Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ lead attorney Marc Agnifilo had an interesting take on Cassie Ventura during his closing argument on Friday (June 27) in the mogul’s federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial: she knew how to keep it gangsta.
While discussing the mogul’s long relationship with Ventura, which is now the subject of a sex trafficking charge due to him allegedly forcing her into repeated freak offs — sometimes days-long drug-fueled bouts of sex with escorts while Combs watched and masturbated — Agnifilo moved onto the topic of Ventura’s relationship with Kid Cudi back in 2011.
The relationship is connected to instances of Combs’ alleged kidnapping (he is accused of bringing an employee to Cudi’s house at gunpoint while he broke in) and arson (he is also accused of being behind a plot to firebomb Cudi’s car several weeks after the alleged break-in).
Cassie testified that she and Diddy “were not in the greatest place” when she began dating Cudi. Cudi himself testified that when he started seeing Ventura, “She and Sean Combs had some problems and they weren’t dating anymore.” However, he also agreed with Diddy’s attorney Brian Steel under cross examination that Ventura had not been “frank” with him about her relationship with Combs, and concurred with Steel’s assessment that the singer had “played” both of them.
This was the context for Agnifilo’s comments on Friday.
“Cudi comes in here, gets on the witness stand and says: ‘Cassie played me,'” he began. “She played him. She played him good too. She played them both.”
The attorney then began to talk about how prosecutors characterized Combs and Ventura’s relationship: that she was intimidated and fearful because of his violence, threats, and control over her career and finances.
“The government wants you to believe, she’s scared to death of Sean Combs. Afraid of his temper. Afraid of what he might do.”
But despite that supposed fear, Agnifilo said, “She lied to him for a long time over and over and over as she had a relationship with another singer-songwriter under his nose. She’s not afraid of him because, you know why? She can handle it.”
He continued: “Was there anything in evidence that led you to believe that she was about to tell one of them on the other? Nothing. Cassie is keeping it gangsta.”
Ventura testified back in May that after Diddy found out about her relationship with Cudi, “I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me, just a whole — his eyes blacked out, super angry. And I just had to get out of there.”
Not long afterwards, she testified, she saw Combs again, and he threatened to release sex tapes of her, and to hurt both Ventura and Cudi. Then, Ventura testified, Combs kicked her in the back hard enough to leave bruises. Photos of the bruises, taken around Christmas 2011, were introduced into evidence, and you can see them below.
Note: the below images are graphic.
