Everything to Know About the Diddy Trial: A Complete Timeline

Update, 7/2/2025: On Wednesday morning, Sean “Diddy” Combs was found guilty on two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution. However, a Manhattan jury found him not guilty on the three more severe charges he faced of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, the latter of which held a maximum sentence of life in prison. Combs now faces up to 20 years in prison, as the maximum sentencing for each of his guilty convictions is 10 years. Judge Arun Subramanian will decide later today if Combs will remain behind bars until his sentencing.

Original article below:

Sean “Diddy” Combs has used many monikers throughout his career – Puff, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and the creepiest one, Love – but he seems to be faithful to at least a few things: Astroglide lubricant, Johnson’s baby oil, applesauce on cheeseburgers and abhorrent sexual violence.

That’s what has come to light since the disgraced hip-hop mogul’s trial began in early May. There are likely several more months to go in this trial, which charges Combs, 55, with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. Since his arrest by the FBI on September 16, 2024, Combs has been behind bars in New York, and he faces life in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty. His mother has attended trials daily, often attended by his sons and step-son; his daughters, who recently graduated high school, have not attended since the first days of trial.

So far, witnesses have included assistants, male escorts, the rapper Kid Cudi and the star witness, Cassie Ventura, the R&B singer known mononymously as Cassie, who was in a relationship with Combs for more than ten years after signing with his label, Bad Boy, at age nineteen in 2006. Combs was about 37 at the time.

The defense has been saying that these testimonies only showcase that Combs was a troubled man susceptible to violent mood swings driven by jealousy – not that he is a sex trafficker helming a false enterprise. To convict Combs of sex trafficking Ventura, the government must prove that he forced or coerced her into his now-infamous freak-offs, which involved sometimes days of sex and drugs and bottles of baby oil. And as more and more testimony pours in, it seems – to laymen, at least – that a conviction could be likely.

While it is unknown how long federal agents have been eyeing Combs, the producer came under fire in November 2023, when Ventura sued him, accusing him of rape, sex trafficking and domestic violence. She also alleged that he set Kid Cudi’s car on fire after discovering they were dating while Combs and Ventura were on a break. A video affirming her account of Combs beating her at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles was also leaked, making international headlines. The suit was settled the next day, for $20 million, but since then, more than 100 suits have been filed by  alleged victims, ranging from children to teens to adults. By February, one of Combs’s six lawyers, Anthony Ricco, withdrew from the defense team: “Under no circumstances can I continue to effectively serve as counsel for Sean Combs,” he said. (For context, Ricco represented Osama bin Laden back in 1998, as well as other terrorists.)

Keep reading to see what has happened at the trial so far. This post will be updated with new information; it cites quotes and reporting from CNN, the New York Times and the New York Post. Westword decided to compile it all in one place, because this is a historic trial that showcases a myriad of issues, both in the music industry and in society at large, as well as the forms that abuse can take in relationships both romantic and business.

Diddy Trial Week One: Cassie Ventura Testimony

“Y’all need to rub more baby oil on each other. You don’t have enough on.” That’s what escort Daniel Philip testified Combs told Ventura at the Gramercy Park Hotel in NYC in 2012, according to the New York Post. On the first day of the trial on May 12, Philip said that for several years, he was paid up to $6,000 to partake in freak-offs. The first time he met with the couple, Combs tried to disguise himself, wearing a bandanna over the lower half of his face and a baseball cap, but Philip said he recognized the hip-hop producer’s voice immediately. He testified that the sessions could last as long as ten hours or more, and during at least two freak-offs, Combs beat Ventura.

Philip, who was the first witness called to the stand, said that he believed Ventura was in “real danger,” but never went to the police because Diddy had taken a photo of his driver’s license, which he perceived as a threat.

The first day of testimony also included Israel Florez, a security guard for the Intercontinental Hotel, where footage showed Diddy beating Ventura in an elevator bay, as well as throwing a glass vase at her. Florez testified that Diddy gave him a wad of cash after the incident, and said he believed it was “100 percent” a bribe to keep the now-viral footage under wraps. That footage was a major focus during the first week of the trial, as it shows Ventura trying to quietly escape the hotel, even waiting to put on her shoes until she got to the elevator, and the hip-hop mogul using abuse as a means to coerce Ventura to stay in the hotel, grabbing her bags and returning them to the room after dragging her by her hoodie and repeatedly kicking her.

At more than eight months pregnant, Ventura took the stand on May 13; her testimony lasted until the end of the week, with the judge placing a time limit on the defense after the prosecution noted that if she went into labor and didn’t finish the testimony, a mistrial could be declared. Her pregnancy was again referenced by the judge when it was decided that for the rest of her testimony, she would be seated before the jury came to court, because the visibility of her pregnancy could cause prejudice.

The singer’s testimony underscored the psychological turmoil abuse victims suffer, a cycle that ultimately causes them to return to their abuser, similar to Stockholm Syndrome. With strength and poise, Ventura detailed the numerous, uncountable instances of horror she suffered during her decade-plus relationship with Combs. She testified that there were “too many to count” in regard to assaults from her then-partner.

