← Fame Under Fire
Fame Under Fire
Cassie asked about explicit texts to Diddy
00:22:26
Diddy’s defence team begin their questioning of Casandra Ventura
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- [00:00]
Anushka Matan De Douati
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Natalia Melman Petruzella
Welcome to paradise with the platinum card unlock. Over $1,500 back in value annually on select purchases across travel, entertainment and dining. Now let's make our trip next level Hottest restaurant booked with resi Unforgettable experiences event access Endless vibes late hotel checkout yes please Platinum Card membership for a trip that's nothing less than iconic. Learn more at americanexpress.com Explore-Platinum terms apply.
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Sean Kent
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
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Madeleine Halpert
Hello and welcome back to Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Mutandadi here at the Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Just a warning. This episode contains descriptions of violence, sexual violence, including rape and graphic descriptions of sex. Cassie Ventura has been in the courtroom behind me all day answering questions from Sean Diddy Combs, defense lawyer. She was Sean Combs partner for more than a decade and she's been the prosecution's main witness for this case. Now remember, after making her testimony yesterday, Cassie wasn't allowed to receive any advice from the prosecution before before facing questions from the defence whose aim it is to pick holes in what she said. But before we dig into the detail, I wanted to just take a moment to tell you a bit about who's been coming into the court to watch the trial this week. In the US Federal court, proceedings are generally open to the public. It means you've got journalists like me, but then you have social media influencers, people referring to themselves as citizen journalists, and then everyday ordinary Americans who are simply interested in finding out what's been going on. There was one moment where a lady had to be escorted out of one of the overflow rooms after shouting her disgust in the direction of the TV monitor which was showing a live feed of the courtroom. She shouted that Cassie was going to go into labor. On the stand and outside the courtroom, Diddy's supporters have been playing his music non stop. Sean Diddy Combs is accused of sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution and racketeering with conspiracy. He denies all the charges and says he's never sexually assaulted anyone, man or woman, adult or minor. If found guilty, he could end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. It's 4pm and it's the end of the day and I'm here with Madeleine Halpert who's been inside the court digitally reporting for the BBC in New York. Marlen, how did the cross examination begin today?
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Cassie Ventura
There's been a lot of starting and stopping today. So it began this morning. They were supposed to Start yesterday, but they decided in the end to push it to today. And we started going through Mr. Combs and Cassie Ventura's relationship. So we started with the early days. There was some going back and forth in terms of time periods, but just kind of establishing actually the love in their relationship and the passion that was there. They were trying to show that other side of things. We've heard a lot about the abuse, but today was kind of, at least at the beginning, was more focused on why they were together and why she fell in love with him.
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Madeleine Halpert
And when they said to Cassie things like, you were in love with him, right? You were in love with him for 11 years, how did she respond to those kind of questions?
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Cassie Ventura
She did not deny loving him. There were these positive things about our relationship. I stayed with him for. They were on and off for 11 years. But I. We got back together several times. There were times she pushed back. Like the attorney said, you kept coming back to him. And she said, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't frame it like that. It wasn't coming back, but that they kept getting back together. So she acknowledged that there were these positive elements to their relationship too.
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Madeleine Halpert
The narrative offered about free coughs was very different from the one yesterday that Cassie spoke about. What were they sort of establishing about free coughs? The defense's version of free coughs?
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Cassie Ventura
Yeah. So they wanted to get at their larger argument that Cassie had free will and was a willing participant in these sex acts. And so they showed us a lot of text messages today, but some of them that we saw from Cassie that she sent to Mr. Combs was, you know, I love our fos freak offs when we both want it. She said at another point, she said, wish we could have f O ed before you left. So they wanted to paint this picture of her at some times being interested in actually having these. And of course, you know, she tried to clarify at one point, she said those were just words at that point. But we definitely saw a different side of the, you know, her involvement in the freak offs there than what we saw with the direction questioning.
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Madeleine Halpert
And in Cassie's direct. It was about establishing coercion. And that speaks to the force, fraud or coercion element of the sex trafficking charge. So with this, they're focusing on her ability to consent and then her written consent. Did she speak to the texts even more and say, well, I said that because of this or that's the reason I wrote that. What did she give as an explanation?
