logo
Diddy's 8-month pregnant ex-Cassie Ventura who he ‘forced into drug-fueled freak offs' set to testify on day 2 of trial

Diddy's 8-month pregnant ex-Cassie Ventura who he ‘forced into drug-fueled freak offs' set to testify on day 2 of trial

The Sun13-05-2025

SEAN "Diddy" Combs' eight-month pregnant ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura is set to take the stand and testify on day two of the blockbuster trial.
Her bombshell testimony comes after the video of Combs beating her in a hotel hallway in 2016 kicked off the downfall of the disgraced rapper and music mogul.
3
3
3
Combs, 55, faces five criminal counts, including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The first day of Combs' trial at the US Courthouse in Manhattan ended on Monday with testimony from male escort Daniel Phillip.
Phillip said he was paid up to $6,000 per session to have sex with Cassie using baby oil while Combs watched from the corner of the room.
After several meet-ups in New York City starting in 2012, Phillip told the court he stopped agreeing to the encounters after he saw Combs beat up Cassie twice and realized she was in "real danger."
The chilling 2016 video was shown to the court on Monday as a security guard also recalled his experience coming face to face with Combs, who he said had a "devilish stare" after beating up Cassie.
It comes as...
Combs turned down plea deal days before jury selection got underway
Potential jurors were given a list of 190 celebrities they recognized
The reason Michael B. Jordan was named during the jury selection process revealed
Combs was hit with fresh prostitution and sex trafficking charges just months before his trial started
The music sensation was arrested in September 2024 at a New York City hotel hours after he was seen relaxing in Central Park
In March 2024, two of Combs' mansions were raided by federal investigators, who seized three AR-15s, drugs, and 1,000 bottles of lube which were part of his 'freak-off' supplies
The arrest came after Combs' ex Cassie Ventura accused him in a lawsuit of physically and sexually abusing her for years
Prosecutors allege Combs orchestrated drug-fuelled sex parties he called freak-offs, where he is said to have forced women, including Cassie and another alleged victim called Jane Doe, to participate in sexual activity with male escorts.
He has pleaded not guilty and appeared stone-faced as the trial began with prosecutors painting him as the ringleader of a criminal enterprise during explosive opening statements.
Prosecutors warned jurors to brace themselves to hear disturbing details of the alleged freak-offs throughout the trial during opening statements.
Combs has denied all allegations against him and argued through his lawyers that he has only participated in consensual sex between adults.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
12th May 2025, 19:15 By Charlotte Maracina
Florez claims Diddy said not to tell anyone
Florez claimed that Sean 'Diddy' Combs told him not to tell anyone about the 2016 incident as he offered him a stack of cash with a $100 bill on top.
The offer happened after Florez, a former security guard at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, approached Combs about a fight between the music producer and his girlfriend, Cassie Venutra.
"Hey take care of this," Florez recalled Combs saying, after Ventura had left. "Don't tell nobody."
12th May 2025, 19:07 By Charlotte Maracina
Florez rejects offer
Florez said he rejected the offer by Combs.
"I said, I don't want your money, the damage is going to be charged to your room."
The witness said Cassie left the hotel in a black SUV.
"We went up to Mr. Combs' room to remind him of hotel rules," the former security guard told jurors.
"He opens the door and grabs the phone and says, Are you recording me? I pinned him to the wall."
12th May 2025, 19:04 By Carsen Holaday
Florez recalls 'devilish stare'
Witness Israel Florez testified that Sean "Diddy" Combs had a "devilish stare" after he violently attacked his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura in 2016.
'He was on the chair, slouched down and he was at a blank stare," Florez, a security guard at the time, told jurors.
"As soon as I walked out, the best way I can describe it is a devilish stare."
Florez added that he was looking at him with "no movement."
He said Cassie had her hoodie on at the time and was hiding her face.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Everyone's a winner: how awards shows became popular again
Everyone's a winner: how awards shows became popular again

The Guardian

time24 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Everyone's a winner: how awards shows became popular again