The R&B singer said that she signed a ten-album contract with Combs, but only released one record, Cassie, that same year. Despite the album’s successful hit single “Me & U,” Ventura said that her life was under Combs’s control when they started a relationship when she was 21. “Control was everything from the way that I looked to what I was working on that day, who I was speaking to,” she said. “Control was kind of an all-around thing to a certain point.”

She said that when she wanted to release music, Combs would give her “busy work” to delay dropping anything new. “I think busy work, just the way I interpreted it, was just control – control over what I was doing over every minute of the day,” she said.

The R&B singer said her relationship with Combs evolved from being “loving” to akin to sex work, with Combs demanding she partake in freak-offs. “Within the first year of our relationship, he proposed this idea, this sexual encounter that he called voyeurism where he would watch me be in intercourse with a third party, specifically with another man,” she told the jury, noting that freak-offs involved her “hiring an escort and setting up this experience, so that I could perform for Sean.”

“Eventually it became a job for me, pretty much,” she said, “so I knew if it was something he wanted me to do, I had the contacts to set it up and get a hotel room and all of that, but in the beginning, Sean set it up. He was in charge.”

When the prosecution asked, “Throughout eleven years in your relationship with Sean, who did you want to have sex with?”, Ventura replied, “Just him.” Ventura expressed that she believed the relationship was monogamous at the time, as that is what Combs demanded of her, although she discovered that wasn’t true for him.

She said his mood swings – Combs has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder – “affected my whole life, my career, how I felt about myself, my self-worth.”

“If he was in the mood to have a freak-off, my work would take the back seat,” she said.

The freak-offs were planned, and Ventura said she and assistants were tasked with supplying the room with baby oil, lubricant and drugs. He once had her fill a blow-up pool with baby oil, which had to be heated and consistently reapplied, she testified. She called the freak-offs “his fantasy,” saying that “he was controlling the whole situation. He was directing it.” When prosecution asked Ventura when the escorts were allowed to ejaculate, she replied, “Usually when it was okay for them, per Sean. But…usually they did it on me. And then Sean and I would go in the next room and he would want me to put the semen on his body.”

Combs had Ventura find male escorts on classified ads, she testified, adding that he specified that he preferred “a Black male with a large penis.” Combs would have to approve the selection, which she said included escorts with such names as “the Punisher,” and he would refer to the escorts as new staff members when booking through their travel agent. When it came to the freak-offs themselves, there was often a pattern Ventura and the escort had to follow, with Ventura testifying she would ask Combs if they could move on to the next “act” in order to quicken the process. “He was controlling the whole situation, he was directing it,” she said.

Aside from voyeurism and violence, Ventura also revealed that Combs had the kink of urinating on her while watching the escort do the same. During one encounter, she said she was choking on the stream and put her hands up to stop, but her boyfriend ordered the escort to continue. “It was disgusting. It was too much,” she said of the freak-offs. “It was overwhelming.”

Ventura said the freak-offs would take place in New York, Miami, L.A., Atlanta, Vegas and abroad, and could sometimes last for days on end. Drugs were a major component of the abusive marathons, including MDMA, shrooms, cocaine and ketamine, which she said she preferred because it allowed her to dissociate. “For me, it was dissociative and numbing. I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of that without having some sort of buffer or just way to not feel it for what it really was,” Ventura said.

She said she was high for every freak-off, and that most of the drugs – particularly MDMA – made her sick “almost every time.” But Combs “would encourage me to get up and continue on with it,” she told the jury. “Continue on with the intercourse even if I felt like I was vomiting, or if I was.” At this point, Ventura asked for a break in the testimony, and the judge obliged.

She testified that she became addicted to opiates, using them as a way to dissociate from the experiences and to come down from the other drugs used during the freak-offs. Recovery could take days, she said, before having to return to the same experience again. Combs was also addicted to opiates, she said, and had once experienced an overdose. To book rooms, Combs would use aliases such as Frank Black. (His old client Biggie Smalls used to refer to himself as the Black Frank White, the name of a character played by Christopher Walken in the 1990 film King of New York.) The name will come up later in the trial.

Ventura noted that the freak-offs weren’t just emotionally painful, but physically. Outside of the attacks from Combs she would suffer during the forced escapades, she had frequent UTIs and sores on her tongue from the encounters. Despite the pain it caused, Combs had her continue participating, and simply told her to see a doctor.

When the defense began its cross-examination, Combs’s lawyers brought up text messages that showed Ventura saying she was excited for freak-offs. But the singer insisted that she was only trying to make her partner happy, noting that what she wrote were “just words at that point.”

“It just felt like it was all I was good for to him,” she said of partaking in freak-offs, in which she would “perform” for him. Ventura said she felt a “responsibility” to be part of the orgies, noting, “It got to a point where I just didn’t feel like I had much of a choice, didn’t really know what ‘no’ could be or what ‘no’ could turn into.”

The elevator footage from the Intercontinental shows what it could turn into. Ventura was fleeing a freak-off after Combs went to take a shower, she said, because the freak-off “got violent and I chose to leave.”

“I’m not sure what happened, but I got hit by Sean and I had a black eye, and at that point all I could think about was getting out of there safely,” she said. “I had my premiere, I didn’t want to mess it up, so I left.”