- [04:40]
Cassie Ventura
A lot of the times she. She just acknowledged that, yes, that's what I said. That's what I said. At the time, she didn't have as much of an opportunity to kind of give the context because this is like cross examination, yes or no questions. But there were times when she pushed back. There was at one point she was reading a long, many, many pages of text and she said to the judge, this is not what I think is relevant. We're skipping over a lot of stuff. So there she's trying to get at. There's a larger context that you're missing, which is of course, what lawyers do on both sides. Right. When they're trying to show evidence and prove their point.
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Madeleine Halpert
And there was another thing running alongside this. We know there's a time pressure with Cassie. She's very visibly pregnant in her third trimester. And at one point the judge expressed some frustration with the length of time the defense are planning to take.
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Cassie Ventura
Yeah, today it was a conversation between the attorneys and the judge and he was saying the expectation was that Cassie would be done with all of her testimony by the end of the week. As you said, she's very pregnant. Which they don't say that. They say she's time sensitive, but we can say that's the reason why. And the Mr. Combs attorney, Mark Agnafillo, was saying basically we might need more time. And the judge was not having that. He was saying, really, you guys should all be done with everything by lunch.
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Madeleine Halpert
And what about the prosecution? Did we hear much from them? I mean, we heard a few objections from the defense before, but not that many. During Cassie's direct testimony. What was it like for the prosecution today?
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Cassie Ventura
We heard a lot of objections from prosecution. Objections over relevance, over asking, not giving enough foundation before asking a question. I think we've heard more from, from prosecutors than we did during Cassie's direct testimony. A lot of, a lot of. And objecting to evidence too. There's been a lot of conversation about whether they can bring up evidence that references Cassie's relationships with other men. And there's been back and forth between the lawyers about that. So definitely a lot of objections today.
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Madeleine Halpert
And I just want to pick up on one more thing that was in Cassie's direct, which was, quote, insane jealousy that she experienced during the relationship. And if you're a casual observer and you listen to her, you might be like, why did, why did they just do that self contained moment about her insane jealousy? Did the defense pick up on that and question her about that today?
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Cassie Ventura
Jealousy was a huge theme of the defense attorney's arguments today. They Must have repeated that remark that Cassie gave about insane jealousy. Several times they argued that Cassie was insanely jealous, that Mr. Combs was insanely jealous. I think it was a part of their broader point that a lot of the violence in the relationship was not about Mr. Combs trying to control and abuse and coerce Cassie, but more about. About just these drug induced moments of jealousy and rage.
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Madeleine Halpert
And finally, a cross examination's not an easy thing for anybody. The whole purpose of it is to kind of pull apart the previous narrative that's been offered. How was Cassie's mood in answering the questions?
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Cassie Ventura
I think earlier in the day she started off very calm. She's pretty soft spoken. She was soft spoken yesterday and the judge even said at one point, you've got a really cooperative witness, a responsive witness. She's answered their questions very directly. There have been times where she's gotten a little bit more combative, I think as the defense attorney accused her over and over again of, you know, being addicted to drugs, which she's said repeatedly. There have been times when she's pushed back slightly or tried to get more context in her answers. But overall, she's been pretty contained on the stand.
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Madeleine Halpert
And if you were checking social media while this was going on, as a lot of people were, you would be seeing different celebrities. Names popped up. What was going on with that?
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Cassie Ventura
There were a lot of celebrity name drops today. We've already heard about her relationship with Kid Cudi yesterday, but that was brought up again. So there was a lot of talk about that. At one point, there was a reference to Britney spears at her 21st birthday party in Las Vegas because Mr. Combs brought her. Also, Michael B. Jordan came up because Cassie apparently had a brief relationship with him, with him after she broke up with Mr. Combs. So that's a relationship I think we didn't know a ton about before. So there was certainly a lot of celebrity action today in court.
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Madeleine Halpert
But none of the celebrities have been accused of anything within this trial.
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Cassie Ventura
No, they have not.
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Madeleine Halpert
Madeline, thank you so much.
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Cassie Ventura
Thank you. It was great to chat.
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Madeleine Halpert
That was Madeleine Halpert, the BBC's digital reporter in New York. Okay, it's time for me to rush back to our New York studio. I've got a lot of questions, so, you know, it's time. I better call Sean.
