After a very brief stint on the stand on May 16 at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking trial, Making the Band vet Dawn Richard returned today with more testimony of abuse and assault — both observed and experienced.
“He would punch her, choke her, drag her, slap her in the mouth,” Richard told the jury today of the violence she personally witnessed Combs “frequently” unleash against then girlfriend Cassie Ventura. “I saw him kick her, punch her in the stomach,” the former Danity Kane singer told the Bad Boy Records founder’s sex-trafficking trial at the start of its second week. Richard was on the stand for about 2.5 hours Monday.
Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitzi Steiner what she did about the abuse against Ventura by her then boyfriend and record label boss, Richard rather quietly admitted Monday morning not much.
“I made a decision that it would be best for the safety of myself to not interfere, because I don’t think that she was really ready to do anything,” Richard responded before Judge Arun Subramanian and the jury in the lower Manhattan courtroom, noting that the ‘Me & U’ singer not to subtly told Richard that this was the price of doing business with Diddy.
Still, in a pivotal role as an actual witness to Combs’ alleged violence and abuse, Richard recollected to the jury today of a 2010 incident in an LA restaurant where the defendant “popped” Ventura straight in the face after the singer spoke about the beatings he delivered. After the punch, Combs told Ventura to “shut the f*ck up!” Richard said that the beatings continued in the car on the way home after the dinner.
Richard also told the court that along with herself, Ventura and Combs, others at the dinner were Usher, rapper Ne-Yo and then Interscope Geffen A&M Records CEO Jimmy Iovine. Under a short cross-examination, defense lawyer Nicole Westmoreland went after Ricard for never bring up such high-profile participants at the dinner before. It was also hard to tell from Richard’s testimony if the trio of Usher, Ne-Yo and Iovine actually saw the violence the witness says occurred.
“You would agree with me that as time progresses your story changes,” Westmoreland asked Richard this morning rhetorically. “Yes,” said the witness. “As time progresses, I get better at knowing what went on because it was quite a long time ago.” Later, under re-direct from prosecutors, Richard added that part of the reason she was sometimes uncertain on events was that during her time with Combs the “environment was volatile and it was very hard to work in, so I tried to erase those things.”
“Every day it gets easier to remember certain things. I try my best to do it to the best of my ability.”
Having secured a contract with Combs via her participation on MTV’s Making the Band show in 2004, Richard first was with Danity Kane and then the trio Diddy – Dirty Money. She exited working with the ‘All About the Benjamins’ performer in 2011. Today in the witness box, Richard said she had reached out to Combs subsequently about getting Dirty Money back together, but it was for fellow singer Kalenna Harper, who had fallen on rough times.
(L-R) Dawn Richard, Sean Combs (Getty)
Getty
Richard filed an ongoing civil lawsuit of her own against Combs late last year. In the suit, which has proven a complication during this criminal trial, Richard claims sexually assaulted her, deprived her of food and sleep and refused to pay her fairly over years. As Ventura and others have also alleged in their own legal actions, Richard alleges that the mogul threatened to destroy her career if she did not comply with his demands and desires.
“You felt like Combs ruined your career, not once, but twice?” the defense’s Westmoreland queried Richard today. “Yes,” Richard replied, conceding her career hasn’t been as strong since Diddy pulled the plug on Danity Kane and Diddy – Dirty Money. In regards to her own lawsuit, Ricard tried to refute teh defense’s contention that she wanted “a lot of money,” as the effective Westmoreland termed it. Richard said she wasn’t in it for the money, but did admit she felt she deserved to be “compensated” for what she went through with Combs professionally and personally over the time she was signed to his label.
Predicted to last eight weeks, the criminal trial of the much-accused Diddy follows his arrest last September on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and more. Incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest, after a trio of failed $50 million bail attempts, Combs has always insisted he is innocent. He has taken the same stance in the dozens of civil suits of abuse and assault that have hit the court dockets over the past several months. Rejecting a plea deal from the government, Diddy could face life behind bars if found guilty in this criminal trial.