“Sean followed me into the hallway by the elevators,” she testified. “He grabbed me up, threw me on the ground, kicked me, tried to drag me back to the room, took my stuff.” Ventura had a movie premiere days later, and had to wear large sunglasses and body makeup to disguise her injuries. The jury was also shown text messages of Ventura discussing the hotel assault with Combs, after he texted her saying he was “horny.”

The freak-offs were documented, at first starting on Ventura’s devices, but she would immediately delete them, calling them “humiliating” and “disgusting.” She said, “I never wanted anyone to ever see me like that.”

Combs would then record the freak-offs and lie to Ventura about deleting them, she said. This footage would come up in arguments, and Combs would use it as a means of control, threatening to release it and humiliate her. However, the defense later pointed to a 2014 exchange of texts as “proof” that Combs didn’t really want the videos released: In Atlantic City, a man had told Ventura he had seen pornographic footage of her, and she began screaming at him. A recording of the confrontation was played for the jury, who heard Ventura yelling, “I will kill you if you don’t show me right now. I will cut you up and put you in the fucking dirt right now.”

The jury also saw texts between Combs and Ventura about the incident, with Combs writing, “You gotta tell him this is your life – this is serious.” However, Combs made his own threats: Ventura testified that he would use the footage as bribery, noting, “That was a big part of our relationship.” He often would make the threats “when he was angry about something or just really wanted me to fear,” she said, telling the jury, “I feared for my career, I feared for my family. It’s horrible, it’s disgusting. No one should do that to anyone.”

She detailed numerous accounts of physical abuse outside and inside the freak-offs. “He would smash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” Ventura said, adding that she sustained several injuries, from busted lips to bruises, knots on her forehead and more. At one point in 2013, Ventura woke up to Combs causing a “commotion” in her apartment, she said, and as he was yelling about her sleeping and not packing for a trip, he was about to attack her when two of her friends jumped on his back to stop him. He threw them off and continued beating her.

“Eventually we ended up from the living room into the master bedroom,” she said, “and they were still jumping on his back, and when he threw me down, I hurt my eyebrow on the corner of my bed.” Ventura noted she received “pretty significant gash on the side of my eyebrow,” and that day, Combs’s security took her to a plastic surgeon to fix the wound, but more than a decade later, it is still visible. Other text messages showed Ventura comparing Combs to Ike Turner, who notably beat his wife, Tina Turner.

Even after such fights, Ventura would be coerced into freak-offs. “Whatever was going to make him not be angry at me and threatening me, I was willing to do,” she said, recounting her thoughts after a fight at the Cannes Film Festival that ended with a freak-off when they landed in New York. “I just didn’t want to feel scared anymore. And it was the one thing he made me feel like I was good at.”

She said that she learned not to fight back when Combs beat her. At one point, after partying at an L.A. club, she said she was drunk and punched him for calling her names. Combs proceeded to beat her in his car until she fell to the ground, and stomped on her face. She later looked at herself in a mirror at his home, and said she couldn’t recognize herself: “Just knots and bleeding, swollen everything. I looked horrible.” Combs then sent her to a hotel to recover where she wouldn’t be seen, and Ventura testified that she was afraid of leaving him. “I didn’t have the resources I needed to get out and move, to get out and not have anybody stop me,” she said. “I understood Sean’s capabilities, his access to guns, and the threats that he made prior to that.”

Although her mother had read an account of the incident online that did not include Ventura’s name, she called her daughter to ask if it was her. Ventura said it wasn’t, explaining to the jury, “I didn’t tell my mom the truth because I was ashamed, but I also felt like at that point I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t want to put my mother in danger of knowing anything of that magnitude.”

But Ventura did end up emailing her mother when Combs again threatened to release freak-off tapes, this time after he caught wind of her romance with Kid Cudi, born Scott Mescudi. She told her mom about the threats, in which Combs said he would “hurt” her and Cudi, and that it would happen while he was outside the country. Combs had learned about her relationship with Cudi during a freak-off – which she continued because “it had become a job” and because she was scared – and attacked her with a wine opener between his fingers. Ventura managed to escape, and called Cudi on a burner phone – which she used to communicate with him – to come pick her up.

Not long after Combs told Ventura he would blow Cudi’s car up, he did so. She testified she joined a meeting between Combs and Cudi afterward, in which Cudi asked about his car. “What car?” Combs asked. It was the end of the conversation, and the last time she would see Cudi.

Other violent instances described by Ventura included a time Combs assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room while he was having a party, and that Combs’s security team had to come in to end it. She said there were “golf-ball-sized” knots on her head and bruises, and one of the guards began crying when he saw her. Combs had her stay at his Los Angeles home to recover, and when he saw her injuries over FaceTime, he ordered her to put on more makeup so that his son, who was home, wouldn’t see.

She also recounted times he would beat other people, including an assistant and expected witness, “Mia,” whom he dragged after she hesitated to give him her phone. Another time, Ventura awoke to Combs dangling her friend over a balcony. “I saw him bring her back over the railing of the balcony and then throw her onto the patio furniture,” she said. Her relationship with her longtime best friend, Kerry Morgan, who later testified, also ended after Combs beat her with a wooden clothes hanger.