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Sean Kent
Our regular criminal defense attorney from South Carolina. Sean Kent is joining me today. Sean, it's Diddy on trial. And Diddy's actually on trial now in New York. Me and you have been catching up every day. And Debriefing you're keeping me sane and keeping up with the trial. What most of this week has been about Cassie's testimony and now her cross examination. What did you make of her direct testimony?
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Anushka Matan De Douati
I thought the direct testimony was actually perfect. I thought the government did what they are supposed to do. People don't understand in the United States, when you're looking to get a conviction, you have to go with elements is what we do. We have elements of our offenses. And so the government's doing what we talk about. They're, believe it or not, they're working on their closing argument right now. You're like, what do you mean? Because at the end of the trial, the very end, the judge is going to say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for you to convict Mr. Combs of these charges, the government has to prove this, this, this, this and this. And so what the government is doing through the testimony, Cassie is going through this, this, this, this and this. And so when you watch the closing argument, I promise you what they're going to do is they're going to say, ladies and gentlemen, do you remember when Cassie testified, she testified about force, she testified about coercion, she talked about abuse, she talked about a history abuse, she talked about going across county lines because they're just going through the elements. So I actually think they did a good job.
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Sean Kent
I've told you this. Maybe I haven't said it to the listeners. This is the first trial I've covered. So when I came in, I did kind of expect bombshell allegation after bombshell allegation, and a lot of it was really spent taking us into the beginning of the relationship and setting the scene. And then in the second day came a lot more emotion from Cassie and far more sort of bombshell moments. Definitely what social media has classed as bombshell moments. There were some prominent critiques from legal analysts and everybody who has an opinion on the Diddy trial. And they were saying, okay, the prosecution has done a really good job of presenting Diddy as a bad person, presenting Diddy as somebody who may have sexually assaulted Cassie. But how does that build the sex trafficking charge?
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Anushka Matan De Douati
And that's the problem is when everybody's got an opinion, but people don't rely on the law. And the law and we're making these assumptions that all the government is doing is proving a case of domestic violence, which, yes, they have. This is domestic violence. But as I mentioned, the judge is going to tell the jury there are certain things required for sex trafficking, and it's not a lot he's going to say at the beginning of trial, you took an oath to follow the law. This is that law 1. Is there a person involved? Check. That person is Cassie, did somebody use force, coercion or something to get them to engage in a commercial sex act? Yes, she testified force was used. What is a commercial sex act? A commercial sex act is basically engaging in sex for money or anything of value. They're going to say, yes, they did. And then the last thing is, and this is what I think is interesting, is the entire defense is going to come on new or should have known meaning did the fandom know that he was engaging in coercion or should he have known that what he was doing was coercing through physical or activity? And that's it. That is all they've got to prove. And I guarantee you, if you go back to the testimony now in your head, you're like, yeah, that's why they asked that question. That's why they asked that question.
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Sean Kent
Yeah, because they did a lot on geography. They did states, but they also did like, oh, Turks and Caicos, Ibiza, Greece. So that's that like foreign as well, because it's interstate and foreign. Right. On the indictment and that.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
And when I read the law, like, have read the charge, it was like, and I think I have it in front of me somewhere, the last line of the charge, the jury, what the judge will say. Third, the defendant's acts were in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. That's why that's in there and that's why they did it.
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Sean Kent
So you touched there about they're going to say it's domestic violence. And I mean that the defense team, they came out and said that in the opening statement. We knew that they were going to say this was domestic violence and there was mutual back. And fourth, physical aggression. People have pointed out a lot about the CNN video. I'm talking there about the assault in the hallway in 2016 that was leaked by CNN. That was played very early on and it's been played multiple times. And Cassie walked the jury through it step by step from her recollection. We've got a question for listener PJ Says, thanks for keeping us up to date. Hearing the testimony of the history of the two witnesses. So far, I haven't heard that a lot about the allegations. I've just heard that he's a horrible person, but that isn't illegal. Have I missed something? When will they start talking about drug trafficking and other RICO allegations be asked by the prosecution. In my opinion, I haven't heard much. And that's reflected in some of the commentary online. We're talking a lot about this CNN video, but that's not rico.
