New Videos of Diddy Hotel Assault and Incident Report Released
Surveillance footage showing the rapper beating then-girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura in 2016 became public during her testimony.
Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the star witness against Sean “Diddy” Combs, has been describing the origins of her professional and romantic relationship with the rapper for two days on direct examination. She described feeling “confused” when Combs first kissed her on her 21st birthday in Las Vegas, her recognition that he “happened to have [her] entire career in his hands,” and of course, the infamous footage of her assault at the InterContinental Hotel on March 5, 2016.
The fuller, unedited footage from the trial is below.
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Given the case’s sex trafficking charge, All Rise News reached out to five top advocacy groups involved in combating human trafficking about how celebrity cases like these affect their work. We will follow up with any responses.
“Please stay far away from me”
More than eight months pregnant, Ventura delivered emotional and devastating testimony about her abuse, which attorneys for Combs acknowledged during opening statements.
“He would mash in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me. Stomp me in the head if I was down,” Ventura testified.
On Wednesday, a jury saw more evidence from some of the aftermath, including selfies of her wearing sunglasses to cover her black eye and the toll of the beatings on her “fat lip.” Prosecutors showed apparently panicked text messages from Combs writing “Pls call.”
“Call me,” Combs wrote. “The cops are here. You’re going to abandon me all alone.”
“You’re sick for thinking you can do what you’ve done,” Ventura replies. “Please stay far away from me.”
Though Diddy denies racketeering, sex trafficking, and transporting for prostitution claims, his defense team acknowledges the uncharged domestic violence. Resources for survivors are available on the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
The videos first came into evidence during testimony from the government’s first witness on Day 1 of trial: Israel Florez, who worked security at the hotel in 2016, before he joined the Los Angeles Police Department. Until Monday, the public did not know that Flores secretly recorded unseen footage from the video on his iPhone that captured his response on the 6th floor.
“Mr. Combs began to offer me a bribe”
Florez testified that Combs tried to bribe him with $100,000 in cash to keep videos like these from going public, an allegation that’s also documented in the hotel’s incident report.
“Mr. Combs began to offer me a bribe ‘you take care of this I got you let’s go to my room,’” the report states. “I then responded with, ‘Sir, I know who you,’ are while extending my arm to him to shake his hand and said all, ‘I ask is for respect for the guest and myself so do me the favor and lets return you to your room.’”
Later in the report, Florez wrote: “Mr. Combs open the door and brought out a currency band wrapped around 100 dollars and told me again, ‘thank you’ and said ‘you take care of this and I take care of you.’ I declined the money and told Mr. Combs that all we needed was for him to stay in his room until check out which is today. I left the scene at 11:25 AM.”
The report also details Combs’ fears about how the incident would affect his professional reputation.
Throughout the report, Combs referred to Ventura as “Miss CC,” which she says was short for “Cassie Combs.” (The former couple never married each other, but Ventura is now expecting her third child with husband Alex Fine.) Florez testified that Combs at one point tried to grab the phone of a hotel staffer, whom the rapper mistakenly thought was recording him.
“[Combs] calmed himself down and apologize[d] and stated ‘it’s just that I don’t want to lose anything and I can lose it all,’” the report states. “We then reassured him that all we need him was to calm down and not have anymore scenes from that time until his check out time.”
Photographs of the damage to the room are attached to the report.
Read the full report here.
This is utterly horrific, but as a former honors student in geology who was drugged and raped by her field professor while on a required class, I know exactly how Cassie felt about having a man who holds your entire career in his hands, while he abuses you. My Alma mater, University of Texas at Austin, continues to cover up the crime of rape by continuing to falsify my transcript, removing the class from my official record and never allowing it to be corrected, even 43 years later, even though UT acknowledges I did attend the class. Kudos to Cassie Ventura!! It takes guts to get up on the stand and tell of the abuse you have suffered, and I can’t imagine going through that at 8+ months pregnant. These men who abuse women are cruel and they are in EVERY profession, every walk of life, from rich to poor, white or black or any other shade of skin tone, any religion - it’s all about subjugation, abuse and controlling women. We’ve got to start holding men accountable for their attempted destruction of women through rape, sexual abuse and horrific drugging and control.