Combs, Sean

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    What Diddy’s Defenders Ignore

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    Earlier this month, when I searched on TikTok for Casandra (Cassie) Ventura’s testimony in the federal sex trafficking trial against Sean Combs, one of the first autocomplete suggestions was “cassie is a liar diddy.”Ventura is not on trial. She is considered to be the government’s star witness in the racketeering conspiracy case against Combs. There are many other high-profile witnesses who testified to Combs’s violence, including the rapper Kid Cudi, who briefly dated Ventura, and Dawn Richard, who is a former member of the group Danity Kane. The entire world saw hotel surveillance video depicting Combs physically assaulting Ventura that was obtained by CNN, and Combs paid Ventura an eight-figure settlement after she sued him for sex trafficking and sexual assault in 2023.Ventura would seem to be a trustworthy witness to her own experience. Yet social media commentators have been trying to undermine public support for her and, by extension, cast doubt on the question of Combs’s culpability. These influencers tend to present some of Ventura’s comments to Combs out of the larger context of his alleged abuse, preying on a public that is poorly informed about sexual assault and domestic violence.During cross-examination, Combs’s lawyers had Ventura read text messages where she seemed to be responding enthusiastically to some sexual encounters that Combs planned. But Ventura testified that she felt coerced into this behavior, and it would make sense that she was trying to placate him; for example, she said that Combs threatened to release videos he recorded of their sex acts if she refused his demands.Combs’s defenders do not seem to care about this context. For example, on X, Andrew Tate, the manosophere influencer who has over 10 million followers and whose tagline is “I think women are dumb,” called Ventura a gendered slur, went after her husband and claimed, “No victims. Only volunteers.” (British prosecutors authorized 10 charges, including rape and human trafficking, against Tate this week, adding to his international legal troubles.)The basic line from most of the anti-Cassie content is that maybe she was beaten up — they have to concede that because of the hotel video — but she’s lying about the rest of it, because she’s a vindictive, bitter, money-grubbing ex trying to bring a successful man down.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Meaning of a Trump-Inspired Style

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      The Times’s chief fashion critic unravels the Trump-inspired style that has spread quickly across Washington.President Trump has changed a lot about Washington over the past four months, including how it looks.I’m not talking about the city’s architecture, although he has made clear his disdain for the brutalism of many federal buildings (an aesthetic that I’m personally quite fond of).I’m talking about the city’s style.Trump and his inner circle of aides and family members cannonballed into Washington’s ocean of understated suits and blouses with a bold and strikingly consistent approach to clothing, cosmetics and, well, personal enhancements. (Nothing points up its consistency so well as the occasional departure, like the T-shirts and blazers Elon Musk has worn to the Oval Office, including today.) If style is a way to send a message, and politics is largely a matter of communication, the maturation of a “MAGA style” in Trump’s second term is a development worth understanding.So I reached out to our reigning expert: Vanessa Friedman, The Times’s chief fashion critic, who has covered political image-making for years (and who, as it happens, writes an excellent newsletter). We discussed the language of Trumpist fashion, the way it has evolved since Trump’s first term and what it means for men as well as for women.OK, let’s start with some visual aids. Who, to you, really embodies the aesthetic of the people around President Trump?Why don’t we take a look?Clockwise from top left: Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times, Sarah Blesener for The New York Times, Doug Mills/The New York Times, Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Up Next at the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Dawn Richard and Former Employees

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      After four days with Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, on the stand, prosecutors will be seeking to corroborate her testimony with additional witnesses.As the second week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial begins, the first witness is set to be Dawn Richard, a singer in two music groups backed by Mr. Combs who says she saw him physically abuse his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.A performer in the now-defunct groups Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money, Ms. Richard began her testimony on Friday, recalling an incident from 2009 in which she said Mr. Combs attempted to hit Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie, with a skillet, then punched and kicked her.“She went into fetal position — you could see she was literally trying to hide her face or her head,” Ms. Richard testified. She also said that Mr. Combs threatened her and a bandmate to keep silent about the event, saying he told them that “where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, if they talk.”Ms. Richard filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs last year, shortly before he was arrested. She accused him in the suit of threatening her, groping her and flying into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. The girl group Danity Kane was formed during the third iteration of Mr. Combs’s MTV reality show “Making the Band.”After the jury had been dismissed on Friday, a lawyer for Mr. Combs called Ms. Richard’s accusation of abuse from 2009 a “drop-dead lie,” noting that Ms. Ventura had not mentioned it during her four days on the witness stand.Ms. Richard is the first of a series of government witnesses scheduled for this week who are expected to testify about what they saw of Ms. Ventura’s 11-year on-and-off relationship with Mr. Combs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Combs Defense Seeks to Undermine Cassie’s Rape Allegation as Testimony Ends

