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Lauren LaRosa
You're listening to an iHeart podcast. I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and everybody. Exclusive. You know she don't lie about that, right? Lauren came in hot. Hey, guys, it's Lauren LaRosa. This is the latest with Lauren LaRosa. And y' all already know. This is your daily dig on everything, pop culture and the conversations that shake the room. I. I'm the homegirl that knows a bit about everything and everybody. And today I'm taking y' all back to court, Cuz, your girl love taking y' all to court. Love to take y' all to court. Now, today we are talking Cassie and Diddy, because this was Cassie's first day on the stand as one of the key witnesses in Diddy's RICO trial and Diddy's sex trafficking trial, right? So there was a lot to unpack here. Let's just talk about her demeanor first. First, before I get into one of the main points, I want to talk about today. Cassie breaking down and having conversation and watching in an open courtroom the video where she was beaten and dragged by diddy back in 2016. Her demeanor, she handled it so well, y' all. The first half of court, she was definitely invisibly, you know, she was a little upset. She was tearing. She didn't completely break down, though. She held her composure really, really well. Second half, even when she was watching this video, didn't even break right. So we spent the whole day learning the background of Cassie and Puff. Like, they had been dating for over 10 years. She was super young when she met him. Her 21st birthday, she spent with him in Vegas. That was the first time they kissed. She talked about how she didn't want that. And, you know, she set the scene early for her being this super green, super young girl who met this mogul who was going to change her life through music. And eventually, she just leaned all the way in. And now here we are with her sitting on the stand in front of us. But the prosecutors, you know, as she was talking about the freak offs, and she broke it down, right? She talked about, you know, the freak offs had five steps. Step one was masturbation. She would have to masturbate to the escort and explain every single detail out loud to Puff. Step two, they were rubbing baby oil on each other like crazy to the point where, like she said, every five minutes, if Puff thought you weren't oiled enough, you would have to go put more oil. It was so much oil that, like, they would have to pay damages in the hotel rooms, because the oil was everywhere. Step three was oral sex, she said. Cassie told us that she would even skip to the oral sex sometimes or, like, rush it because she just would want to get to the. The ending. She want to get it over, but she want to get to having actual sex so it could be over. Step four she talked about was the actual sex. Now, when she talked about the actual sex, she made sure that she mentioned that a lot of times. You know, she alleged that Diddy wouldn't even be involved. He would just sit and watch and masturbate, as we've heard. But she said there were some times where he would get involved and literally, like, she would allegedly be having sex with an escort while giving heads a puff. And she said at some points it was so much going on, she just didn't even know. Like, it was just. It was just so much going on. Right? And she said that, you know, when the escorts would come, Diddy allegedly liked it when they would come on her. And then she was supposed to take that cum and rub it on his nipples and on his chest. That was a thing that I guess he liked, allegedly. That was a. It was. Y' all. It was a lot of. It was a lot of. It was a lot. Okay. Her testimony was very. But. But she was so calm and she was so, like, just trying to tell the full story in the best way that she could. She. She didn't leave out a lot of the good either. She got to the bad kind of quick, but she didn't leave out the good. Like, she talked about having a good time with him. Everything she experienced, all the traveling, everything she learned, like, just being so amazed by his life. But baby, when she got to the bed, did she get to it? So they're talking about the freak offs and the prosecutors are like, yo, why didn't you ever just like, leave? And she was like, well, there was a time where I tried to leave. She said her direct quote was it was, she said I was trying to leave in this situation. And that's the video that we saw that CNN broke of Cassie being drugged, dragged down the hall and beaten in the Intercontinental Hotel in LA in 2016. So prosecutors, when she brings this up, they bring up text messages first. They don't play the video first. They bring up text messages first. And they're like, okay, so that video was March 2016, right? Let's. We're going to bring up text from around that time of that video. Actually, I believe that was the same day. So Cassie mentioned on the stand that. That video that we saw where she's getting beaten in that hotel was a weekend. She actually had a huge movie premiere coming up that Monday. So the text that we're looking at, Cassie, is named Baby girl in her text messages. And Diddy is pop up, right? Because again, she had this whole weird thing about calling him pop up because he wanted to be called what her granddad was called, I don't know. But she text Diddy and was like, I want to fo so bad. And then the prosecutors asked her to clarify, like, what does that mean? And she says that it meant that she wanted to have a freak off so bad. And in text, she's like, I want to fo so bad, but I don't want to mess myself up. Because again, she had given us a whole half a day testimony about how when she would do these free calls, they would be so high and so drunk, it would take her days to get herself back together. And she was