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Madeleine Halpert
What do you say to that one.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
Everybody like there's a famous case in the United States of America. It's a case of guy Al Capone, the United States got Al Kimon basically on tax fraud, but not all the awful stuff that he's done. I'm not saying that that's what they're doing the Diddy, but people tend to forget this Cassie charge if they stopped and they said today, you know what Judge, we don't want to go any further. And they said we want the jury to convict him of just the sex trafficking on the elements. I just told you 60 months is 5 years, 120 months is 10 years. So you can assume if they just stop here, they've convicted him of a 15 year offense without even getting into the RICO. And number two, the reason they're not, it's not that they're not getting into the RICO is I made the joke. Cassie is 11 months pregnant. If they didn't start with her right now, there's a real chance that she could have had this baby and who knows where we are.
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Madeleine Halpert
Yeah.
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Sean Kent
And then that's come up with prosecution in some of the transcripts with the judge. And also the judge got quite sort of firm today. You need to finish with her by this week. The prosecution are worried that she's going to go into labor over the weekend. So that's been, that's been voiced. But you speak there about if they can convict him of force. So doesn't that all hinge on who's recollection of that CNN video you believe because Cassie says she was fleeing a freak off and then he's dragging her back. That is directly he was forcing her into do it in black and white. He says she stole my phone and I wanted my phone back. So they say he said, she said situation. Right.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
Yep, he is and that's why if I'm not mistaken, they also had one of the sex workers who were also testifying that there was a freak off going on. But you're exactly right. That's why I think he's going to testify because he is the one who's going to have to explain this is what was really going on, not what she was saying because she is, she has made the government's case. This was a freak off. I was leading the freak off. He beat me. And let's. To make it easier for the law, let's call it what it was. I was leaving a commercial sex act because that's what the law is. We call them a free cost. But for the statute, I was leaving a commercial sex act. I didn't want to participate. Somebody was getting paid and he was beating me up and making me go backwards. Check. Element, element, element, element, element.
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Sean Kent
Let's touch on the cross examination. Now you've got the crystal ball. You told the future it was all going to come down to consent. You've told us this pretty much from episode one of this, from program one of this podcast. And a lot of it hinged on going through multiple text messages, emails, correspondence between Diddy and Cassie, where Cassie puts in writing, I am looking forward to this freak off. We can freak off anytime. I love it when we freak off and we both want to freak off. Multiple messages where she seems to express that she wanted to participate in the freak off. Now, she responded to that saying, you know, these are just words. And she also later on said, sometimes I just say it. So he leave me alone. Sometimes I do stuff to kind of mitigate against him asking me to do it.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
So.
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Sean Kent
But when you're talking about the sex trafficking, doesn't that mean if she's putting stuff in black and white in text.
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Madeleine Halpert
How could he be on a reasonable.
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Sean Kent
Doubt think that she had withdrawn her consent?
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Anushka Matan De Douati
And this is what the judge is going to tell the jury. He's going to say, the government must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt. And that's a strong burden. Make that clear beyond any doubt, a reasonable doubt. And if a jury is like, huh, and the second element, the defendant, Puffy Combs, knew that forced threats or force or fraud or coercion or any combination would be used to get her to engage in a commercial sex act. If he's saying, look in my mind reading these text messages, she wanted it. This is what she told me she wants. This isn't me assuming she is putting in writing. So how am I supposed to not think she wants it?
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Sean Kent
We've got a great question here. That said, it might be obvious, but I've been wondering if the prosecution has compelling, say, video evidence of victims being forced into sexual acts or drugs, would the defense be well aware of that beforehand? And if, if they have a kind of ace up their sleeve of, of somebody being forced or frauded into sex trafficking on tape, wouldn't. Did he have taken a plea deal or is they ask, is that Too logical, too simplistic of a thought pattern. Say that this is from laws in Australia.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
If that would have happened in opening statements, I guarantee you the government would have said, you are going to see a video of this woman doing blank.
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Madeleine Halpert
Yeah.
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Sean Kent
I find it confusing though, because when we had that initial press conference with the attorney general and they spoke about finding video materials in the March raids on Diddy's properties that they say showed people being victimized on tape. So where did that go? Or did they misinterpret it?
