NEW YORK — When Sean “Diddy” Combs discovered his ex, R&B artist Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, was dating someone else, the multimillionaire hip-hop mogul grabbed an employee in the middle of the night for assistance hunting down and murdering the other man, a Manhattan jury heard in a bombshell opening statement from the feds on Monday.

“For years, the defendant physically abused Cassie. He also sexually exploited her, forcing her to have sex with male escorts while he watched and recorded it. But that night, the defendant learned he had lost control of Cassie,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson charged in Manhattan Federal Court.

“He took his gun and he took his bodyguard — one of his most loyal lieutenants — to wake up one of the defendant’s employees in the middle of the night. The defendant yelled that he was going to kill the man Cassie was with.”

The prosecutor said a crazed Combs couldn’t locate the man. But he did find his ex, 17 years his junior, whom Johnson said he habitually assaulted between 2006 and 2018 for reasons as simple as taking too long in the bathroom.

“He did what he had done countless times before. He beat her brutally. Kicking her in the back and flinging her around like a rag doll. All of that violence was not enough, though. The defendant had to make sure he had control over Cassie once again, so he threatened her — the defendant told Cassie that if she defied him again, he would publicly release the videos of her having sex with male escorts that he kept as blackmail. Souvenirs of the most humiliating nights of her life.”

Johnson said the disturbing account was just one night in 20 years of violence, abuse and depravity that jurors would hear about throughout the trial.

She said prosecutors would piece together the timeline of how Combs reached stratospheric success after founding Bad Boy Records, carefully cultivated his reputation, and used his wealth and status to force and manipulate women into sordid “freak offs” — violent, “dayslong, drug-fueled” sexual performances with male commercial sex workers — against their will.

She said evidence would show how victims were drugged for the perverted sessions in which Combs sometimes directed male escorts to urinate in their mouths. The prosecution’s case will primarily focus on the abuse inflicted on three women, Johnson said: Ventura; Jane, a single mom whom Combs met in 2020; and Mia, Combs’ former personal assistant. Jane and Mia will be referred to under pseudonyms.

“He sometimes called himself the king, and he expected to be treated like one,” the prosecutor said. “This case is not about a celebrity’s private sexual preferences. The evidence will show that the sexual conduct in this case was coercive and criminal, because the defendant made women have sex when they did not want to.”

She said extensive evidence, including testimony, videos, text messages, voice memos and more, would leave no doubt about Combs’ guilt and would evince how his network of bodyguards and high-ranking employees helped him commit kidnapping, arson, narcotics offenses, sex crimes, bribery, and obstruction and cover it all up.

The jury is also expected to hear about more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil recovered during searches at the mogul’s lavish properties across the U.S., in addition to AR-15 semiautomatic rifles with defaced serial numbers.

“This is Sean Combs. To the public, he was ‘Puff Daddy’ or ‘Diddy’ — a cultural icon, a businessman, larger than life,” Johnson said in court, looking over at Combs. “But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise.”

Opening statements at the highly anticipated trial began around 10:30 a.m. after Manhattan Federal Judge Arun Subramanian swore in an anonymous eight men and four women to serve on the jury, having surveyed dozens of New Yorkers over the past week.

In the defense’s opening statement, Combs’ attorney, Teny Geragos, told jurors her client committed domestic violence, “gets so angry, so jealous, he’s out of control,” and would appear to be “mean” and a “jerk” when they see the prosecution’s evidence. She told the panel he was a “complicated man.”

But the lawyer said they must still find him not guilty.

“He is not charged with being mean. He’s not charged with being a jerk. He’s charged with running a racketeering enterprise,” Geragos said. “We take full responsibility that there was domestic violence in this case. Domestic violence is not sex trafficking. I want to say it again: domestic violence is not sex trafficking. Had he been charged with domestic violence, had he been charged with assault, we would not be here right now.”

Geragos then added, “Sex trafficking, prostitution, racketeering, these are federal crimes. They charge different elements. And he is simply not guilty of those crimes.”

The lawyer said the case was about “love, jealousy, infidelity, and money” and “capable adults in consensual relationships,” accusing Combs’ alleged victims of being motivated by money. She claimed that none of his former employees or associates would testify about participating in a criminal enterprise, describing the Harlem native as a self-made millionaire whose charisma was magnetic and who provided promising professional opportunities to those in his orbit.

The attorney said videotapes of the “freak offs” may be hard for some jurors to watch, but she said they were “intimate” and never intended to be viewed by anyone who didn’t participate, denying they were used as blackmail.

“This case is about Sean Combs’ private, personal sex life, which has nothing to do with his lawful businesses. The government has no place in his private bedrooms,” Geragos said. “He is physical. He is a drug user. You may know of his love of baby oil. Is that a federal crime? No.”

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to multiple sex-trafficking charges, racketeering conspiracy, transporting victims and sex workers for prostitution, and related counts. The disgraced mogul, who’s incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, is facing a potential decadeslong prison sentence if convicted at the end of the trial, which is slated to last for around two months.

Following opening statements, the prosecution launched quickly into their case, playing highly publicized footage of Combs beating Ventura on March 5, 2016, in a lobby at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles, during testimony from the first witness, a former security guard from the hotel. They then called a former male dancer who said Combs hired him to sleep with his girlfriend in 2012.

The 2016 beating saw domestic violence allegations against Combs explode into public view in May 2023 when the footage was published by CNN and led to Combs publicly apologize. His lawyers aggressively sought to stop the jury from seeing the footage, which shows Combs, wearing nothing but a towel, violently throwing Ventura to the ground, pummeling her, dragging her body across the floor, and shoving a vase at her as she sought to escape him.

Police Officer Israel Florez, who was the assistant director of security at the hotel at the time, verified the footage. He told jurors that Combs tried to bribe him to stay silent about the incident, which he said he refused.

After Florez, Daniel Philip, a former male dancer, said Combs first enlisted him to have sex with Ventura at the Gramercy Park Hotel in 2012. He told the jury he thought he’d been hired to perform for a bachelorette party, but when he arrived, he was met by only Ventura, holding thousands of dollars, and a man wearing a baseball cap, a white robe, and a bandana covering most of his face. Ventura told him that her “husband” wanted Philip to massage her with baby oil.

Philip, who said he’d never engaged in sex work before or after his sessions with Combs and Ventura, said he recognized the man as Combs as soon as he opened his mouth, though Combs claimed to him he worked in “importing and exporting.” He said Combs sat in the corner masturbating while he had sex with Ventura.

He said he’d be hired multiple times after that first day until late 2013, always in Manhattan, always with Combs present and masturbating in the corner, and always including baby oil. He said he was once directed to urinate on Ventura, that on another occasion, she was so heavily drugged that he could not sleep with her and that the only time he communicated with her alone, she was shaking and seemed “terrified.”

Philip said he stopped meeting the couple after he first witnessed Combs physically assault Ventura. He said that occurred after Combs called Ventura to come into another room, and she asked him to wait a second, prompting Combs to throw a liquor bottle at Ventura, grab her by the hair, drag her across the room and begin beating her.

Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey why he never reported Combs’ violence to the police, Philip said he was scared for his safety.

“I was concerned for my life. By this point, he had taken my ID and taken a picture of it, and I felt threatened by what he said to me, and I felt that at the very least, I could try to get her to realize that she needed to leave and maybe try to help her that way.”

The trial continues Tuesday.

_____

©2025 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.