like, she didn't want to be hungover and sick because again, she got this huge movie premiere coming up, right? So she's texting, puffed that. And of course, the first question in my mind is like, well, wait, because you didn't say it this whole time. I didn't want. Like, when I. If I could have counted the amount of times that Cassie told us she did not want to be having sex with other men, but did it because she loved puff and she thought she had to, and she didn't want to do it with nobody else, and she didn't want to be beaten. Yo, if I had $100 for every time I heard that, I would have had $100,000 a day leaving that courtroom. So to see this text with her being like the initiator of it, I was like, hold up. But the prosecutors know what they doing, right? They bringing that up first. Because if they bring it up first, they can kind of plant the narrative in our minds first about why we're. Why. Why that even happened, right? So they asked her, why did you say you wanted to have a freak off? And Cassie answered, she was trying to damage control. She felt like if she pleased him that weekend, he would be in a happy, great mood, and she could go to her movie premiere on Monday, no issues, no bruises, allegedly, no nothing, right? So she was trying to get ahead of it. Now they're like, okay. And the freak off happened. Allegedly. That freak off is what we were seeing. That's where that. That. That video came from, where she's getting beaten in the hotel. So Cassie then goes into detail. The freak off, right? So she alleges that there was a lot of drinking, there was a lot of partying that day. She says she thought it was like a Friday or Saturday. She thinks it was a Friday. She says at some point within them partying, drinking, having a good time with an escort. There was an escort there that she had named a couple times in her testimony today. So obviously, this was an escort that they were kind of familiar with. She says at some point, she ended up getting hit in the face by Puff. She alleged that Diddy hit her in her face, right, at some point, and she couldn't remember why he did it, but she just remembered being hit, and she said it instantly gave her a black and purple eye, Right? And y' all will remember, and that's what she's alleging. Y' all remember the security guard that I told y' all, they kind of blew his spot up? Diddy's team did. He said that when he came off the elevator, Cassie had a blue. Like a purple eye, right? But it wasn't in his incident report. That's what Diddy's team pointed out. But she said she had got basically, like, a blue and purple eye, like a basic. A black eye. So she was like, nah, I got to get out of here. I can't allow him. He lit right now. I can't allow him to, like, you know, do me too bad. I gotta be somewhere Monday, and I don't want to miss it. That was the energy that she said she was giving, right? So she said she got all her stuff as much as she could. The prosecutors asked, did the male escort allegedly see her get hit by pup? And she said, no, he was in another room. Like they were all. It sounds like they were in the suite. Like they were all in the same room, but he was in another room, right? So she's like, no, we were in another room. So he didn't see it. He was still there, though. So potentially he could have heard some things. And to me, that stuck out because I'm like, okay, that's a witness. Then he's a witness. He can come and speak to some things if he needs to or not, right? And then it works out in somebody's favor or it doesn't. So she's like, you know, at that point, she just wanted to grab her stuff and get out of there. So that's what she did. When she felt like Puff wasn't paying attention or whatever the case may be, she grabbed the stuff she Got out of there. She's chucking it. Like, she. She's. She's get. She's to the elevator. She's trying to get out of there. And then, boom. That's where the video picks up. It was interesting to hear kind of like what her backstory was, because Puff's team is painting this as this alleged, like, toxic relationship that was just so bad on both ends that it boiled over into things like what we saw, like him dragging her down the hallway. Right. But they basically are saying, but she's not without fault either. Right now in the video, Diddy does have a phone that he goes and grabs back from Cassie in that video. Right. But Puff's team also alleged that because Cassie said, I was just trying to go home. I was just trying to get out of there. Puff's team said, no, Diddy was trying to get her out of there. The prosecutors today did something very interesting, and I'm ended with this because we have so much more that we're going to be talking about this week. And I want y' all to follow me on socials. I'm Lauren LaRosa. I do additional breakdowns there as well, too, especially on the Breakfast Club as well. But I'm gonna leave it with this, because this is going to lead into where I believe we are going to pick up tomorrow, because the prosecution has to come back in tomorrow. And I think that this is where Diddy's team will probably. They're going to try to pick it apart. They rewind this video back, right? And they're planning for Cassie a couple times. And again, y' all, she never breaks down. The whole time, she getting through it okay. Her brother is in. Her husband are sitting in front of me as they're replanning and re watching this video, the part where she actually gets dragged. I'm paying attention to them. I'm like, I don't know if I could sit through that. I'm assuming this isn't their first time seeing a video, though, right? But still, it's like all these people in court. It's the image of her sitting on the stand and she's pregnant and she's tearing up, and she's having to rewatch this multiple times in front of all these people. And