The annual Tony awards, honoring excellence in American theatre, have never exactly been a TV ratings powerhouse compared to the Oscars or Grammys. Yet the most recent ceremony experienced a surprise surge in viewership, with broadcast viewership up 44% compared to the 2024 installment. It was the largest audience since the last pre-pandemic edition in 2019. That seems to sync up with the record-setting season that the awards were celebrating, where Broadway productions featured a number of movie stars drawing huge crowds (and ticket prices). Yet apart from George Clooney and a few other familiar faces, it wasn't a particularly starry Tonys; Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kieran Culkin weren't nominated, and there wasn't a single crossover mass-culture powerhouse like Hamilton or The Producers (whose winning telecasts are still the highest-rated of the 21st century). Moreover, Broadway isn't alone; the Oscars experienced ratings growth (part of a four-year upward trend), and the left-for-dead Golden Globes have stabilized. This trend goes back nearly a year, to last fall, when MTV's more specialized Video Music Awards saw an uptick and Emmy viewership jumped up 50% to a three-year high. Awards shows, so often derided as bloated, self-congratulatory ratings ploys, have somehow survived the streaming apocalypse to become broadcast TV's last stand. (Apart from real sports, of course.) In some ways, it makes sense. Very few scripted shows still command watch-it-live urgency, not least because it's not always clear when or if they air live in the first place. Awards shows, however, only really need the date; most of them run for the full prime-time block, and in some cases on multiple channels. (The VMAs are basically shown on the entire Paramount family of channels, as if to scoop up as many errant unconverted cable-watchers as possible.) It seems related to how Saturday Night Live has become one of the highest-rated shows on network TV simply by not bleeding quite as many viewers as its primetime brethren: everyone knows when and where it's on and what its deal is – yet it also doesn't require full and sustained attention to enjoy. Similarly, awards shows sprawl out like a lazy couch stretch, while also breaking into easy-to-follow segments. And despite the ubiquity of shareable online highlights – you probably could have watched three-quarters of the Tonys in 47-second clips on social media – those bits and bobs are really more fun if you're actually watching along in real time, rather than piecing together the timeline like an awards detective. Remember various apps trying to sync up Watch Parties for isolating friends during the height of Covid? Awards shows do that for you: it's live, on TV, ready for your second-screen experience. That's been true for decades at this point, since well before Elon Musk bought Twitter. (If anything, the social media landscape seems more fragmented now than it did five or six years ago.) What's emerged from the great streaming shift is that awards shows function as particularly organic second-screen entertainment, something streamers have quietly and insidiously backwards-engineered with some of their shows and movies. Scripted (shudder) 'content,' material that's clearly designed to be passively consumed while fiddling with your phone or folding laundry, tends toward clunky exposition, repeated plot points, and an overall glossy indifference to tight, engaging narrative. Viewers may not immediately clock the difference, especially if they're performing the designated distractions while watching, but the empty-calorie nature of so many streaming movies and shows may eventually (fail to) add up, especially when compared with so much great work of the past. But awards shows are already like that by design! Hosts, presenters, announcers and on-screen graphics all tell you what's happening, repeatedly. Clips, speeches and live performances even offer catch-up context for whatever plays, songs or movies you aren't personally caught up with. Rare moments of chaos or genuine spontaneity get the instant-replay treatment on social media – as do micro-expressions from just about anyone caught on camera, subject to ridiculous levels of analysis exploiting the fact that sometimes people, even famous ones, affect neutral expressions in public. Network TV has approximated a particularly celeb-saturated Instagram feed without even trying. There's probably a grim irony in the fact that many millions of people would prefer to second-screen the experience of Anora winning a bunch of Oscars than to actually sit down and pay attention to Anora – just one of many movies that is, in terms of merging art and entertainment, a lot more potent and intellectually rewarding than a veg-out in front of the Oscars, even if someone as funny as Conan O'Brien is hosting. It's possible that our modern pop-cultural feeds have been awards-ified without even realizing it, turning too many other experiences into a kind of destructively participatory sporting event. Then again, it's hard to hold that against the Tonys, which offers an annual big-budget sampler of Broadway material to a lot of viewers who don't have regular access to the highest-profile stages in the country. (Hell, some of us media types who live in New York City still had no idea what Floyd Collins was before the ceremony.) If it takes an old-fashioned self-congratulatory awards show to cheerfully force-feed us some genuine culture in the virtual company of others, hey, it sure beats scrolling alone.