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      The singer spent four days on the stand recounting what she described as an 11-year relationship in which she came to feel more like a sex worker than a girlfriend.Defense lawyers for Sean Combs pushed on Friday to undermine one of the most damaging allegations in the music mogul’s trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges — that he raped his longtime girlfriend, the singer Casandra Ventura, in 2018.On the last of four grueling days of Ms. Ventura’s testimony, Mr. Combs’s defense team pointed out inconsistencies in her recounting of when such an incident had occurred. They also noted that Ms. Ventura, an R&B singer known professionally as Cassie, never mentioned anything about an attack in a flurry of emotional breakup text messages that the couple exchanged soon afterward.The nature and history of the relationship between Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura is central to the government’s case. Prosecutors have depicted the music mogul as a sexual predator whose employees helped stage marathon drug-fueled sessions, known as “freak-offs,” during which Ms. Ventura had sex with male prostitutes while Mr. Combs watched, and sometimes masturbated.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and his lawyers have portrayed Ms. Ventura as someone who fell deeply in love, participated willingly in the freak-offs but then, bitter with jealousy, has recast the relationship as a grim 11 years of beatings, blackmail and coerced sex.In that vein, the defense questioned Ms. Ventura about consensual sexual intercourse she had with Mr. Combs about a month after what she said was a night when Mr. Combs raped her in her home. Ms. Ventura was already dating her now husband, Alex Fine, at the time of the consensual sex with Mr. Combs, and she testified that while together with Mr. Combs, she received, but didn’t answer, a FaceTime call from Mr. Fine.“Your now husband didn’t know that you were with Mr. Combs at the time, correct?” a defense lawyer, Anna Estevao, asked Ms. Ventura. She replied that Mr. Fine eventually found out about her rape allegation and the subsequent intercourse she had with Mr. Combs. Ms. Estevao said Mr. Fine punched a wall in response.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cassie Confronted by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Lawyer Over ‘Freak-Offs’ During Trial

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      During cross-examination, the defense team depicted Casandra Ventura as fully engaged in staging and participating in the marathon sex sessions she says were abusive.Lawyers for Sean Combs worked on Thursday in court to portray his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, as a willing and full participant in sex marathons with prostitutes, as they sought to undermine her harrowing account of an abusive, coercive relationship riddled with violence.Ms. Ventura’s credibility is central to the government’s case, in which they have charged Mr. Combs, the music mogul, with sex trafficking and racketeering. Earlier this week she told the jury of eight men and four women of how she had suffered through hundreds of degrading sexual encounters and many injuries out of a misguided attempt to please a man she loved.But on the fourth day of Mr. Combs’s trial, the defense tried to recast Ms. Ventura, a singer known professionally as Cassie, as not nearly the victim she had portrayed herself to be. During cross-examination, Anna Estevao, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers on a team led by Marc Agnifilo, repeatedly had her read text messages in which she expressed graphic enthusiasm for their sexual encounters, including the now famed “freak-offs” involving paid escorts.“I’m always ready to freak off lolol,” Ms. Ventura said in a message from 2009.In another exchange from around the same time, Ms. Ventura expressed her excitement in graphically sexual terms, and he told her: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott.”She answered: “Me too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.”Jurors gazed at the barrage of text messages, which were displayed on screens in front of them, sometimes leaning forward to get a closer look.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his defense has argued that the government is trying to criminalize unconventional, but lawful, sexual relations between consenting adults. In her first two days on the stand, Ms. Ventura said that she might have feigned interest at times to avoid Mr. Combs’s anger, and she recited a litany of incidents in which she was beaten when she failed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cassie Testifies Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Used Sex Videos as Blackmail

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      Ms. Ventura, Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend, said he threatened to use tapes of their sexual encounters, known as “freak-offs,” to control her behavior.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, told a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday that her life with Sean Combs had its moments, but was largely filled with beatings, threatened blackmail and even a rape.During more than five hours of testimony in Mr. Combs’s sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Ms. Ventura recounted how he had stomped on her in the back of his car and how she suffered a gash above her eye when he threw her against a bed frame.She also recounted how, after the pair had dinner in 2018, Mr. Combs raped her in her living room.“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified.At the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura said through tears that after she had broken up with Mr. Combs, the trauma remained and she enrolled in treatment for drug abuse. Even so, she said, she contemplated taking her life by walking into traffic. She said her husband stopped her.Ms. Ventura told the court she stayed with Mr. Combs despite beatings and other abuse partly because of the nagging, persistent fear that videos of their sexual encounters with male prostitutes, the hundreds of “freak-offs” that she said Mr. Combs enjoyed watching and recording, would be posted online.Hers was not idle anxiety based on what she viewed Mr. Combs might be capable of, she said, but the consequence of repeated threats he had made to use the material to damage her if she deviated from his wishes. In one case, she described sitting beside him on a flight when he displayed for her videos that she thought had been destroyed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cassie Recounts ‘Violent Arguments’ and ‘Physical Abuse’ by Sean Combs

