I should say up front that I don’t really care about Sean Combs in any of his various incarnations as a rapper or a business mogul. In fact the only music I can associate him with is some song he did for the terrible 1998 Godzilla movie where he appeared with Jimmy Page. My thought at the time was that it was pretty terrible.
Nevertheless, I assumed that he must have something to offer someone since so many people seemed to like him. He’s been a big celebrity for a long time at this point. Really the only thing that registered with me is that every year or two he had a new nickname. P-Diddy. Diddy. Puff. Puff-Daddy. It was a lot of nicknames for one guy. He sort of seemed like the most self-absorbed rapper out there until Kanye West came along.
All that to say, the news coming out of his trial this week is really the first time I’ve paid any attention to Sean Combs and wow!! If the testimony against him is even half true he’s quite a creepy weirdo. If you’ve been similarly out of the loop on P. Diddy, you’ll probably be shocked too.
Combs is on trial for five federal charges “one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.” Of course, he’s innocent until proven guilty and has denied all the charges against him but with that said, here’s what his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, has been saying in court.
Ventura testified that their relationship started platonically when she was signed to Bad Boy Records in 2006, she was 19 at the time. She later told the court she was “really confused” the first time Combs kissed her while celebrating her 21st birthday in Las Vegas. She described him as a “fun guy who also happened to have my career in his hands,” saying he called “all of the shots” while she was younger.
Ventura said some of their arguments would be violent and result in “some sort of physical abuse.” “He would smash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” she said. Combs experienced mood swings, and if she didn’t answer her phone, he would call her incessantly or send staff to find her, Ventura testified.
In the first years of their relationship, Ventura said Combs proposed “this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism where he would watch me be in intercourse” with another man, which “shocked” her. She said she didn’t feel like she could refuse them, adding that Combs controlled “a lot” of her life.
And this really was Combs’ thing, according to Ventura. Starting when she was 22, Combs would routinely pressure her to have these parties called “freak offs” which were like drug-fueled orgies in which she would have sex with male prostitutes while he told everyone what to do.
“Every ‘Freak Off’ was, like, directed by Sean, like he knew specifically where he wanted everyone to be, the lighting and such,” Ventura said…
“I was high, so there wasn’t too much feeling,” she said, but recalls feeling “dirty and confusion.” But said she felt like, “okay, he’s really happy with me.”
And this just went on for years, with Combs demanding she do this and her agreeing and gradually becoming more reliant on drugs to help her forget about it.
Cassie Ventura said after a “freak off” she would go back to Combs’ place, where they would have massages to take care of themselves.
“I had an addiction to opiates, so I would take pills to come down,” she told the courtroom. “I wanted to feel numb and not know what was going on in my mind.”
Her drug of choice became Ketamine which she described in her testimony as the “most dissociative.”
And on top of the sex parties, there was also (according to testimony) frequent domestic violence. There were so many instances that Ventura said she couldn’t count them all.
“Sean would put his hands on me, he would push me down … kick me,” she told the courtroom…
When asked by prosecutors how often Combs would injure her during the “freak offs,” she replied, “Too often.”
One of the incidents, which happened at a hotel in 2016, was caught on video.
🚨 DIDDY TRIAL BOMBSHELL
Sean Combs allegedly handed a hotel security guard $100K in a brown paper bag to bury footage of his 2016 assault on Cassie Ventura.7 explosive revelations about abuse, control & sex trafficking by Cassie.#DiddyTrial #SeanCombs pic.twitter.com/wuCeVVc3pn
— HOLLYWOOD (@HollywoodOnTV) May 13, 2025
That incident caused her to finally tell him to stay away.
Combs texted her again asking her to call him. He claimed the police were there and he was getting arrested. “Call me the cops are here you’re going to abandon me all alone,” he said.
She texted him that she had a premiere coming up for what she said was the biggest thing she’d done in her life so far.
But there had been other incidents like this before this one.
She said she woke up to a “commotion” with Sean “Diddy” Combs in her apartment, yelling about her being asleep and not packing for an upcoming trip. Two of her friends jumped on Combs’ back “because he was trying to attack me,” she said.
“Eventually we ended up from the living room into the master bedroom, and they were still jumping on his back, and when he threw me down, I hurt my eyebrow on the corner of my bed,” she testified, adding that she had a “pretty significant gash on the side of my eyebrow.”
One of Combs’ security guards took Ventura to a plastic surgeon that day to suture her injury, Ventura testified.
Combs’ lawyers say they are looking forward to cross examination.
Speaking to CNN outside the courthouse before the start of Ventura’s second day of testimony at Combs’ racketeering and sex trafficking trial, spokesperson Holly Baird acknowledged his toxic behavior but said it was not “criminal.”…
“We can’t ignore the domestic violence, the toxic relationship, the jealously and the potential infidelity that occurred throughout the duration of their relationship — however, when you look at the charges, it appears that the intimacy that occurred within their bedroom is kindly — not criminal,” she added.
I think that’s supposed to say “kinky not criminal” but you get the idea. The defense is admitting he’s a bad guy who committed domestic violence, they are just claiming it didn’t rise to the level of the federal sex trafficking and other charges Combs is facing. We’ll see how that argument plays with the jury.