Ventura described a near-confrontation between Combs and his longtime industry rival, Suge Knight, who is currently in prison. During a break in a freak-off, Combs’s longtime associate Damion “D-Roc” Butler came in to inform his boss that Knight was at Mel’s Drive-in Diner, a nearby iconic establishment. Ventura said Combs “quickly packed up and drove down there.”

“I was crying,” she recalled to the jury. “I was screaming, ‘Please don’t do anything stupid.’ I was just really nervous for them, what it meant, what they were going to do.” Later in the trial, another key witness to that event gave more information.

The relationship ended in 2018, after a period in which Combs would unexpectedly show up at Ventura’s house; one friend later recounted a time when he was pounding the door with a hammer. The jury was shown a disturbing photo of the lengths Ventura’s fear for her life went: A large kitchen knife wedged in the door. Ventura said its purpose was to “kill two birds with one stone – lock it and have a weapon.” When Ventura and Combs met for a closure discussion in August, he raped her afterwards in her living room. “I just remember crying and saying ‘no,'” Ventura told the jury, “but it was very fast.”

But even after the relationship ended, Combs continued threatening Ventura. She had moved on with her trainer and now-husband, Alex Fine, and Combs believed that because he paid for the trainer, she owed him money. He said she had “too many iPads full of skeletons.”

A key point the defense tried to make was that Ventura was a consenting adult, albeit in a toxic situation. However, every time she was asked whether she wanted to partake in freak-offs by the prosecution, she said no. “If that’s something Sean wanted to happen, that’s what was going to happen. There wasn’t another way around it,” she told the jury.

Ventura began to cry, according to CNN, when she recounted going to rehab and trauma therapy in 2023, after suffering flashbacks and suicidal ideation. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point,” she said. “I couldn’t take the pain that I was in anymore, and so I just tried to walk out the front door into traffic and my husband would not let me.”

Ventura released the following statement after her powerful, nearly week-long testimony: “This week has been extremely challenging, but also remarkably empowering and healing for me. I hope that my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors, and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from the abuse and fear.

“For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget. I want to thank my family and my advocates for their unwavering support, and I’m grateful for all the kindness and encouragement that I have received. I’m glad to put this chapter of my life to rest. As I turn to focus on the conclusion of my pregnancy, I ask for privacy for me and for my growing family.”

Ventura gave birth to her third child with Fine on May 28.

If you or someone you know is suffering from domestic violence, resources include the Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233.

Diddy Trial Week Two: More Revelations, and Kid Cudi Enters the Chat

After Ventura’s testimony, at the end of the first week and beginning of the second week of trial, Special Agent Yasin Binda told the jury what agents found in Combs’s room at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan after he was arrested on September 16. Feds uncovered bags of Astroglide and baby oil, a bottle of Klonopin written for Frank Black, the new pink-colored drug tusi (a concoction of ketamine, MDMA and whatever else the dealer decides to put in), ketamine, MDMA and $9,000 in cash.

Dawn Richard, who sang in the group Danity Kane, which Combs created, also took the stand. She had filed a suit against him last September, stating he groped her in a dressing room. On the stand, she recounted how she witnessed Combs viciously beat Ventura “often.”

At one point, he was “screaming, belligerent, asking where his food was and proceeded to hit her over the head and beat her on the ground in front of us,” she said. He attempted to hit Ventura in the head with a skillet, but Richards said Ventura immediately went into a fetal position on the floor. Combs then began to punch and kick her before grabbing her by the hair and dragging her away. The following day, Combs took Richard and another person into his home recording studio and locked them in, with Richard testifying, “He said what we saw was passion and what lovers in passionate relationships do. He said she was okay and it would be in our best interests if they didn’t say anything.” She added that Combs told her that, “where he was from, people go missing if they talk.” He then gave them flowers, she said.

Richard said she told Ventura that she “should leave” Combs, and so did the next witness, Kerry Morgan. A model, Morgan was best friends with Ventura for seventeen years until Combs assaulted both of them. She recalled several abusive events, including a time in Jamaica when Morgan heard Ventura’s “guttural, terrifying” screams. Morgan said she saw Combs drag Ventura by her hair down a hallway before pushing her onto brick pavement, and Ventura didn’t move for almost thirty seconds. “I thought she was knocked out,” Morgan testified. She and Ventura had to hide from Combs in the bushes. While Morgan suggested her friend leave Combs, the witness said that Ventura always said she couldn’t, as the mogul “controlled everything.”

Morgan was with Ventura after the infamous Intercontinental Hotel assault. She had been staying at Ventura’s apartment when the singer arrived with a black eye; shortly after, Combs began banging on the door with a hammer while Ventura sat on her couch, “numb,” Morgan said. “She was just sitting on the couch. She wasn’t doing anything. I was freaking out and she was just like, she didn’t care if he came in and killed her,” she told the jury.

