• Cassie Ventura testified for more than 20 hours at Sean "Diddy" Combs' criminal trial.
• Her testimony revealed big settlements, "freak off" details, and a Playboy Mansion overdose.
• Here are 8 of the biggest revelations to have come out of the trial so far.

The R&B singer Cassie Ventura — Sean "Diddy" Combs' ex-girlfriend and the catalyst for his public downfall — testified at his criminal trial last week about humiliating sexual violence she says she endured throughout their 11-year relationship.

Ventura spent more than 20 hours on the witness stand over the course of four days, at times giving tearful testimony, in a packed Manhattan federal courtroom as Combs sat opposite her at the defense table.

The singer, while eight months pregnant, played a central role in Combs' ongoing sex-trafficking and racketeering trial as the prosecution's star witness. During the trial's opening statements, a prosecutor told jurors that Combs used "lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce" Ventura and later an anonymous Jane Doe into dayslong sex performances that the hip-hop mogul called "freak offs."

Combs was arrested in September on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution — the culmination of months of lawsuits and public accusations of sexual assault and other misconduct.

It was Ventura's November 2023 lawsuit that began this avalanche of accusations. Filed about 10 months before the criminal charges, it accused Combs of rape, physical abuse, and controlling her during their relationship. The lawsuit was settled a day later for what Ventura testified was $20 million.

Combs has denied all wrongdoing. The music tycoon is arguing through his defense team that all sexual encounters were consensual, including the drug-fueled freak offs. The defense also argues that any violence fell far short of sex trafficking and that his accusers have a financial motive to implicate him.

Here are some of the most striking moments from the trial so far.

Dawn Richard's testimony highlighted a brutal beating, an alleged death threat, and flowers

Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard was the fifth prosecution witness, and her testimony on May 16 alleged that in 2009, Combs brutally beat Ventura after she took too long to cook him dinner.

"Where's my fucking egg?" Richard recounted Combs shouting in 2009, as he stormed into the kitchen of his rented Los Angeles mansion.

"He took the skillet with the eggs in it and tried to hit her in the head, and she fell to the ground," Richard testified.

Ventura cowered on the floor "in a fetal position" as Combs punched her and kicked her, she said. Then he dragged her upstairs by her hair, she said, adding that she then heard the sound of screaming and breaking glass from the third floor.

The next day, Combs called Ventura and Richard into the mansion's first-floor recording studio, she said.

"He said that what we saw was passion, and it was what lovers in a relationship do," Richard said.

She said Combs told the two women that "he was trying to take us to the top, and that, where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, like, if people talk. And then he gave us flowers."

While back on the stand on May 19, Richard re-emphasized that she felt this was a threat to her life.

The details in the testimony came as a surprise to Combs' lead defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, who called it prejudicial and "just a drop dead lie."

"It didn't happen," the lawyer complained to the judge. "And the reason we know it didn't happen is that Ms. Ventura didn't talk about it" during her four days on the witness stand.

On cross-examination on May 19, Richard agreed that she only recalled the alleged death threat in speaking with prosecutors earlier this month. It had gone unmentioned, she agreed, during a half-dozen prior interviews with prosecutors.

Combs attacked Ventura over bathroom use, prosecutor and ex-bestie say

Ventura was beaten by Combs for the most minor of perceived infractions, including taking too long in the bathroom, prosecutor Emily Johnson said in her opening statement.

"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," Johnson said.

Ventura's ex-best friend, Kerry Morgan, was called to the witness stand on May 19 and told jurors about two attacks on Ventura she witnessed, including one while on vacation in Jamaica in 2013.

Morgan said Ventura at one point went to the bathroom at the residence where they were staying, and Combs said, "She's taking too long."

"A few minutes later, I heard her screaming — like guttural. Terrifying," Morgan said. "He was dragging her by her hair on the floor."

Morgan told jurors that she saw Combs push Ventura to the ground, causing her to hit her head on the paving bricks.

"She didn't move. She fell on her side," Morgan said, adding, "I thought she was knocked out."

Ventura, too, had testified that arguments with Combs would regularly result in physical abuse.

Ventura —who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018 — described six separate times when 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.

She said she hid under the back seat to escape the attack. Combs demanded she stay hidden in a hotel for a week so her bruises could heal, she said.

The surprising things Combs kept in his luxury NYC hotel room while waiting to be arrested

The prosecution's fourth witness took the witness stand briefly on May 16 to detail what she and other Homeland Security investigators say they found inside Combs' suite at Manhattan's Park Hyatt New York after his September arrest.

