May 15, 2025 – Day 4 of testimony in the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial

• Cassie Ventura on the stand: Cassie Ventura, ex-girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs and one of his accusers, took the stand for a third day today in Combs’ federal criminal trial. Cross-examination will continue tomorrow, and the judge is urging lawyers to wrap up Ventura’s testimony before the weekend, as she’s due to give birth soon.

• Her testimony: The defense asked Ventura about her relationship with Combs while they were dating. The jury saw emails and messages between them, including sexually graphic ones that occurred as they were planning a “Freak Off,” which is what Combs called the drug-fueled sex performances he orchestrated.

• Federal charges: Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges that include racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to life in prison.

• Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with intimate partner violence, there are resources available, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage of the trial for the day. Read more about Cassie Ventura’s testimony here.

Cassie Ventura faced cross-examination from Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team today in his federal criminal trial.

Ventura, a former girlfriend of Combs and one of his accusers, has been on the stand since Tuesday afternoon. The prosecution’s star witness testified about the beginning of the relationship and her participation in “Freak Offs,” which is what Combs called the drug-fueled sex performances he orchestrated.

In court, the jury saw affectionate messages between Ventura and Combs, but also texts that showed Ventura’s frustrations and hesitancies.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution and could face up to life in prison.

Here’s what to know:

Sean “Diddy” Combs did “not look happy” during his federal criminal trial in New York today, according to a CNN correspondent who was in the courtroom.

Cassie Ventura, his ex-girlfriend, was answering questions from his lawyers on cross-examination about their relationship and the “Freak Offs” he organized. The jury also saw a slew of text messages between the two, some of them explicit.

As for Ventura on the stand, Wagmeister said her demeanor had changed from the last two days, when she was facing questions from prosecutors.

Wagmeister said Ventura’s hours of testimony recounting graphic details have been “grueling for her,” but today “she was much more at ease and even laughed a few times on the stand.”

Combs’ defense attorney laughed with her in some of those instances, Wagmeister said, adding that those were moments that “kind of humanized” Ventura and helped her as a witness.

Prosecutor Emily Johnson said she expects about an hour of redirect-examination whenever the defense team finishes its cross-examination of Cassie Ventura.

Judge Arun Subramanian told the defense that they should be able to finish cross-examination with the balance of the trial day tomorrow. Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said they’d do their best, but still made no promises that cross-examination could be finished in that timeframe.

Subramanian has noted that he does technically have authority to cut off cross-examination when it’s amounted to the duration of the direct testimony.

The prosecution and defense teams plan to convene at 9 a.m. ET tomorrow before Ventura’s testimony continues.

The jury has been dismissed for the day. Testimony is expected to resume again tomorrow morning.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao is going through more messages between Cassie Ventura and Sean “Diddy” Combs from March 3, 2016, which led to the “Freak Off” before the eventual assault in the hotel hallway.

Some of these messages were shown to the jury by prosecutors during Ventura’s direct-examination.

After going back and forth about potential plans with her friends, Ventura messaged, “We can have fun, I don’t want you thinking I don’t want to.” She told Combs to set it up.

The defense attorney suggested Ventura proposed and encouraged the “Freak Off.”

Ventura pushed back, testifying that messages from Combs repeatedly asking about her plans for the night was his way of posing a “Freak Off.”

She said when you’re with someone for so long, “you know what they mean when they text certain things.”

In some of the messages, Combs indicated they should do the “Freak Off” sooner rather than later since Ventura had events for a movie premiere coming up.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao is suggesting Sean “Diddy” Combs was going through withdrawal in the days before the March 2016 assault at the InterContinental Hotel.

Combs’ attorney reviewed a series of text messages from March 3 between Combs and Cassie Ventura in which the couple discussed Combs having symptoms that Estevao suggested are consistent with withdrawal.

Ventura testified that she does not remember Combs going through withdrawal at that time. She acknowledged the texts appear to suggest he was sick at the time.

The jury is back in and Cassie Ventura is back on the stand after court took a short break.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao asked Cassie Ventura to confirm the Johnson’s baby oil they used during “Freak Offs” was never laced with any drugs.

The defense attorney also asked her to confirm that filling a baby pool would take a lot of baby oil and might explain why Sean “Diddy” Combs was keeping lots of baby oil on hand.

Judge Arun Subramanian sustained an objection to that question.

Large amounts of baby oil were recovered during searches of Combs’ residences in Miami and Los Angeles in March 2024, according to an indictment at that time. Law enforcement seized “various Freak Off supplies,” including drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, at his homes, according to the indictment.

The jury was just dismissed for a short break. Testimony will resume soon.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao returned to Cassie Ventura’s previous testimony about the time Combs’ rival Marion “Suge” Knight was nearby and he and his security guards “quickly packed up and drove down there.”

Estevao pointed to a report from investigators after they met with Ventura in June 2024, which said she told them she was brought along in the car and cried. Ventura said that was incorrect.