Police showed up hours later, Morgan testified, but Ventura would not cooperate with the authorities. Their friendship ended in 2018, when she said Combs assaulted her at Ventura’s apartment. Combs let himself into the apartment with a key Ventura wasn’t aware he had, and she locked herself in the bathroom. Combs then began to choke Morgan, and then “boomeranged a wooden hanger” at her head, she said, leaving her with a concussion. Morgan said she hired a lawyer to sue Combs, but a month later, she met with Ventura, who offered her $30,000 to sign an NDA. Morgan accepted the money, and the friends never spoke again.

Regina Ventura, Cassie’s mother, also testified that Combs extorted $20,000 from her. As Cassie stated the week before, in 2011, Combs was threatening to release freak-off footage of the singer after learning she was dating Kid Cudi. Regina told the court that her family had to take a home equity loan to pay for the footage to prevent it from being released. “I was physically sick,” she said. “I did not understand it. The sex tape threw me. He was trying to hurt my daughter.”

Other witnesses from the week included Combs’s ex-assistant George Kaplan, who recounted several bizarre requests from his boss: stocking up on American ketchup for trips to England (he didn’t like that country’s version of the condiment) and applesauce, which Combs particularly enjoyed on cheeseburgers. (One jury member made a gagging motion, according to the New York Post.) Kaplan, who received immunity to testify, said he would set up rooms for freak-offs, picking up supplies including drugs. 

Another former assistant, David James, testified that Combs would ask his security for footage from his parties to review and implied his intention was to use it for blackmail. “We’d have a videographer who basically recorded everything for his parties, and Mr. Combs was reviewing the footage to see what people were doing at the party, things like that,” James said. When Combs saw footage that showed James dancing at a party, he asked if the assistant was on ecstacy, which he confirmed. “And he kind of nodded his head and he said, ‘Okay, I want to keep this footage in case I ever need it,'” James said.

James was also the driver when Combs went to confront Suge Knight at a diner, he testified. He said that incident caused him to eventually quit the job. “I was really struck by it. I realized for the first time being Mr. Combs’ assistant that my life was in danger,” he said.

James also spoke to witnessing Combs’s control over Ventura and his abuse of the singer. At one point, he said he had asked Ventura why she wouldn’t leave, to which she replied, “He controls my career, pays my allowance and pays my rent.” He also told the jury he overheard a conversation in which Combs said Ventura was his “queen” and “very moldable.”

Sharay Hayes, the escort Ventura referred to as “the Punisher,” was called to the stand as well, and testified that he had been part of between eight to twelve freak-offs, and said that while Ventura would “flinch” at some of her partner’s requests, she appeared to be comfortable. Hayes later gave a public apology to Ventura after his testimony.

Other witnesses included a makeup artist, Mylah Morales, who heard Combs beating Ventura in a nearby room in 2010, and that Ventura was covered in bruises with knots on her head. Morales said Ventura stayed with her to heal for a few days, but did not want to go to the ER. Gerald Gannon, a special agent from the Department of Homeland Security, provided an account of the raid on Combs’s Star Island home in Miami, where there were loaded guns, AR-15s, drugs, thousands of bottles of baby oil and lubricant. Joshua Croft, another special agent, described the examination process for seized laptops, one of which included an account for Frank Black, Combs’s alias. Psychologist Dawn Hughes also testified to the cycle of abuse and why victims stay attached to their tormentors.

The most recognizable name to testify was Kid Cudi, who was subpoenaed to give his account of the car bombing. the rapper confirmed Ventura’s account of when Combs found out about their relationship and that she had Cudi come pick her up. Not long after, Cudi said he spoke with Combs’s assistant, Capricorn Clark, who had called Ventura and said Combs was on his way to Cudi’s house. Cudi said he called Combs, and asked, “Motherfucker, you in my house?” He recalled that Combs was calm, and said, “What’s up? I just want to talk to you.” Cudi went to his home, but Combs wasn’t there; his dog, however, was locked in a bathroom, his security cameras had been moved and several items he had bought had been rifled through.

In December 2011, Cudi received a call from his dogsitter that his Porsche was on fire. “The top of my Porsche was cut open and that’s where they inserted the Molotov cocktail,” he told the jury, who were shown images of the vehicle’s cut roof and melted seats. Cudi called the police.

A few days later, “I reached out to Sean Combs after my car caught fire and told him we needed to finally meet up and talk,” Cudi said. “He’d been wanting to talk to me. After the fire, I thought, ‘This is getting out of hand and I need to talk to him.'”

The rapper met with Combs at SoHo House in Los Angeles, where he said the mogul was looking out the window with his hands behind his back, “like Marvel supervillain.” Cudi said Combs’s “whole point was, ‘We were homies…that was my girl.'” He said, “I let him know she told me they were broken up and I took her word for it.”

Ventura also came to the meeting, and Cudi admitted he was “upset” to see that she had gone back to Combs, whom he described as very calm. “It was weird he was so calm,” he noted. At the end of the meeting, as he and Combs shook hands, Cudi asked Combs, “What are we going to do about my car?”

“He looked back at me with a cold stare and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,'” Cudi said. “He said, ‘Wait, I thought we were cool, is there a problem?'”

Cudi didn’t see Combs again until a few years later at SoHo House, where he said Combs apologized for “everything, all that bullshit.”