Combs had checked into the luxury Midtown hotel, his lawyers have said, in case federal prosecutors in Manhattan had asked him to surrender voluntarily.

Special Agent Yasin Binda told the Combs jury she photographed what her colleagues found inside the room.

Those items included a clear plastic bag of baby oil bottles found inside a duffle bag. There were three more bottles of baby oil in his bathtub, alongside two bottles of personal lubricant.

Two more bottles of lubricant were recovered from a nightstand drawer, next to a prescription pill bottle she said held two small baggies containing a pink powder.

On the living room floor was a large blue party light of the kind Ventura testified were used to illuminate freak offs.

Similar bags of pink powder have previously been seized from Combs and tested positive for ecstasy and other drugs, a prosecutor had said in court the day after Combs was arrested.

Ventura's big settlements after her lawsuit and that infamous hallway-beatdown video

In some of her final moments on the witness stand, Ventura was asked by the defense about a legal settlement that she said she is on the verge of receiving from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles.

"I think it was $10 million," Ventura said of the settlement, hesitating when asked for the total amount agreed to.

The InterContinental is where security cameras captured Combs beating Ventura in a hallway in 2016, as she tried to flee what prosecutors say was one of Combs' freak offs.

The jury was shown the infamous footage at the beginning of the trial.

Johnson, the prosecutor, said in her opening statements that at the time of the attack, Combs paid a security guard at the hotel $100,000 in a brown paper envelope in exchange for the footage.

Combs apologized for his actions in the video after CNN published the footage last year.

It was the second big-money settlement revealed in Ventura's testimony.

Earlier in her testimony, Ventura told jurors that Combs paid her $20 million to settle her civil suit against him in 2023.

Britney Spears and Michael B. Jordan became the biggest celebrity mentions of the trial

Pop icon Britney Spears and actor Michael B. Jordan were both name-dropped on May 15, on Ventura's third day of testimony.

During a cross-examination, Ventura was asked to tell the jury about the 21st birthday party Combs threw for her in 2007, at a club in Las Vegas.

The party was a significant moment in the Combs-Ventura story. Ventura testified that Combs, who recently signed her to his record label, gave her an uninvited kiss in a bathroom, sparking their relationship.

"I believe there were other celebrities there in attendance?" defense attorney Anna Estevao asked Ventura, who answered yes, there were.

"Sean was there, and he brought Dallas Austin, he brought Britney Spears," Ventura said, referring to the "Oops!… I Did It Again" singer and the record producer. "I think those were the two people that stand out to me," Ventura added.

Asked how a 21-year-old of limited fame was able to attract such big names to her party, Ventura credited Combs, saying, "That was all him."

Jordan's name came up as the cross-examination focused on 2015, when Combs became suspicious that she was having an affair with the actor.

"Is Michael B. Jordan a celebrity?" Estevao asked.

"I would say so," Ventura answered, sounding surprised.

Combs overdosed on opioids at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura said

Both Combs and Ventura were heavy opioid users, the R&B singer testified — and on one late night in February 2012, the pills he took made the rapper seriously ill, she said.

"Was that around the time that Whitney Houston died?" Estevao, Combs' defense attorney, asked about the timing.

"Yes," Ventura said.

That evening, the pair went to a sex club in San Bernardino, California, and then she went home, and Combs went to a party at the Playboy Mansion, Ventura told jurors.

"Well, from what he told me, he took a very strong opiate that night, but we didn't know what was happening, so we took him to the hospital," Ventura testified.

There, she said, she learned that he had overdosed on whatever painkillers he had taken, she said.

Combs was said to be enraged over Ventura's romance with Kid Cudi

Ventura told jurors that she briefly dated rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, in 2011 and that it sent Combs into a violent rage.

Combs discovered the relationship during a freak off in Los Angeles when he went through Ventura's phone, she testified.

"I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me," Ventura said, adding that Combs' "eyes blacked out, super angry."

"And I just had to get out of there," she said. "It was actually another time I was able to get out of a freak off."

When Ventura saw Combs at his home later that day she said he was "irate" and threatened to release freak off videos of her and "hurt Scott and I."

On her way out, Ventura said Combs kicked her in the back so hard that she fell to the floor.

