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    Key Moments From Cassie’s Last Day of Testimony in the Sean Combs Trial

    The first week of Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking trial was dominated by four days of searing testimony by Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, who told the jury that he had raped and abused her and subjected her to degrading marathon sex sessions with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, stepped down from the witness stand on Friday afternoon after a long and sometimes meandering cross-examination by lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty.Here are five takeaways:Mr. Combs’s lawyers suggested she was a willing participant in the “freak-offs.”In contrast to the prosecution’s questioning of Ms. Ventura, which traced a narrative of a troubled relationship from its origins until a painful collapse after years of abuse, the defense’s cross-examination frequently jumped back and forth in time. By zooming in on dozens of text messages from throughout her years in a relationship with Mr. Combs, his lawyers tried to paint a very different picture of the freak-offs.In many of those messages, which could be flirtatious in tone or matter-of-fact in setting up logistics, his lawyers noted, Ms. Ventura appeared to express willingness, or even excitement, about the sexual encounters.But Ms. Ventura pushed back, saying that she was just acceding to his requests. “I would say loving FOs were just words at that point,” she said, commenting on a 2017 text message chain about planning a freak-off, or “FO.”The sometimes repetitive pattern of the cross-examination led to a complaint by prosecutors. In a letter to the judge early Friday, they said that the “inefficiency of cross-examination” raised the possibility of a mistrial if Ms. Ventura went into labor before the questioning was completed. The judge urged the parties to stick to a schedule of completing Ms. Ventura’s testimony by the end of the week, and it ended midafternoon Friday.Cassie said she would gladly “give that money back if I never had to have freak-offs.”During Ms. Ventura’s testimony, she revealed that Mr. Combs had paid her $20 million to settle a bombshell lawsuit she filed against him in November 2023.Under questioning from Mr. Combs’s lawyers, she revealed a second settlement: with InterContinental, the company that owned the hotel where Mr. Combs assaulted her in 2016. She testified that she had reached an agreement with the company over the past month and that she expects to receive about $10 million.The defense used those settlement figures to suggest that Ms. Ventura had been motivated to go public with her account of abuse in the relationship because she was experiencing “financial issues,” at a time when she and her family had moved into her parents’ home in Connecticut.Ms. Ventura denied that she had been motivated by money problems. She said that she had used her parents’s home temporarily during a move to the East Coast.When the prosecutor Emily A. Johnson got a chance to question her again, she asked whether she would give the millions back if it meant never having had to participate in the sexual encounters at the center of her testimony.“I’d give that money back if I never had to have freak-offs,” Ms. Ventura said.Cassie was mostly calm, but wept a few times on the witness stand.Ms. Ventura remained largely dispassionate throughout her hours of testimony this week, speaking in a soft but firm voice as she recounted incidents like Mr. Combs’s violence and her experience of degrading incidents like being urinated on during freak-off sessions. In the witness box, she sometimes placed a hand on her belly as she shifted around or got up during breaks in testimony.On the stand, she frequently dabbed her eyes with a tissue but wept on only a few, brief occasions. She cried when saying she had considered suicide years after leaving Mr. Combs, and toward the end of her testimony on Friday, when she talked about Mr. Combs beating her during freak-offs. A defense lawyer then asked if she needed a break. “You can continue,” she said.Baby oil and drugs were found in the hotel where Mr. Combs was arrested last year.The government’s fourth witness was Yasin Binda, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, who searched Mr. Combs’s room at the Park Hyatt hotel in Manhattan, where he was arrested in September 2024.Mr. Combs had traveled to New York expecting to turn himself into the authorities. But he was arrested in the lobby. Inside his hotel room, Ms. Binda testified, she found baby oil, the lubricant Astroglide, a “mood lighting” device and two small baggies of pink powder. One tested positive for ketamine and the other for ketamine and MDMA.She also found a medication bottle for a benzodiazepine with the prescription made out to Frank Black — an alias that Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs used. Ms. Binda also testified that a fanny pack with $9,000 in cash was hanging off the bed.What’s next in the case?Much of Ms. Ventura’s testimony was focused on the government’s allegations that Mr. Combs’s sex-trafficked her throughout their yearslong relationship. But the case against him is much broader than that, accusing him of running a criminal enterprise in which he and some of his employees conspired to commit a series of crimes over two decades.While questioning Ms. Ventura, the government laid the groundwork for trying to prove several of those crimes. Prosecutors also asked her to identify employees and associates of Mr. Combs who were asked to do his bidding.As the case proceeds, the prosecution is expected to try to prove that an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees helped him commit crimes, including kidnapping, arson, drug violations and sex crimes. The jury is also expected to hear from at least two other women whose accusations of sexual coercion are at the heart of the government’s case.The defense is expected to try to flesh out the argument they made in their opening statements, that Mr. Combs is a flawed and sometimes violent man but that he is not guilty of a racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking.Anusha Bayya More