The testimony wasn’t enough to prove that Combs was responsible for the arson…until an ex-assistant took the stand the next week.

Diddy Trial Takeaways Week Three: Capricorn Clark Confirms Arson, “Mia” Testifies

Bombshell testimony was dropped on May 27 by Capricorn Clark, who worked for Combs from 2004 to 2012 and said she was kidnapped by her boss during that time. Clark also confirmed that Combs was indeed responsible for blowing up Kid Cudi’s car, and even went further, saying he wanted to kill the rapper.

Clark said she was making $65K a year as an assistant, but was working from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. and was not allowed breaks. When the head of HR told Combs he owed Clark $80K in overtime, “he ripped up the paper” that detailed the necessity, and Clark never received her overtime. However, she added that she learned a lot, calling her work “another form of business school.”

She said that Combs also threatened her when he discovered she used to work for Suge Knight’s Death Row Records. “He told me that he didn’t know that I had anything to do with Suge Knight and that if anything happened, he would have to kill me,” she told the jury.

Clark testified to several harrowing events, including when Combs’s bodyguard Paul “Uncle Paulie” Offar removed her from her home and took her to an abandoned New York City skyscraper to undergo lie-detector tests about whether she stole a diamond necklace, bracelet and watch from Combs. She said a man, chain-smoking cigarettes, greeted her and said, “If you fail this test, they’re going to throw you in the East River.”

When Clark told a chef at Combs’s Miami home that she “hates it here,” the chef repeated her words to the mogul, who proceeded to charge at Clark, she testified. Combs shoved her 25 to thirty yards, according to the Post, and Clark quit her job after the incident.

But Clark’s real revelations came in her testimony that a “livid” Combs came to her apartment holding a gun and told her, “Get dressed, we’re going to kill this n–a,” referring to Kid Cudi, whom Combs had discovered was dating Ventura. “I had never seen anything like this before,” Clark said. “He had never come to my house the entire time I’d known him. I had never seen him with a weapon.” The prosecution is referring to this instance as a kidnapping.

Clark rode with Combs in a black Escalade, sitting on his lap, to Cudi’s house. Clark stayed in the car after they arrived, and called Ventura. “Puff came and got me with a gun and took me to Cudi’s house to kill him,” Clark said she told the R&B singer.

Clark also testified that while she didn’t think Ventura had the talent for the stage, calling her more of a studio artist, her “heart was breaking seeing her get beat like that” by Combs, who assaulted the singer later the same day he took Clark to Cudi’s house. Combs had directed Clark to pick up Ventura and bring her to his L.A. home, where he began to kick Ventura in the leg with “100 percent full force,” Clark testified. “She didn’t do anything. She was just crying silently.”

The former assistant recalled a time Combs was complaining about his feud with 50 Cent, who has notably beefed with the producer through the years. “I don’t like all the back and forth…I like guns,” Clark remembered him telling his manager, Chris Lighty.

Clark did admit that in April 2024, she attempted to work for Combs Enterprises again as a chief of staff, telling his lawyers that “Combs wouldn’t be in this mess if he had kept me around.”

On May 28, Officer Christopher Ignacio of the Los Angeles Police Department told the jury what he saw when he arrived at Kid Cudi’s house after the car bombing. He said he received the call at 8:20 a.m. and when he approached the scene, he noticed a black Escalade parked outside the home; the vehicle took off as the police car pulled up. He said the Escalade returned about fifteen to twenty minutes later and that he ran the plates; the vehicle’s registration was tied to Bad Boy Productions Inc.

Arson investigator Lance Jimenez also responded to the car-bombing incident and testified after Ignacio. He said the damage likely would have been worse if the handkerchief placed in the Old English bottle hadn’t been silk, which caused it to slip. Female DNA was also found on the bottle, he said. He unsuccessfully attempted to reach both Ventura and Clark after the incident, and said that at one point, Clark’s brother answered the call. “She wanted nothing to do with me, nothing to do with the investigation,” Jimenez recalled being told.

Jimenez testified that it was clearly a targeted attack, and that the area was swept for fingerprints. Two fingerprints were collected from a glass door, he said, and were placed in evidence. He alleged that this evidence was destroyed by an LAPD officer in 2012, but the judge instructed the jury to disregard that particular testimony after objection from the defense.

The defense made a motion for a mistrial on May 29, saying that there was prosecutorial misconduct in the jury selection. The judge denied the motion.

Ventura’s friend Deonte Nash was also called to the stand, testifying May 28 and 29. Nash worked in fashion at Bad Boy Entertainment from 2008 to 2018 and is a stylist. Nash testified to how he would hear Combs telling Ventura that he would “beat her ass” and would threaten to not release her music and that he would get her parents fired from their jobs. He said that any outfit he picked for Ventura had to be approved by Combs.

Nash also confirmed Ventura’s account of Combs assaulting her when her friends jumped on his back to stop him; Nash was one of those friends, along with an assistant whom the trial is identifying as “Mia.” Nash said Combs threw them off his back and continued to attack Ventura, only stopping once he noticed blood and “panicked.” He said Combs told Nash and Mia, “Look what y’all made me do.” Nash noted he tried to call 911, but someone told him to hang up before the call went through.