Ventura, whose lawsuit first suggested that Combs was responsible for blowing up a car that belonged to Kid Cudi in 2012, told jurors that Combs said Kid Cudi's car "would be blown up" when they were out of the country.

"Sean wanted Scott's friends to be there to see the car get blown up in the driveway," she testified.

Prosecutors alleged in court papers that Combs ordered his underlings to torch a vehicle "by slicing open the car's convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside the interior."

Ventura said she first joined Diddy's freak offs out of love

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.

Johnson said in her opening statements that Combs eventually made it Ventura's job to find and book escorts to participate in the sex encounters.

While on the stand, Ventura described in detail what went on during freak offs. Prosecutors say Combs arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded the sex performances.

Ventura testified 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."

• A jury has been seated for Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex-trafficking trial in New York City.
• The jurors are eight men and four women.
• Four of them have said they listen to R&B or hip-hop.

A scientist. A massage therapist. A deli clerk.

These New Yorkers are among the eight-man, four-woman panel of jurors who are set to determine Sean "Diddy" Combs' fate in his criminal sex-trafficking case.

Combs, a hip-hop mogul and businessman who was once on the cusp of becoming a billionaire, faces up to life in prison if convicted at trial of all the charges against him.

The 12 jurors, plus six alternates, were seated on Monday following a jury selection process that unfolded over a week in a Manhattan federal courtroom.

Four of the jurors selected for the trial — which is expected to run about two months — said during the process, known as voir dire, that they liked hip-hop or R&B music.

One of them, a 30-year-old woman from the Bronx who works the deli counter at the grocery chain Gristedes, said that her mother was arrested and convicted over 20 years ago for stealing money from a bank.

"She worked in the bank, and they caught her and she got arrested," the woman previously told the court.

Another juror, a retired 68-year-old man from Westchester, wrote in his jury questionnaire that he had viewed the infamous security-camera footage in which Combs appears to beat Cassie Ventura, an R&B singer who was his girlfriend at the time.

Ventura is the prosecution's key witness, and jurors are expected to be shown that footage at trial, among other graphic videos.

That juror also said he had a problem viewing graphic videos showing violence but would force himself to watch if needed.

"I wouldn't be biased. And, to be honest, I'd have to make myself look at it," said the man, who worked for Verizon for 40 years.

At the end of the jury selection, Combs' defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said prosecutors had used their preemptory strikes to unfairly keep Black members out of the jury.

He's previously argued that the Justice Department has targeted Combs because of his race.

"By our count, the government struck seven Black people, which we believe amounts to a pattern," Agnifilo told the judge.

The prosecutor Maurene Comey detailed the reasons she struck each juror, making the case for each one. One attended the same high school as Combs, making him susceptible to unconscious bias, she said. Another talked about how some accusers would jump on a "bandwagon" to accuse famous people of abuse, making it possible she'd be biased against victims, Comey said.

The judge ultimately ruled that Combs' legal team couldn't prove prosecutors tried to exclude jurors based on race.

Meanwhile, Combs' family members, including his children and mother, filled two rows of benches in the courtroom on Monday. They were seated behind the defense table where Combs sat wearing a light-colored sweater and eyeglasses.

At times, he blew kisses to his family.

Combs was arrested and indicted in September on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has strongly denied all charges and all allegations of sexual abuse.

Prosecutors allege that for decades, Combs led a "criminal enterprise" that involved the sex trafficking of two women, Ventura and an anonymous Jane Doe.

Combs, 55, is also accused of coercing those women, plus another two, into sex through a pattern of threats and violence.

At the core of the Combs' indictment are allegations that the "I'll Be Missing You" rapper organized elaborate sex encounters that he called "freak offs." In court papers, prosecutors described the events as dayslong, drug-fueled sex performances that Combs directed and often recorded.

Over the course of the trial, jurors are set to be shown hours of graphic sex videos that prosecutors say Combs recorded over the years, including footage prosecutors allege was taken without his accusers' consent.

Some of the footage depicts Combs' freak offs.

• Jury selection began in New York on Monday for the Diddy trial.
• Three prospective jurors told the court about their own experiences with sexual assault.
• None of them has been excluded from the jury pool. One accuser's lawyer said that's the right call.

Three prospective jurors in the sex-trafficking trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs shared their own experiences of sexual assault.

Their stories were revealed Monday during the first day of jury selection in Manhattan federal court.

None of the three women, so far, have been removed from the pool of people who may eventually decide Combs' fate. They all told US District Judge Arun Subramanian, who is presiding over the case, that they could be impartial in weighing the evidence in the trial.

