it was sent to the rapper.

She filed a lawsuit against Combs later on.

“I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain, the many, many years of trying to fix my life,” Ventura said of her book.

Ventura said she wanted $30 million from Combs to purchase the rights to her book.

“I really didn’t do any research. I just picked a number that I felt like would alert him,” Ventura testified.

Ventura, who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018, is one of the key witnesses in the prosecution’s case. She described the “freak offs,” drug-fueled sex performances at the core of Combs’ indictment that prosecutors say Combs arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded.

In her opening statement on May 12, prosecutor Emily Johnson told jurors that Combs used “lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce” Ventura and later an anonymous Jane Doe into sex performances that would last for several days. Combs also referred to these events as “wild king nights” and “hotel nights.”

Johnson said Combs taught Ventura that “defying him could and often would end in violence” by brutally beating her for minor perceived infractions.

“He beat her when she didn’t answer the phone when he called. He beat her when she left a freak off without his permission. He beat her when he thought she took too long in the bathroom,” Johnson said.

When Ventura took the stand on May 13, she also testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.

On May 14, Ventura described six separate times Combs’ attacks left her with injuries, with the most severe beating occurring in Los Angeles in 2009 following a party Combs had hosted at a club called “Ace of Diamonds.”

Ventura said she punched Combs in the face after he called her a “slut or a bitch” for talking to a record producer. Combs retaliated in the back seat of a chauffeured luxury vehicle by punching and kicking Ventura throughout a ten-minute ride to the rapper’s rented mansion, she said.

Ventura said she hid under the back seat to escape the attack.

“I was trying to cover my face,” Ventura said. “Because Sean was stomping on it with his foot.”

Ventura testified on May 13 that she was initially nervous, but felt a sense of responsibility to participate in Combs’ freak offs.

“I was just in love and wanted to make him happy,” Ventura told the jury.

Ventura testified that in 2007, Combs first proposed “this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism, where he would watch me have a sexual encounter with a third man, specifically another man.”

“I didn’t want to upset him if I said it scared me or if I said anything aside from, ‘OK, let’s try it,'” she said.

The prosecutors said in their opening statements that Combs eventually made it Ventura’s job to find and book escorts to participate in the sex marathons.

“Freak offs that were happening as often as once a week for days at a time. Meaning that for almost half of every week, Cassie was in a dark hotel room, high and awake for days, performing sex acts that she did not want to do on male escorts,” Johnson said.

Ventura testified on Tuesday that Combs would urinate and ask escorts to urinate on her during the freak offs.

“It was disgusting. It was too much. It was overwhelming,” she said. “I choked.”

In May 2024, CNN published surveillance footage from 2016 from the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, where Combs can be seen physically assaulting Ventura.

The video shows Combs trailing his then-girlfriend down a hallway. He grabs Ventura by the back of the neck, throws her down, kicks her twice, and drags her body across the floor. After the video leaked, Combs posted a video on Instagram apologizing for his behavior, but later deleted his apology.

At Combs’ trial, prosecutors showed jurors the video and said the assault followed a freak off.

Combs ultimately paid a security guard at the hotel $100,000 in a brown paper envelope in exchange for the footage, Johnson told the jury during her opening statements.

Johnson said Combs, his bodyguards, and his chief of staff went to great lengths to get what they thought was the only copy of that video.

“This is far from the only time that the defendant’s inner circle tried to close ranks and do damage control,” Johnson said.

In March 2024, the Department of Homeland Security raided Combs’ Los Angeles and Miami homes. Later that year, Combs’ indictment said that law enforcement seized “more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant” during the raid.

During her testimony, Ventura said bottles of Johnson’s baby oil and Astroglide were used as lubricants during the freak offs.

“We poured it all over our bodies, they had to be glistening,” Ventura said. “It was always heated. Like, with the cap on, we’d put it in the sink with hot water and it’d be heated up.”

At times during the freak offs, Ventura told jurors that Combs would order her to apply more baby oil.

“He would say, ‘You’re too dry, you need to put more oil on,’ or ‘you need to be glistening, you need to be shining.'”

Ventura testified that the freak offs would be “super pungent” because of all the oil, body odor, and candles.

“There was oil all over the walls, the door handles, the bed, the sheets,” she said.