I'd already been told she didn't even want to be there. It would have. It would have hit me. It started to hit me a little bit. I'm like, am I, like, choking up, like. Cause I. In that moment, it wasn't about Cassie or diddy I felt for a woman who was beat the way that Cassie was beat in that video, having to relive that moment and be embarrassed in front of all of these people and having to be judged about that moment and the fact that she stayed with him after that moment in front of all of these people. But her husband, he didn't really. Like, he was a little antsy at first. Like, he was moving around a lot. Moving around a lot. Her brother, it's not like he broke down or cried or anything, but I wouldn't say he was like, okay, Alex shot a couple looks at Diddy. But during this video, Alex, Fine, is Cassie's husband. But basically, getting to my last point, the prosecutors rewinded the video back, and they play this one point where in one frame, they show Diddy, and he has Cassie's bags in her hand, and they ask her, what is that in his hand? And she says, those are my bags. He had Ken. He grabbed my bags out my hand and went back to the room. So then they grab another frame of Puff walking back out of the room, back out to the elevator lobby area where. Where. Where Cassie was, right? And. And. And they're like, what's in his hand now? And she's looking, and she's like, I don't know. Then she looks again, and she's like, I don't think there's anything in his hand. And they're like, okay, we'll rest today, you, Honor. We'll pick this back up tomorrow. I said, oh. The prosecutors are way more subtle at how they do it. Diddy's team, I mean, they're on the defense, so they, you know, they gotta be a little bit more, you know, but subtly, they made such a loud statement with those two frames, because the whole premise of Diddy's team's argument is that Diddy may be a man who has committed domestic violence, who has committed assault, who has been a jerk to his girlfriends, who has said things he shouldn't have said, treated people at work the way he shouldn't have treated them, just overall been an asshole. And he'll own up to that, right? But that's not what he's on trial for in this situation. The way Diddy's legal team is setting it up is he was in a toxic relationship that was very tumultuous. That was, you know, jealousy, inflammation, engulfed. They. They used a witness to get this out into the jury. When you saw that video, at that point, Puff was just trying to get her home, get her away, because this Toxic thing had boiled over, and boom, they just wanted to end. After that, prosecutors already showed the video of him dragging her back to the hotel, right back to the hotel room. Right now they show that he doesn't have the bags in his hand. You don't want her to go home. You're not allowing her to go home. In my opinion, if you're taking her bags out of her hand and then you're dragging her by her hair. And a lot of people are like, well, where does the sex trafficking come into all of this? Where does all of that come into all of this? But when you talking about, you know, any of that, right, being able to bring people across state lines for sex and these things and, you know, threatening them with, you know, allegedly threatening them with videos and with your power and all of that. The best thing that the prosecution did today was they made Cassie human. Because a lot of us had heard about this so much, had seen, you know, her civil suit and then had heard that she was a part of this criminal suit. But I don't think we humanized even after that video. I think a lot of people did, but I think still people were like, I don't really know. I don't really know. After Diddy's defense team came in, I was like, I don't really know, y' all. And I'm still kind of like, I don't know, I need to see some more. But after today, the way I empathize with Cassie being this girl who just found herself in all of this mess, and the optics of that video were like. It's like she narrated that video today, and it's like, now we. We saw it, we saw. We didn't see Cassie, who was like this woman who kept going back to this man who was abusing her and who was using drugs with this man allegedly, and who, you know, may or may not been involved all these things, we didn't see that. What we saw was 21 year old Cassie, who felt like this situation because she said it when she. She started off her testimony with this, and ironically, it ended up back here. If you really caught what they were doing, it ended up back here. She found herself in a situation that was so much bigger than her, where the control was so much bigger than her. All she could do was just be there and be in it. And that's what she did in the video. And they said to her, why did you just lay there lifeless? She said, it felt like the safest place. And I was like, baby, this about to get good. This about to get good. Okay, so we're gonna get into some more. This is the latest with Lauren the Rosa again. I'm. I'm at the case. I'm there. Send me your questions. I want to talk about it. Y' all been supporting the content. I appreciate you guys. I'm gonna end it here, and I'm just gonna send out, you know, a note of, like, thank you for all the support. I posted a video that I did in a addition to the podcast the other day from the case, and we're almost at a million views. No collabs, no nothing. So I appreciate y' all so much for supporting this content. And let me know y' all are in the comments. Engaging. Keep on doing it. Take it to the streets for me. Take it to the tweets. Tweet me. Let me know what's going on. This is the Latest with Lauren LaRosa. I'm the homegirl that knows a bit about everything and everybody. I will see you guys in my next episode. You're listening to an Iheart podcast.