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    Combs Defense Seeks to Undermine Cassie’s Rape Allegation as Testimony Ends

    The singer spent four days on the stand recounting what she described as an 11-year relationship in which she came to feel more like a sex worker than a girlfriend.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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Michael Flynn, a Trump Ally, Sponsors Beethoven at the Kennedy Center

    Following the president’s overhaul of the center, Mr. Flynn, the former national security adviser, has made a substantial gift to the National Symphony Orchestra.The list of donors to the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the Kennedy Center’s flagship ensembles, is usually filled with financiers, socialites, corporations and foundations.But the name of a sponsor of this week’s performances of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” stood out. It was Michael T. Flynn, the general and former national security adviser during President Trump’s first term. He was listed, along with his nonprofit, America’s Future Inc., as “performance sponsors” for the National Symphony Orchestra’s concerts from May 15 to 17.Mr. Flynn said on social media that his nonprofit was “thrilled to sponsor a spectacular three-night performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts!”“This performance is filled with a vibrant celebration of music, culture, and the unyielding spirit uniting all Americans,” he wrote in a post on X. “The Kennedy Center shines as a proud symbol of our nation’s legacy!”Mr. Flynn’s gift to the National Symphony Orchestra totaled $300,000, according to two people familiar with the donation who were granted anonymity because details of the gift were not publicized.Officials at the Kennedy Center said they did not have details of the gift.“We didn’t know how much but we welcome all sponsorships,” the center said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ Polarizes Critics at Cannes Film Festival

    Set in the pandemic’s early days, the noted horror director’s Covid comedy satirizes the national mood during lockdown. Reactions have been polarizing.Ari Aster, the director behind the horror films “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” is no stranger to upsetting an audience. But with his new movie “Eddington,” which premiered Friday at the Cannes Film Festival, Aster may have devised his most harrowing cinematic experience yet: forcing us to relive 2020.Set in May of that year, the film chronicles a clash in the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington between the conservative sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), and the liberal mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), after the latter insists on mask mandates and lockdowns during the pandemic. “There is no Covid in Eddington,” insists Cross as he refuses to wear a mask, though his mounting frustration with Garcia may also have something to do with the mayor’s complicated romantic past with Cross’s wife (Emma Stone).To bring his enemy down a peg, Cross decides to mount his own mayoral campaign, plastering his cop car with misspelled banners (“Your Being Manipulated”) and spouting conspiracy theories about his opponent that he posts online. But as Eddington erupts in Black Lives Matter protests and teenage activists begin training their phone camera on Cross, hoping to catch him in an act of police brutality, the escalating tensions in this small town threaten to claim lives right and left.Aster is keen to zero in on the moment when our fraying social fabric was torn apart, and the movie has already inspired battle lines as strongly drawn as the political sides “Eddington” means to satirize. Early reviews have been wildly mixed, and at a cocktail party that followed the Cannes press screening, I watched several critics square off: Though fans of the film found it bold and daring, detractors called it unfunny, too on the nose, and more eager to lampoon annoying liberals than the conservative main characters.Will audiences be anxious to revisit the fraught early months of the pandemic when “Eddington” hits theaters on July 18? The cast is stocked with A-listers — in addition to Phoenix, Pascal, and Stone, Austin Butler also appears as an online cult leader — but for all of Aster’s evident craft, “Eddington” is hardly a crowd-pleaser. He initially keeps the proceedings relatively grounded, but the second half of the film spirals into a sort of absurd surrealism that will feel familiar to anyone who saw Aster’s last movie, “Beau is Afraid” (2023).Then again, that might not be many people: “Beau,” which also starred Phoenix, was a costly box-office bust that reportedly lost A24 around $35 million. To release Aster’s next movie during the superhero-laden summer season is a risky bit of counterprogramming: Amid all those capes, could audiences be enticed to choose masks instead? More