Combs has vehemently denied the charges against him, as well as all other allegations of sex abuse. If Combs — who was once estimated to be worth $820 million — is convicted at trial on all charges, he faces up to life in prison.

The hip-hop mogul has been locked up at a federal Brooklyn jail since his September 2024 arrest and indictment on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The first jurors may be seated as early as Tuesday morning.

Experiences of sexual assault

As part of the jury selection process, prospective jurors were given a written questionnaire that asked if they had been victims of sexual assault.

Three women among those who responded "yes" to the question discussed their experiences in court on Monday. They answered questions from US District Judge Arun Subramanian, who is deciding whether they can be impartial in deciding the case.

The first, who is in her 40s, told the judge that a family member molested her and her sister when they were young. She said she would "feel empathy toward the victims" but that she was "also a very rational person" who could keep a fair and objective view.

"I'm sorry that happened," Subramanian told the woman.

The woman said she works as a photo producer at HBO, which was subpoenaed by Combs' defense lawyers, who wanted to obtain raw interview footage of victims for "The Fall of Diddy" docuseries.

A second woman said she was sexually assaulted around 1996 by a neighbor. They had begun to date, and "he took it too far and sexually assaulted me in the stairwell of my house," she said.

The woman, who said she studied the relationship between sexual assault and women's self-esteem in college, said it was possible to hold nuanced views about perpetrators of sexual assault.

"I don't think it's a good thing, but I don't think it makes the person who did it horrible in all respects," she said.

The third survivor, a white woman in her 60s, said she was sexually assaulted as a teenager when she worked for a dentist for around two years. The dentist was "grossly inappropriate" and kissed and fondled her, she said.

But in more recent years, she has opened her mind to "both sides" of the relationship between perpetrators and victims, she said.

"I work very hard to remain impartial to people every day," she said.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys are trying to find a fair jury

Jury selection in the high-profile trial is expected to take several days, with the trial anticipated to run for about eight weeks.

Combs donned black framed glasses, black slacks, and a sweater with a crisp, white collar peeking through at the neck.

Linda Moreno, a jury selection consultant whom Combs has hired, was the first on the rapper's team to arrive at the courtroom on Monday. As a criminal defense lawyer, Moreno has represented actor Wesley Snipes and Noor Salman, and has done jury consultant work for Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.

The "I'll Be Missing You" singer appeared in good spirits, smiling as he hugged or shook hands with his team of about a dozen defense attorneys and staff before taking his seat.

Among those seated in the courtroom gallery on Monday was Douglas Wigdor, the attorney for Combs' ex-girlfriend R&B singer Cassie Ventura, who is expected to testify at the trial. Ventura is referred to as "Victim-1" in the indictment against Combs.

Also in court were Lisa Bloom and Arick Fudali, who represent another of Combs's accusers who expected to testify. Fudali told Business Insider that being the victim of sexual assault should not be disqualifying for jurors.

"What I heard there today is that all three of those jurors, who expressed having experienced sexual or harass sexual assault, also expressed that they could be impartial and they can separate their own experiences from the trial," Fudali said. "And that's what you want in a juror, and that's why I believe none of them were excluded."

At the center of the indictment against Combs are accusations he orchestrated "freak offs," which prosecutors describe in court papers as "elaborate and produced sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded."

In these alleged drug-fueled sex sessions, prosecutors say Combs "used force, threats of force, and coercion" to get female victims to engage in sex acts with male commercial sex workers.

Combs and his associates "wielded the power and prestige" of the rapper's success to "intimidate, threaten, and lure female victims" into his orbit "often under the pretense of a romantic relationship," prosecutors said in the indictment.

During the jury selection process, known as voir dire, prospective jurors will be asked if they can objectively deliberate in a case involving graphic sex.

Those who are selected for the jury will be asked during the trial to watch hours of graphic sex videos that Combs recorded over the years, including footage prosecutors allege was taken without his accusers' consent. Some of the videos are from Combs' so-called freak offs.

For Combs to win an acquittal, jurors would need to believe these videos depict a consensual good time, as the defense has insisted was the case.

Jury selection will continue Tuesday morning with the sides selecting the first jurors from among 19 prospects — 11 women and 8 men — who were questioned in detail about what they already know about the case from the media. Only three in the group said they listen to hip hop.

This story was updated to include developments from later Monday.