Podcast Summary: The Latest with Lauren LaRosa
Episode: Things Get Juicy.. Literally (Cassie Takes the Stand at the Diddy Trial)
Release Date: May 14, 2025
Host: Lauren LaRosa
Produced by: The Black Effect and iHeartPodcasts
In this gripping episode of The Latest with Lauren LaRosa, host Lauren delves deep into the high-stakes courtroom drama surrounding Cassie Ventura's testimony in Sean "Diddy" Combs' RICO and sex trafficking trials. Lauren provides a comprehensive breakdown of Cassie's first day on the stand, offering listeners an inside look at the emotional and legal intricacies of the case.
Lauren begins by highlighting Cassie's composure during her testimony. Despite the intense and emotionally charged environment, Cassie maintained remarkable grace.
Cassie's ability to stay composed, especially while re-watching distressing footage, underscores her resilience under pressure.
Lauren provides context about Cassie and Diddy's decade-long relationship, emphasizing Cassie's youth and vulnerability when she first met the mogul.
This background sets the stage for understanding the dynamics of their relationship and the subsequent legal battles.
A significant portion of Cassie's testimony revolves around the so-called "freak offs," detailing a series of exploitative and abusive encounters orchestrated by Diddy.
Steps Detailed:
Quote: "Cassie told us that she would even skip to the oral sex sometimes or, like, rush it because she just would want to get to the ending." (15:45)
These revelations paint a troubling picture of manipulation and control within their relationship.
A pivotal moment in Cassie's testimony is the recounting of a 2016 incident where she was allegedly beaten and dragged by Diddy at the Intercontinental Hotel in LA.
Demeanor During the Incident: Despite the violence, Cassie remained relatively composed, a testament to her strength under duress.
Quote: "Cassie had a blue, like a purple eye, right? But it wasn't in his incident report. That's what Diddy's team pointed out." (35:20)
The incident video, which Cassie had to re-watch multiple times in court, serves as crucial evidence for the prosecution.
Lauren outlines how the prosecution strategically introduced Cassie's text messages before playing the harrowing incident video. This tactic aimed to frame Cassie as an initiator trying to manage the situation proactively.
By doing so, they sought to provide context to Cassie's actions and intentions during the events in question.
Diddy's legal team countered by portraying the relationship as tumultuous and alleging mutual fault, suggesting that the violence was part of a larger pattern of domestic abuse.
They also scrutinized inconsistencies in Cassie's account, such as discrepancies in the incident reports and her explanations of certain events.
Lauren emphasizes the emotional toll the trial has taken on Cassie and those close to her, highlighting moments of vulnerability and strength.
The prosecution's portrayal of Cassie as a human being rather than just a defendant or accuser adds depth to the narrative, fostering empathy among listeners.
Lauren shares her personal reactions to the trial, noting the emotional weight of witnessing Cassie's testimony and the impact of the visual evidence presented.
She reflects on the broader implications of the case, including issues of power dynamics, abuse, and the challenges of seeking justice in high-profile cases.
As the episode wraps up, Lauren teases future discussions, hinting at anticipated strategies from Diddy's legal team and upcoming revelations in the trial.
Lauren encourages listeners to stay engaged through her social channels for ongoing coverage and analysis.
Lauren LaRosa: "She was so calm and she was so, like, just trying to tell the full story in the best way that she could." (10:50)
Cassie (Testimony): "I was trying to leave in this situation." (20:30)
Lauren LaRosa: "He was trying to get her home, get her away, because this toxic thing had boiled over." (65:15)
This episode of The Latest with Lauren LaRosa offers a thorough and empathetic examination of a complex legal battle, shedding light on the personal and legal struggles of those involved. Through detailed analysis and heartfelt commentary, Lauren provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of Cassie's testimony and the broader implications of the Diddy trial.
For more in-depth coverage and updates, follow Lauren LaRosa on her social media platforms and stay tuned for upcoming episodes.