Nash left the apartment with Ventura, but a few minutes into the drive, he said, Combs called him and told them to pull over. Combs came to the car and told Ventura he would start releasing the freak-off videos “on schedule” and send them to her parents’ employers. Combs also told Ventura he was the “only one that protected her,” Nash said.

He then received a call from his boss, Derek Roche, who told Nash that he had given Combs his address and that the producer was on his way there. Nash dropped Ventura off on Sunset Boulevard so she could get a taxi, while he returned to his home, where he saw Roche, Combs and Combs’s security guard, Teri Fletcher. They searched the house for Ventura, and Combs even looked in the oven, Nash said.

He told the jury that Combs took his phone and saw that Ventura had called him from a hotel. Combs directed Nash to drive to the hotel while Combs followed. When Nash and Fletcher got to Ventura’s room, Nash said she appeared terrified, and said she would “go over the balcony” when they said Combs was waiting outside for her.

Nash said he spent that night at a hotel, as he didn’t feel it was safe to return to his home. When he did return to his house, he saw that a backpack holding his ID, $1K in cash and his iPad had been stolen.

Nash testified to seeing bruises on Ventura “quite often,” and that Combs had even gotten violent with him, throwing him against a parked car. He said he never reported the violence out of fear of retaliation.

He was familiar with the freak-offs, noting that Ventura and Combs would go to a hotel on a weekly basis, with Ventura packing a bag of sex toys for the occasions. He echoed Ventura’s account of her 29th birthday party, when Combs forced her to leave the bash to have a freak-off. Nash recalled that Ventura told him that she didn’t want to go, but she felt she didn’t have a choice. During times when the couple broke up, Nash would try to help Ventura move on, he said, and linked her with Michael B. Jordan, whom she dated for a spell.

Nash and Ventura have remained friends. He helped her pick out her wedding dress and recent court outfits, and congratulated her on the birth of her third child.

The anonymous witness Mia, who worked for Combs from 2009 to 2017, began her testimony on May 29. “The highs were really high and the lows were really really low” when it came to working with Combs, she said. When she first went to meet him for an interview, he was wearing just his underwear and was on the phone, although he eventually put on his clothes.

The live-in assistant job involved long hours, and Mia testified she once went five days without sleep, which she managed by taking her extra-strength ADHD medication. Combs only let her sleep after she had a meltdown, she said: “I had a physical breakdown. I remember my hearing went, I felt like I was underwater. My equilibrium was off.”

Although she was a live-in assistant, Mia wasn’t allowed a lock on her bedroom door; she said that Combs told her, “This is my house. No one locks their doors.” His four live-in security guards had locks for their rooms, however. “One had a dead bolt and another had a keypad where the cameras were,” she said.

Working for Combs was volatile, and she often witnessed abuse against Ventura, with whom Mia was close. “He’s thrown things at me, he’s thrown me against the wall, he’s thrown me into a pool, he’s thrown an ice bucket on my head. He has slammed my arm into a door and he’s also…sexually assaulted me,” she told the jury.

Mia confirmed Nash and Ventura’s account of the assault in which she and Nash jumped on Combs’s back and Ventura was “gushing blood.”  She said, “He threw me against he wall so quick and so easily and I realized we were in real danger.” Combs instructed Mia to call a doctor and tell them that “Cass was drunk and hit her head.”

Mia also said that Combs once attacked Ventura at one of Prince’s parties, and that Prince’s security had to step in. Ventura and Mia had gone to the party without Combs, but Combs “caught up to her and had her on the ground,” Mia said, referring to Ventura. “It’s like he started to attack her but Prince’s security swiftly intervened.” Afterwards, Mia was suspended without pay for being “insubordinate.” She would be suspended without pay another time for wanting to get a tampon while she was in his home, where she lived; Combs threw a bowl of spaghetti at her and chased her during that incident, she said.

Ventura and Mia had to hide from Combs together during a 2012 trip in Turks and Caicos. Mia said she woke up to Ventura “running and screaming,” and saying, “He’s going to kill me.” They locked themselves in a room and piled furniture against the door as Combs banged against it, and then they ran to the beach. They had to hide again on the trip, lying flat on paddleboards in the ocean while Combs ran on the beach screaming. But they had to return to him when the weather began to turn, with Mia telling the jury, “I was trying to weigh whether it was scarier to face Mother Nature or go back to Puff.”

She testified to Combs’s frequent drug use, which included forcing her to snort unidentified powders as part of a “guessing game” at Burning Man. He would be high for board meetings, appearances and other professional events, she said.

Mia said she was first assaulted by Combs just months after beginning to work for him. During his fortieth birthday party at the Plaza Hotel, he called Mia into the kitchen and cleared out the staff before pouring them shots. Mia said the shots had a big impact on her, and all of a sudden Combs was kissing and groping her. All she remembers next is waking up in a chair in the middle of the room in the penthouse.

“He was my boss. He was a very powerful person. … I looked at him like an older adult. He was the boss or the king, a very powerful person,” she said.