'The greatest shot in the history of golf': World No 284 produces 122-yard putt on the 'world's HARDEST golf course' ahead of 125th US Open
'The greatest shot in the history of golf': World No 284 produces 122-yard putt on the 'world's HARDEST golf course' ahead of 125th US Open

Daily Mail​

time25 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

'The greatest shot in the history of golf': World No 284 produces 122-yard putt on the 'world's HARDEST golf course' ahead of 125th US Open

PGA Tour pro Zac Blair has produced what one fan has described as 'the greatest shot in the history of golf' on the famously difficult Oakmont Country Club course in the build-up to the US Open. Golf stars have been taking to the course - known as the toughest to tackle in the sport - as they prepare for the 125th installment of the major, which begins on Thursday morning. The course at Oakmont Country Club, situated in Pennsylvania, is known as the 'Beast' by members who play on it with regularity. Phil Mickelson once described it as the 'hardest' layout he's played. Rory McIlroy, who recently completed the golf Grand Slam by winning the Masters, has even been struggling on the Oakmont grass during practice rounds, claiming the Pittsburgh venue 'felt impossible' after a recent visit. So, when a video started circulating of Blair - who is ranked 284th in the world - executing an extraordinary 122-yard putt onto the green the notoriously tough hole number one. clip posted by Andy Johnson, a golf fan, displays Blair impressively drilling the ball down the fairway, and it sloped perfectly onto the green into a perfect position to putt home. . @z_blair from 122 with the putter on 1 at Oakmont….pretty good. — Andy Johnson (@AndyTFE) June 10, 2025 The majority of the build-up to the third major of the year has been congested with complaints from the world's best golfers, so it's fair to say that fans have been left stunned by the shot from Utah-born Blair. One particularly amazed social media user, wrote: 'No exaggeration, that might have been the greatest shot in the history of golf.' Another's reaction was short but sweet: 'That's a tremendous putt.' Meanwhile, a different fan was left in disbelief: 'Absurdly good [laughing face emojis]. He hit that left hand low?! Insanity.' Not all fans were left impressed, however. Many X accounts couldn't see what was so special about the shot. 'Mostly luck. No pressure. The shots Rory hit in Augusta on Sunday were way more impressive than this,' read one reply to the video. However, I'm not sure the great McIlroy will agree with the comment. The Masters champion was one of many taking part in the US Open to admit to struggling with the Oakmont Country Club course. On Tuesday, the Northern Irishman - who was beaten to the title by Bryson DeChambeau last year - opened up about the difficulties he faced on a scouting mission at the course last week. 'Last Monday felt impossible,' McIlroy said. 'I birdied the last two holes for 81. It felt pretty good, it didn't feel like I played that badly [on Tuesday]. It's much more benign right now than it was that Monday. 'They had the pins in dicey locations and greens were running at 15.5 [on the stimpmeter]. It was nearly impossible. This morning it was a little softer. The pins aren't going to be on 3 or 4% slopes all the time. 'If you put it in the fairway, it's certainly playable. But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that's a bonus. 'I'm glad we have spotters out there because last Monday you hit a ball off the fairway and you were looking for a good couple of minutes just to find it. It's very penal if you miss. Sometimes it's penal if you don't miss. The person with the most patience and the best attitude this week is the one that's going to win.'

Netflix fans 'feel violated' after graphic spitting scene in trailer for new romcom series - gasping 'that really caught me off guard!'
Netflix fans 'feel violated' after graphic spitting scene in trailer for new romcom series - gasping 'that really caught me off guard!'

Daily Mail​

time28 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Netflix fans 'feel violated' after graphic spitting scene in trailer for new romcom series - gasping 'that really caught me off guard!'