“I didn’t go in the car with them,” she said.

During her testimony yesterday, Ventura said Combs was “rivals” with Knight, the former rap mogul who was sentenced to 28 years in prison for a fatal hit-and-run incident on the set of the movie “Straight Outta Compton.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs overdosed on painkillers in February 2012, Cassie Ventura confirmed while testifying.

Ventura said that on that day, they had a “Freak Off” and went to a sex club before Combs went without her to a party at the Playboy Mansion.

Later that night, she took him to the hospital, where they learned he’d experienced an overdose, she testified.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao has asked a lengthy line of questions to suggest Combs was reliant on opiates and any withdrawal from them would negatively affected his mood.

“He was extremely dependent on his opiates right?” she asked Ventura.

“For a time,” Ventura said.

“He was very upset if his opiates were taken away from him?” Estevao asked.

“I guess so,” Ventura said.

Cassie Ventura said that in early 2017, she got very sick from her drug use and began to look for help.

“I lost all sense of smell and taste when I woke up, and I had numbing in my arm,” she said. She said she also experienced some dissociative side effects from ketamine use.

Ventura confirmed that Sean “Diddy” Combs noticed some of her symptoms and suggested she see doctors.

She said that she didn’t tell Combs everything about her drug use throughout their relationship, but she added that they were both doing a lot of drugs.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao suggested that Cassie Ventura didn’t personally witness Sean “Diddy” Combs dangle her friend, Bryana “Bana” Bongolan, over a balcony at Ventura’s apartment as she’s previously alleged.

“Isn’t it true you learned about this incident after the fact?” Estevao asked.

“I saw what I saw,” Ventura responded.

Estevao showed Ventura a text message she sent Comb’s chief of staff Kristina Khorram shortly after the incident telling her that she learned of the altercation after the fact.

Ventura told the prosecution during her testimony yesterday that she woke up to find Combs holding her friend over her balcony railing before throwing her onto the patio furniture.

Estevao asked Ventura if she was on drugs that night. Ventura testified she couldn’t remember if she’d done drugs before falling asleep earlier that day.

Cassie Ventura said Sean “Diddy” Combs was “explosive” at times when he’d find out she was doing drugs with her friends or took his drugs without him knowing.

“If we weren’t getting high, or if I wasn’t doing it with him, it was a problem,” she said.

Sean “Diddy” Combs controlled Cassie Ventura’s career through her record deal with his company and his clout in the industry as a whole, Jem Aswad, executive music editor at Variety, told CNN today.

By 2011, Ventura had only made one album, even though she signed a 10-album deal with Combs’ label, Bad Boy Records. Aswad described Ventura as a “mid-level star at the time.”

He said that while most record companies signed similar long-term deals, seven albums was usually the standard. Aswad said Ventura’s terms were “very restrictive,” adding that a deal like that “locks you up for your career and then some.”

And Aswad said that, despite Combs developing a reputation around the industry for having a temper and even being violent, the fear he struck in others insulated him from consequences and kept certain things from coming to light.

Cassie Ventura testified that her friends knew that Sean “Diddy” Combs physically abused her — sometimes because they witnessed the abuse themselves, she said.

She said she also told her parents and brother about the abuse at different points.

At the time, Sean “Diddy” Combs was also suspicious that Cassie Ventura was starting to date actor Michael B. Jordan.

When asked about it, Ventura said she didn’t know how Combs reacted to this news because she wasn’t with him to see it.

Defense attorney Anna Estevao moved on from that line of questioning without expanding on that purported relationship with Jordan.

Cassie Ventura testified that in 2015, she broke off her relationship with Combs for a time while she was in South Africa filming a movie.

She said she broke it off with Combs by sending a video of him with another woman at an event to a text chain with Combs and some of his closest staff. Ventura said she felt betrayed by them for not telling her.

Ventura said she also blocked Combs’ phone number for a time while she was filming.

Cassie Ventura’s answers to questions from both the prosecution and defense are setting up the more fleshed out arguments lawyers will make over the next several weeks of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ criminal trial, a trial consultant told CNN.

First, the testimony will be bolstered by expert witnesses for each side, Richard Gabriel said.

The prosecution will bring experts who likely argue that, “psychologically, this does meet the threshold for coercion and sort of her being under the thumb of Sean Combs,” Gabriel told CNN. Meantime, the defense’s experts will likely say it does not, and argue her “independence and her ability to leave” the relationship.

Secondly, the lawyers will take what Ventura says on the stand and argue the actual legal statutes. They will need to explain to the jury how her testimony does — or doesn’t — meet the legal definition of what Combs is accused of, Gabriel said.

Jurors “fundamentally have to get their own gut feeling as to whether there’s real participation on her part,” he said.

This sentiment was underscored during a conversation between the lawyers and the judge earlier today about how much longer Ventura would be on the stand. Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo stressed to the judge that the defense believes Ventura is the most important witness in the case.