Another time, she woke up in her bedroom at Combs’s home to the mogul “on top of” her. She said he then quickly raped her. Then, when she was helping him pack for a trip, he forced her to perform oral sex on him. Mia said that although she didn’t outright tell Combs she did not want to have sex with him, she was afraid of his power and temper.

“I knew his power and I knew his control over me,” she said. “I didn’t want to lose everything that I worked so hard for in this world that was the only thing I had anymore.”

Mia took the stand again on May 30, and testified that after she quit in 2017, she received a settlement of $400K (half went to her lawyers). She also detailed more instances of abuse, testifying that Combs threatened to kill her if she didn’t answer his calls while she was on a trip with Ventura in 2015, after Ventura discovered Combs had cheated on her with Gina Huynh, a woman who was expected to testify but has evaded the prosecution’s requests.

She also said that a little over a month after Ventura sued Combs in 2023, Combs’s associate D-Roc texted her, saying that Combs wanted to speak with her. She said Combs then called her a couple of hours later, but “I threw my phone as far as it can go, and I ran outside.”

During cross-examination, the defense referenced positive social media posts she made about Combs. Mia responded: “Instagram was a place to show how great your life was, even if it was not.” Combs’s lawyer also repeatedly asked questions implying she was lying about Combs raping her.

“What I said in this courtroom is the truth,” Mia said. “I have not lied to anyone at all.”

Diddy Trial Week Four: Mia Continues Cross-Examination, Security Guard Admits to Accepting Bribe

Combs’s lawyers continued to press Mia on whether her allegations of sexual assault were true, asking why she did not report the instances to HR. Mia is integral to the government’s case of racketeering; prosecution says that Combs forced labor on Mia, as well as sexual activity, through violence.

Mia said she did not disclose that she had been raped by Combs, aside from talking to a therapist, until June 2024, when she began to meet with prosecutors. “I was still deeply ashamed and wanted to die with this,” Mia told the jury. She said she did not report to HR because she believed the department would be more retaliatory than helpful.

When the defense exposed text messages between Mia and Combs, including one from 2020 in which she said she loved him and always stand by him, Mia explained she was “brainwashed” by the executive. “The version of Puff that did treat me like the best friend, I did love that dude,” Mia said, using a nickname for Mr. Combs. “He protected me from the other versions of himself. And I didn’t understand what happened to me until recently as he was still being praised by everybody in the world. So how would I have known?”

The defense asked her why she was looking down while testifying to the assaults, according to the New York Times. “Because it’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to talk about in my life,” Mia answered.

Mia testified that Combs had put a tracking device on Ventura’s car, and noted, “He’s stolen my phone many times, he’s stolen Cassie’s phone many times. He’s put tracking devices on her car. I’m not sure what he’s capable of. I was terrified.”

She said that after working for Combs, she worked for Madonna for eight months, although she had previously testified Combs had “blacklisted her,” which the defense hung onto. Mia answered that Madonna “didn’t care about that,” and that Combs had gone back on promises that included crediting her on a documentary and TV show.

Next, Sylvia Oken, who works for the Beverly Hills Hotel, began testimony, which lasted about fifteen minutes. She noted that Combs was charged for “oil damage” for a room he booked at the swanky Los Angeles hotel. Trial concluded for the day as a protester was escorted from the court.

Trial resumed on June 3 with testimony from Eddy Garcia, a security guard at the Intercontinental Hotel, where the elevator bay beating took place. He is testifying under immunity, as he admits to accepting a bribe.

Garcia said he received a call about a domestic-violence dispute, and that afterwards, Combs and his chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, began calling him to make the video evidence “go away.” On the phone, Combs& “sounded very nervous,” Garcia said. “He was talking fast. He said he had a little too much to drink, said one thing led to another.”

Another time, Combs “said something like this could ruin him,” Garcia said. “He was concerned that this video could get out and that it could ruin his career. He said he would take care of me.”

Garcia testified that he and his boss, Bill Medrano, agreed to take the bribe. Medrano gave Garcia a USB drive with the footage and sent him to a meeting with Combs and Khorram. “Eddy, my angel,” an excited Combs greeted Garcia, the security guard recalled to the jury.

Combs then put Garcia on the phone with Ventura, saying the R&B singer also wanted the video to go away. “She said hi, she said that she had a movie coming out and that it wasn’t a good time for this to be coming out, and she wanted it to go away,” Garcia said. He signed an NDA and received $100K in cash in a brown paper bag. Medrano took $50K, Garcia said, and “the additional money was for me and what [Combs] thought was for Mr. Flores,” the other security guard who had testified in the trial and refused to take the bribe. He said $20K went to another guard, Henry Lias, and he kept the rest to buy a car.

Combs then called Garcia on Easter. “He said, ‘Happy Easter. You are my angel. God is good. God put you in my life for a reason.’ And he asked if anyone had inquired about the video,” Garcia said, noting that no one had inquired about the video.

Garcia admitted he lied to federal investigators when they initially asked him whether he had taken a bribe from Combs. “I didn’t want to be a part of this,” he said. At the next meeting with investigators, he told the truth.

Next, Derek Ferguson, who worked for Combs from 1998 to 2017, including as chief financial officer, took the stand.

This post will be updated as more testimony comes in.