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      The singer began testifying for a federal jury in the sex-trafficking and racketeering case against Mr. Combs.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, began testifying for a federal jury on Tuesday morning in the sex-trafficking and racketeering case against Sean Combs.The much-anticipated testimony was Ms. Ventura’s first major public comment since she filed a bombshell lawsuit against Mr. Combs, her former boyfriend and label boss, in late 2023, in which she accused him of having instituted a system of abuse and control over her life and career for more than a decade. That case led to a government investigation and Mr. Combs’s arrest in September 2024.In the first minutes of her testimony, she was asked by prosecutors to describe the more than decade-long relationship she had with Mr. Combs.“There were violent arguments that would usually result in some sort of physical abuse,” she answered. “Dragging, different things of that nature.”Ms. Ventura, 38, who is visibly pregnant, wore a form-fitting brown outfit. As she entered court Mr. Combs turned back in his chair to see her walk in. His lawyers had asked the judge to have her present on the stand before the jury entered, a request that the judge apparently denied.Her husband, Alex Fine, was allowed to be present in the courtroom for the beginning of her testimony, but the judge said Mr. Fine would have to leave during discussions of sexual assault.Ms. Ventura was expected to recount for the jury how Mr. Combs instituted a system of abuse and control over her life and career for more than a decade. Prosecutors say the executive dangled ever-disappearing music opportunities; beat her when she stepped out of line; and plied her with drugs, forcing Ms. Ventura to have marathon sex sessions with male prostitutes while he taped the encounters.Though legal filings in the case had merely identified her as Victim-1, there was never much doubt that the singer, who had been Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend for more than a decade, was the witness at the center of the racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking case against him.It was Ms. Ventura’s decision in late 2023, following extensive therapy, to bring a federal lawsuit accusing Mr. Combs of rape and years of physical abuse — and his decision not to settle before it became public — that set into motion the criminal investigation that led to the trial. Combs and Ventura quickly reached an eight-figure settlement in the civil case.Ms. Ventura was Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend — and employee — almost from the time they met in 2005 until she finally severed ties from his storied record label, Bad Boy, in 2019. Lawyers for Mr. Combs have portrayed the relationship as loving but deeply toxic while maintaining that any sexual arrangements were completely consensual. More

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      Judge Delays Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jury Selection, Concerned About ‘Cold Feet’

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      Judge Arun Subramanian said he feared jurors might grow uneasy over the weekend and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial was delayed on Friday over worries that some jurors might get “cold feet” before the start of the high-profile case.Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, expressed concern that if jurors were selected before the weekend, they could grow uneasy and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday. The decision came after one potential juror sent an email to the court asking to be left off the panel for “issues of personal well-being,” the defense said.Twelve jurors and six alternates will be selected and sworn in on Monday at Federal District Court in Manhattan, ahead of opening statements in the case.The jury will be tasked with deciding whether the music mogul was a “swinger” with unorthodox sexual proclivities, or a predator who used his power to abuse victims in drug-dazed encounters. If convicted, Mr. Combs, who was once a roundly celebrated figure in the music industry, could spend the rest of his life in prison.The jurors will be anonymous, meaning their names will not be disclosed in public court. They will not be sequestered, however, so it is up to them to shield themselves from the media coverage and other chatter about the case.Over three days, dozens of New Yorkers took the witness stand inside the courtroom, where they were asked to describe in detail what they had seen and heard about the case against the artist and executive, who has been the subject of swirling allegations of sexual abuse over the past year and a half.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay-Z Sues Rape Accuser and Lawyers, Saying They Knew Claim Was False

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      The anonymous woman withdrew her sex abuse suit last month, but the entertainer says in court papers she has since admitted her account was fabricated. She and her lawyer deny that.Jay-Z filed a lawsuit on Monday against the anonymous woman who withdrew her rape lawsuit against him last month, asserting that she and her lawyers knew the allegations were false but proceeded with the claim anyway.The lawsuit, brought in federal court in Alabama, where the woman lives, was filed against both the accuser and her lawyers, Tony Buzbee and David Fortney. In the suit, Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, said the woman had admitted to his representatives that she had made up the story.But in a statement, Mr. Buzbee said the suit has “no legal merit” and that the woman continues to stand by her account.The woman originally sued Jay-Z last year, naming him as a defendant in one of the dozens of cases that have accused Sean Combs of sexual abuse. In this case, the plaintiff accused Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs of raping her when she was 13, at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000. After an NBC News interview with the plaintiff highlighted inconsistencies in her account, the plaintiff acknowledged that she had “made some mistakes” in presenting the allegations.For about two months, the plaintiff’s lawyers defended the veracity of her allegations in court papers, but last month, they withdrew her claim with no public explanation.In the new lawsuit, lawyers for Mr. Carter assert that the plaintiff — who is not identified — has “voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr. Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More