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Anushka Matan De Douati
And this is the great thing about press conferences, opening statements, none of that's evidence. You can say whatever the heck you want until it's presented. And I tell everybody, until I see it in the trial, it ain't evidence. To me, there is a real chance here Diddy and Cassie can both be telling the truth. Diddy 100% believed that she was into it by the text messages. And Cassie's like, I just wrote this because I hate him. They both could be telling the truth. So in his mind he could be like, why is she saying this? I've got these text messages, I love you, I care about you now. Freak offs are the best thing that's ever happened to me. And in her mind is, I don't want to get beat anymore. So I'm writing everything. So in his mind he might be like, I'm not pleading guilty.
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Sean Kent
There has been discussion on social media about some of the stuff that we heard in opening statements and in Cassie's direct that the jury are presumably going to be so disgusted by stuff that they've heard, whether it will cloud their judgment of whether they think it's sex trafficking or not. But we had a chat the other day and you brought something up about them being everyday Americans, private individuals with their own proclivities. And I hadn't, I hadn't considered that before.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
The great thing about what I believe is our American justice system is any human could serve on our jury and we're not in their bedrooms. There could be people who we don't know, who have certain fetishes, they could have certain proclivities, if you will, that could lend themselves to siding with the evidence presented against Diddy. I'm not saying it is, I'm not saying it isn't, but they could have proclivities that they could look at this evidence through their own lens. The judge says, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you bring your own individual wisdom to the jury and you use it. And given the fact you don't know who it is. Some people could get on there and just say, that's okay to me.
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Sean Kent
I just picked up on this thing that was said today. And I guess it's because we've done so many episodes of Diddy before he was ever even on trial, and we've covered so many of the civil cases. The defense's cross examination of Cassie has been reported by lots of different agencies and by our own reporters has been quite jumpy. It jumped around different time frames, it jumped about different topics. And members of the public in there, in the room that I was in were like, this is tricky to follow. At one point they asked Cassie about the baby oil, of course, and then they said, were there ever any drugs in the baby oil? Have you said there were drugs in the baby oil? She said, I've never said there were drugs in the baby oil. And it was kind of just thrown in there. And nobody has spoken about drugs in the baby oil apart from in civil lawsuits.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
My personal belief, and knowing the lawyers on this team the way that I know them, given that there are seven lawyers, I promise you they are scouring social media for other commentary and people of that nature. And remember, we don't know what this 12 jury is actually seeing. And you know, John Q. Public, how many times have you seen on social media, drugs in the baby, ghb in the baby oil. It's in the baby oil. It's in the baby oil. It's in the baby oil. And maybe that's just the question. It's like, you know what? Let's just knock this out in case there's any person on that jury who's thinking otherwise.
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Sean Kent
Shun, thank you so much.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
I love that you're so interested in the criminal justice system. It makes me so happy because it is confusing, but once you start to understand it, like, it's very clear you're starting to understand it. And it's like putting a piece of a puzzle together that you now see why they're crossing the way they are and why they're asking the direct questions.
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Sean Kent
Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me about this today. We'll see you again next Thursday for our next analysis episode. Guys, keep sending in your questions. Sean is obviously, it's a masterclass every time we speak to you.
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Anushka Matan De Douati
Thank you all for having me. We'll see you next Thursday.
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Sean Kent
That was our resident criminal defence attorney.
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Madeleine Halpert
Sean Kent from South Carolina. And that's it for this episode of.
- [22:12]
Sean Kent
Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds. With me, Anushka Matan. De Douati. Please keep sending us your questions. You can get us on WhatsApp at 033-01-2355, 551.
- [22:21]
Madeleine Halpert
That's 033-01-23551.
- [22:31]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
I'm Natalia Melman Petruzella and from the BBC. This is Extreme Peak Danger, the most.
- [22:38]
Anushka Matan De Douati
Beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you.
- [22:42]
Cassie Ventura
Stay on the mountain.
- [22:45]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive.
- [22:55]
Anushka Matan De Douati
If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore.
- [22:59]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Extreme Peak Danger. Listen first on BBC Sounds.