Handled in less than an hour by the prosecution and passed over to defense lawyer Westmoreland, the testimony from Richard comes after an opening week that saw often grueling and frequently harrowing testimony from a very very pregnant Ventura.
Over four days, the star witness went over and over text messages and sealed photos detailing the drug driven and depraved “freak-off’ sex marathons Ventura claims Combs coercedher into with male escorts. Sometimes filmed, the “freak-offs” became the thrust of the couple’s more than a decade long relationship, with Combs allegedly using the threats of making the footage public as one of the many methods he used to control and manipulate Ventura. The extent of that predatory behavior became starkly evident when Ventura described how Combs allegedly raped her in the living room of her LA apartment in 2018. Stating how Combs’ eyes went “black” during the horrific attack, Ventura said the rape followed what she thought at the time was a lovely “closure conversation” the then ex-couple had over dinner in Malibu over their break-out.
With the feds and defense meticulously going through the couple’s relationship, a lot of time was spent by both sides examining the now infamous LA hotel security footage of Combs attacked and brutally kicking Ventura in 2016 as she tried to escape a “freak-off.”
In the tale of two realities, the prosecution has essentially treated the footage, portions of which were exclusively aired on CNN back in the spring of 2024, as a smokin gun. Having declared that Combs was a heavy drug user and a resorted to domestic violence in their opening statement on May 12, the defense tend to treat the damning footage as an example of a consensual entanglement, noting that Combs did eventually let Ventura leave the Intercontinental hotel.
Already have secured a $20 million settlement in her quickly resolved abuse and assault civil suit against Combs in November 2023, a reluctant Ventura was skillfully cornered right near the end of her last day on the stand by defense lawyer Anna Estevao into admitting she has also reached a $10 million settlement with the owners of the Intercontinental. The revelation, which brought gasps in the courtroom, played right into the defense’s narrative that Ventura got a lot out of being with Combs and that she is has become a potential gold digger since the couple broke up.
Having never brought up the $10 million settlement before, Ventura and the prosecution walked right into the defense’s trap. Certainly, the witness’ passionate exclamation was undermined that she’d “give it back (the $20 million settlement from Combs) if I never had to have ‘freak-offs’” and “If I never had ‘freak-offs,’ I would have had agency and autonomy, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard to get it back.”
Always a contentious witness due to her own ongoing civil suit against Combs, Richard did score a win for the feds first thing this morning.
In a session Monday before the jury was brought in, Judge Arun Subramanian took the defense’s objections into consideration and trimmed some of the prosecution’s upcoming witnesses. However, when it came to Richard, the judge allowed her testimony at the end of May 16 where the singer detailed a 2009 violent attack on a cooking Ventura by Combs that she says she was literally standing right there when it occurred.
Whether this comes to bit the prosecution in the long run remains to be seen, but certainly Richard’s presence is an addition to any continuance or appeal move the defense choses to make down the line.
Today, as they did to some extent with Ventura, the defense spend time contesting Richard’s sense of the sequence of events of that 2009 event saying at one point she told investigators that it was eggs not a frying pan that Combs threw at Ventura in the attack the Dirty Money singer says she saw. “Would you agree with me that it’s been hard to keep your story the same in reference to this egg incident?” defense attorney Westmoreland almost mocked. In another instance of apparent inconsistency, Westmoreland said that Richard never mentioned a verbal threat from Diddy of “where he comes from, people go missing” previously, but suddenly is saying it now.
Ruffled, Richard told the court once again she was trying to remember things as best as possibly considering how long ago they occurred.
In its own response to Ventura’s days of testimony, the Marc Agnifilo, Teny Geragos and Brian Steel-led legal team this weekend dropped a swath of defense exhibits online. Primarily more of the flood of texts, emails and photos from Combs and Ventura’s volatile 2007 – 2018 relationship, the exhibits attempt to reinforce the defense’s core claim that the couple had a violent, and unconventional sexual “toxic relationship,” but it was always consenting, and no one broke the law.
The rest of this second week of Combs’ criminal trial will see Cassie Ventura’s mother and former best friend also called as witnesses. A number of Combs ex-staffers are expected to take the stand too.