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    5 Takeaways From Cassie’s Final Day of Testimony in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial

    Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, ended four days of sometimes grueling testimony about being abused by Mr. Combs.The first week of Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking trial was dominated by four days of searing testimony by Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, who told the jury that he had raped and abused her and subjected her to degrading marathon sex sessions with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, stepped down from the witness stand on Friday afternoon after a long and sometimes meandering cross-examination by lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty.Here are five takeaways:Mr. Combs’s lawyers suggested she was a willing participant in the “freak-offs.”In contrast to the prosecution’s questioning of Ms. Ventura, which traced a narrative of a troubled relationship from its origins until a painful collapse after years of abuse, the defense’s cross-examination frequently jumped back and forth in time. By zooming in on dozens of text messages from throughout her years in a relationship with Mr. Combs, his lawyers tried to paint a very different picture of the freak-offs.In many of those messages, which could be flirtatious in tone or matter-of-fact in setting up logistics, his lawyers noted, Ms. Ventura appeared to express willingness, or even excitement, about the sexual encounters.But Ms. Ventura pushed back, saying that she was just acceding to his requests. “I would say loving FOs were just words at that point,” she said, commenting on a 2017 text message chain about planning a freak-off, or “FO.”The sometimes repetitive pattern of the cross-examination led to a complaint by prosecutors. In a letter to the judge early Friday, they said that the “inefficiency of cross-examination” raised the possibility of a mistrial if Ms. Ventura went into labor before the questioning was completed. The judge urged the parties to stick to a schedule of completing Ms. Ventura’s testimony by the end of the week, and it ended midafternoon Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Bruce Springsteen’s Rowdy ‘Repo Man,’ Plus 11 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by S.G. Goodman, the Lemonheads, Rihanna, Lido Pimienta and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Bruce Springsteen, ‘Repo Man’While Bruce Springsteen was recording the somber songs on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in 1995, he was also, it’s now revealed, blowing off steam with rowdy, lighthearted songs like “Repo Man,” the latest preview of his archival collection “Tracks II: The Lost Albums.” It’s a Chuck Berry-meets-Buck Owens country-rocker that has Springsteen hollering, “You shouldn’t have bought it if you couldn’t have paid!” It’s also a showcase for skidding, careening, scene-stealing solos by Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar, abetting Springsteen’s stunt driving as he turns class warfare into comedy.S.G. Goodman, ‘Snapping Turtle’“I grew up hard on bottom land where only crops should grow / Watched people reap what the demons sowed,” S.G. Goodman sings in “Snapping Turtle,” from an album due June 20. She’s from Kentucky, where she grew up and still lives; the cracks and scratches in her voice hark back to Appalachian roots. “Snapping Turtle” is a stoic, six-minute march, a two-chord jam with eerie resonances opening up under drums and guitars. Goodman sings about memories she can’t escape — including a friend who had “a life beat down” — and the bitter lessons of the small town “where my mind gets stuck.”Sofi Tukker featuring Liniker, ‘Intensity’Sofi Tukker — the duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern — sets aside its usual electronic production on its new album, “Butter.” Instead, they visited Brazil, enlisted the producer Marcio Arantes to assemble a mostly acoustic studio band and invited Brazilian musicians like Seu Jorge as guest singers. Most of “Butter” remakes (and unplugs) songs from the duo’s 2024 album, “Bread.” But “Intensity” — with guest vocals from the Brazilian songwriter Liniker — is a new song. Over syncopated acoustic guitar and a crisply sputtering, samba-rooted beat, Hawley-Weld and Liniker celebrate a partnership that’s “way too much / It’s the right amount for me.”yeule, ‘Dudu’Named after the nonsense syllables in its hook, “Dudu” has such a blithe, shiny pop facade that the verses could easily go unnoticed. Yeule — a style-hopping, electronics-friendly songwriter and producer from Singapore — sings about unrequited love that’s turned pathological. “Overdosed from the pain / Woke up in a bed, restrained,” yeule sings. “I screamed and screamed and screamed your name.” But the vocals are so nonchalant, surrounded by whizzing synthesizers and kicked along by a robust backbeat, that the heartache almost evaporates.DannyLux, ‘Sirena’The Mexican American songwriter DannyLux has thrived by playing up his sensitive side, and “Sirena,” the single from his new album “Leyenda,” is no exception. In a waltzing corrido that updates the traditional acoustic guitars with a sheen of reverb, extra vocal harmonies and a sudden shift of texture before the second verse, he insists he’s been hypnotized forever by a woman’s beauty — though he also reminds her that “Other guys would put a price on your body, a price on your kisses.” He’s more sensitive, of course.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    At the Cannes Film Festival, the Mood Is Uncertain and Unsettled