Netflix fans 'felt violated' after a graphic spitting scene in the trailer for a new romcom series - gasping that moment 'really caught them off guard'. Too Much, from the mind of Lena Dunham, stars Megan Stalter (Hacks) as Jessica, a thirty-something, New York workaholic, grappling with a devastating breakup. The ten-part series, coming to the streamer on July 10, sees her move across the pond to London for a fresh start. There, she meets and falls messily in love with Felix, played by Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) - a layabout musician and an entirely unexpected, unlikely match. The trailer dropped on YouTube yesterday - but fans in the comments were shocked by a particular scene in it that jarred with its classic romcom vibe. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Too Much stars Megan Stalter (Hacks), left, as Jessica, a thirty-something, New York workaholic, grappling with a devastating breakup One shot shows Felix spitting into Jessica's mouth as they lie in bed together One shot shows Felix spitting into Jessica's mouth as they lie in bed together - prompting viewers to complain: 'The spitting in mouth scene violated me.'; 'That spitting scene is not gonna leave me for a while now.'; 'OK, I'm not alone. I stopped to read the comments at the spitting scene.'; 'The spitting really caught me off guard OMG.'; 'I felt violently touched after seeing that spitting scene.'; 'What in the spitting jump scare was that?' Punning on the show's title, one said: 'Yeah, the spitting scene was Too Much for me.' But some were not so taken aback by it as others, referring to Lena's most famous TV creation, Girls, which aired on HBO from 2012 to 2017: 'Those of you shocked by the spitting scene have clearly never seen Girls.'; The trailer dropped on YouTube yesterday - but fans in the comments were shocked by a particular scene in it that jarred with its classic romcom vibe But some were not so taken aback by it as others 'As a gay man, that spitting scene is tame. Y'all freakin' over nothing.' Fans were mostly very excited to see the series hit the small screen next month: 'Oh, this actually, genuinely looks good. Is this the start of a Dunhamaissance?'; 'We love a plus-size lead who knows what she wants. So excited for this!'; 'Too Much looks like exactly the kind of chaotic comfort watch I need right now. Who else is ready to binge this entire thing in one sitting?' The romcom boasts a star-studded cast, with Stephen Fry, Andrew Scott, Richard E Grant, Kit Harington, Rita Ora, Jessica Alba, Rhea Perlman, Jennifer Saunders, Emily Ratajkowski, Adwoa Aboah and Lena herself all starring. It is made by the producers of Love Actually and Notting Hill and is co-created by Lena, 39, and her husband, Peruvian-British musician Luis Felber, 38. Lena told Netflix news site Tudum their own love story is similar to Jessica and Felix's: 'When I first started coming to the UK for work... I thought to myself, "I want to write something about the experience of being a foreigner here and the fantasies we have of [London] versus the realities". 'Then, when I met my husband Luis, I felt like I was experiencing all of that but in the context of a relationship.' Fans were mostly very excited to see the series hit the small screen next month But she also said, at a Next on Netflix event in London earlier this year, Megan had made the role of Jessica her own. 'She is truly an old-fashioned physical comedian in the vein of Carol Burnett or Elaine May but she has something really modern and also really sweet about her and she can move between intense comedy and heavy drama with ease', Lena gushed. 'She just felt like the perfect foil to feel how Americans contrast against the people of this nation. 'Because it didn't take very long for me to realise that while you technically speak the same language, there are some vast differences I am still coming to understand.' Megan loves how the show overturned tropes both about romcoms - and how Americans see London: 'The show does a really good job of knowing what it is but then also flipping it on its head.' Her co-star Will agreed: 'It has such an awareness of rom-com... but it also does have some rougher edges. 'That makes the sweeter aspects all the more powerful because there's an honesty to it.' Megan saw herself in her character: 'Jessica and I both wear our hearts on our sleeve. We're emotional, we're dramatic, we're weird and remain that way as adults.' Lena said while the show does have some serious moments, she hoped it could mostly act as a source of escapist joy for viewers. 'You can take a half hour away from your day and feel like you are part of a world that is truthful but just a little more sweet and tender than the actual world we live in,' she explained. Since working on Girls, Lena has continued her acting work, appearing in American Horror Story, The Simpsons and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. She has also kept working as a writer, producer and director, creating American comedy Camping, starring Jennifer Garner and David Tennant. She also directed some episodes of British show Industry, about newbie investment bankers, and wrote 2022 medieval comedy Catherine Called Birdy, starring Bella Ramsey, Billie Piper and Andrew Scott. Lena swapped her $2.8million Los Angeles bungalow for a property in London after marrying Luis in September 2021, at a members-only club in the capital. The pair met in January 2021 on a blind date, which they were set up on by friends. Luis has previously told The New York Times their first date was about eight hours long - and they moved in together just months later. The pair met in January 2021 on a blind date, which they were set up on by friends. Pictured: Lena at their London home 'I think when you know, you know', he said. 'I've only been alive for 35 years in this lifetime, and I think it's another archaic thing for guys to hide their feelings. 'I'm way more into the flow of getting to know the person. 'And I think Lena's the same, and I think - I'm going to sound cheesy - but when you find your soulmate, you just know.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store