Defense lawyers for Sean Combs pushed on Friday to undermine one of the most damaging allegations in the music mogul’s trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges — that he raped his longtime girlfriend, the singer Casandra Ventura, in 2018.
On the last of four grueling days of Ms. Ventura’s testimony, Mr. Combs’s defense team pointed out inconsistencies in her recounting of when such an incident had occurred. They also noted that Ms. Ventura, an R&B singer known professionally as Cassie, never mentioned anything about an attack in a flurry of emotional breakup text messages that the couple exchanged soon afterward.
The nature and history of the relationship between Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura is central to the government’s case. Prosecutors have depicted the music mogul as a sexual predator whose employees helped stage marathon drug-fueled sessions, known as “freak-offs,” during which Ms. Ventura had sex with male prostitutes while Mr. Combs watched, and sometimes masturbated.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and his lawyers have portrayed Ms. Ventura as someone who fell deeply in love, participated willingly in the freak-offs but then, bitter with jealousy, has recast the relationship as a grim 11 years of beatings, blackmail and coerced sex.
In that vein, the defense questioned Ms. Ventura about consensual sexual intercourse she had with Mr. Combs about a month after what she said was a night when Mr. Combs raped her in her home. Ms. Ventura was already dating her now husband, Alex Fine, at the time of the consensual sex with Mr. Combs, and she testified that while together with Mr. Combs, she received, but didn’t answer, a FaceTime call from Mr. Fine.
“Your now husband didn’t know that you were with Mr. Combs at the time, correct?” a defense lawyer, Anna Estevao, asked Ms. Ventura. She replied that Mr. Fine eventually found out about her rape allegation and the subsequent intercourse she had with Mr. Combs. Ms. Estevao said Mr. Fine punched a wall in response.
During her testimony on Friday, Ms. Ventura was questioned about a rehabilitation center where she said she sought treatment for trauma she suffered from her relationship with Mr. Combs. She said she began writing a book as part of her therapy, a memoir about the tempestuous relationship, and told the jury she had tentatively titled it “The Dark Times.”
The book was never published, but Ms. Ventura did sue Mr. Combs in 2023, and much of the abusive behavior she described in her lawsuit became part of the government’s case against him. The suit was settled one day after it was filed, and Ms. Ventura testified earlier in the week that she had been paid $20 million to drop it.
During Ms. Ventura’s testimony on Friday, Mr. Combs seemed engaged in the questioning, whispering to his lawyers often and passing notes that made their way down the table. As the morning’s testimony began, he hugged Ms. Estevao. Once the questioning was underway, he popped his black-framed glasses on and off to review each piece of evidence seen by the jury.
Mr. Combs’s drug use remained a focal point of the case as a Homeland Security Investigations agent told jurors about what turned up in a search of Mr. Combs’s room at the Park Hyatt hotel in Manhattan after his arrest last September. Baby oil, the lubricant Astroglide, a “mood lighting” device, one baggie of powder that tested positive for ketamine and another determined to be ketamine and MDMA were found in the room he booked while waiting to surrender on an expected indictment.
Part of the tension of the day was the pressure on the defense to complete its cross-examination on Friday, because Ms. Ventura is approaching her ninth month in pregnancy. In a letter early Friday morning, prosecutors asked the judge to ensure that the defense conclude its questioning that day because she had been cross-examined for two full days already — “multiple hours longer than her direct examination lasted.”
The prosecutors suggested that if her time on the witness stand extended into next week, there was the risk of a mistrial if she went into labor. “The inefficiency of cross-examination yesterday,” the government wrote, “raises the inference that the defendant hopes to accomplish precisely that outcome.”
But the cross-examination ended in the midafternoon, and Ms. Ventura was released as a witness on Friday after some final questioning by both sides. Over her four days on the stand, she had described episodes of drug use, jealousy and infidelity that filled the decade she spent with Mr. Combs. But the most compelling parts of her testimony were those where she described beatings and sexual degradation that she said she had suffered at his hand.
She said at one point on Friday that she felt her singing career had suffered because, ultimately, Mr. Combs had turned her into a “sex worker.”
At another point on Friday, Ms. Ventura was asked by the defense about the time she had heard from a D.J. that an explicit sex video that included her was said to be in circulation. An audio recording was played in court in which Ms. Ventura, enraged, grilled the man for information about the video, and threatened him: “I’ve never killed anybody in my life,” she said on the recording, “but I will kill you.”
The vehemence of Ms. Ventura’s reaction to the possible dissemination of one of the sex videos was in keeping with what she described earlier in her testimony as the fear she felt when, she said, Mr. Combs threatened to make them public. In this instance, she said on Friday, Mr. Combs also sought to ensure the rumored video never saw the light of day, and it never did. But as part of the prosecution’s case, still frames from at least one freak-off video have been shown to the jury.
In her account of being raped by Mr. Combs in 2018, Ms. Ventura said it had occurred in her home after the two had a pleasant dinner.
Ms. Estevao raised the fact that in talking with investigators, Ms. Ventura said that Mr. Combs had acted “nice but strangely” at the dinner and wondered if the attack could be attributed to a bipolar disorder.
Ms. Estevao also pointed out that Ms. Ventura in her November 2023 lawsuit had said the attack took place in September 2018, an assertion she repeated when she first met with federal investigators, about two weeks after she filed her lawsuit.
But Ms. Estevao suggested that Ms. Ventura changed her story in a meeting with the government last month, when she said the rape had occurred in August 2018. Around then, Mr. Combs had texted her: “I know I look bad to you. I could tell I didn’t turn you on yesterday. I fell off.”
But prosecutors later asked Ms. Ventura if she had a ”clear memory of August 2018.”
“Not super clear, but clear enough,” Ms. Ventura replied.
“Do you have any doubt that Sean raped you?” Emily A. Johnson, the prosecutor, asked.
“No,” Ms. Ventura replied.
Ben Sisario and Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times who focuses on popular music and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast (Deluxe).”
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page.
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