    The threat of tariffs and the struggles of Hollywood have dampened what is usually an international party. Even the early standouts are somber.For days leading up to the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, it seemed that rain would dampen the 78th edition. The film gods spared the worst. The red carpet remained dry Tuesday and so did the beautiful people parading into the Lumière, the grand auditorium where each year cheek-kissing, glad-handing stars and deal makers get this generally fizzy party going. At the 2024 edition, a barefoot chanteuse had sung Bowie’s “Modern Love” to Greta Gerwig, the president of the jury, delighting her and everyone else in attendance. This year, by contrast, the atmosphere inside the room was moody and felt more uncertain than the weather.There were the usual smiles, couture gowns and starry entrances. Yet overall it was a fairly sober affair, and only partly because the evening featured a poignant tribute to David Lynch, who died in January. When Juliette Binoche, the president of the main competition jury, took the stage, she spoke about the obligation of artists to testify on behalf of others, mentioning the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 and quoting the Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who in April was killed with 10 family members in an Israeli airstrike. Hassouna is featured in a documentary here, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.”Later during the ceremony, Robert De Niro received an honorary Palme d’Or (handed to him by Leonardo DiCaprio), and spoke of democracy and the arts. “America’s philistine president has had himself appointed the head of one of our premiere cultural institutions,” he said, an apparent reference to President Trump’s naming himself chairman of the Kennedy Center in February. De Niro then referenced the topic that started phones pinging throughout the entertainment industry on May 4, and led to stark headlines and head-scratching.Leonardo DiCaprio giving Robert De Niro an honorary Palme d’Or.Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo wit, President Trump’s May 4 announcement on social media that he was imposing a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced in foreign lands,” an issue he called a national security threat. The next day, a White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said that no final decisions had been made on such tariffs, but that the administration was “exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.”Like other film lovers, I responded to this tariff threat with a mixture of concern and confusion. Among other things, how such tariffs would work is baffling given the movie world’s complexity and internationalism, or how it’s possible to even define which films are “produced in foreign lands.” Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” was partly shot outside the United States; when Florence Pugh steps off a skyscraper in the movie, she topples from a building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The specter of retaliatory tariffs from other countries is another concern, given how reliant American companies are on the global market. In 2024, “Inside Out 2” was the top-grossing movie both domestically and overseas, with 61.6 percent of its overall box office coming from abroad.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Who is Dawn Richard, the Danity Kane Singer Who Will Testify at Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Trial?

    The musician performed in two of the mogul’s best-known recent acts, Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money. She sued him last year, alleging threats and groping.Dawn Richard, the singer expected to take the stand as a witness at the Sean Combs trial after Casandra Ventura, was part of two of Mr. Combs’s best-known acts over the last two decades. She was in the R&B girl group Danity Kane, familiar to viewers of his MTV reality show “Making the Band,” and a trio called Diddy — Dirty Money.And like Ms. Ventura, she has accused Mr. Combs of misconduct during her time with him, alleging in a lawsuit filed last year that he threatened her, groped her and would fly into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. In response to that suit, a lawyer for Mr. Combs said in a statement that Ms. Richard had “manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday.”Danity Kane was assembled by Mr. Combs during the third iteration of “Making the Band,” which began in 2005. On the show, 11 finalists were winnowed to a final team of five, their name inspired by a superhero character that Ms. Richard had drawn.Ms. Richard, now 41, grew up in New Orleans, and she was the subject of the premiere episode of the show’s third season, as the group visited her hometown and surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. That season ended with the quintet’s filming a video for its debut single, “Show Stopper,” which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.Danity Kane opened for Christina Aguilera on tour and released two albums before going on a hiatus in 2009. Then, Ms. Richard remained in Mr. Combs’s musical tent as part of Diddy — Dirty Money, a trio that also featured Mr. Combs as well as another singer, Kalenna Harper.After one album, Mr. Combs disbanded the trio — over email — but Danity Kane reunited, releasing a third and final album in 2014. After another break, Danity Kane was active again, from 2018 to 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More