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Kid Cudi gave his long-awaited testimony at Sean Combs‘ sex trafficking and racketeering trial today, describing for jurors the menacing harassment Combs allegedly inflicted when he learned the rapper was dating Casandra “Cassie” Ventura.
Cudi claimed Combs personally broke into his home in December 2011, and that the music mogul’s jealous rage culminated with a firebombing of Cudi’s Porsche outside his Hollywood Hills home in January 2012.
The rapper, actor, and producer, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, took the witness stand shortly before 11 a.m., with Combs looking straight ahead and avoiding any eye contact with the musician as he entered the packed courtroom.
Speaking to jurors during his nearly 90 minutes of testimony, Mescudi said his romance with Ventura started after she told him she and Combs “had some problems” and “weren’t dating anymore.” He said he was “really confused” when Ventura called him in a panic one morning in December 2011 to say Combs had discovered their relationship. “She sounded really stressed on the phone, nervous, scared,” he recalled. He went to pick her up and took her to the Sunset Marquis hotel. “I just thought it
was safe and just wanted to put her somewhere where she was off the radar,” he said.
The musician said he later spoke to Combs’ assistant at the time, Capricorn Clark, by phone. She told him she was “forced to go along” with Combs and another man to Mescudi’s house, and they were inside the residence while she outside in a car. “She was very scared, sounded like she was on the verge of tears,” he said of Clark. Mescudi said he started racing to the Hollywood Hills address and called Combs from his car. “Motherfucker, are you in my house?” he recalled repeatedly asking Combs.
“I’m here,” Combs allegedly replied. “I’m over here waiting for you.”
According to Mescudi, Combs had fled by the time he arrived. Still, there were telltale signs someone had broken in. Holiday gifts from Chanel were opened and left in the kitchen. Mescudi’s dog was found locked in a bathroom, clearly traumatized by something, he said. Mescudi said after the incident, the dog was “very jittery and kind of on edge all the time.”
After he saw his dog, Mescudi called Combs again, he testified. “I was looking for him. Because I wanted to confront him. I wanted to fight him,” Mescudi told jurors. Once he gathered himself, he called police instead and made a report. He then traveled to Connecticut with Ventura for the holidays. Combs was texting him throughout the trip, Mescudi said, but he decided not to engage.
“I told him, you know, specifically told him, ‘You broke into my house. You messed with my dog. Like, I don’t want to talk to you,’” Mescudi testified.
A couple of weeks later, Mescudi’s dog sitter called him to say his Porsche was on fire, he testified. Someone had sliced the car’s convertible roof and dropped a Molotov cocktail inside, on the driver’s side, he said.
“What the fuck?” he said of his reaction to the car bombing in his driveway. Jurors saw photos of the damaged sports car, with its red leather interior blackened from flames.
Mescudi said he reached out to Combs after that, because the situation was “getting out of hand.” He said the trio met at the Soho House in Los Angeles the next day. “Combs was standing there, staring out the window with his hands behind his back, like a Marvel supervillain,” Mescudi recalled, causing laughter in the courtroom.
At the meeting, Combs refused to acknowledge any connection to the car, Mescudi told the jury. He believed that Combs “was lying,” Mescudi testified. The musician said Ventura effectively ended their relationship, essentially ghosting him.
For his part, Mescudi said he also wanted to give the relationship space. It was “for my safety, for her safety,” he testified, “because I knew Sean Combs was violent.” Under cross-examination, Mescudi admitted no one saw who torched the car and that he had no direct evidence Combs was involved. (Combs has pleaded not guilty to the five felony charges against him and denies any connection to the vehicle arson.)
After the jury left the room, U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian admonished defense lawyer Brian Steel for asking Mescudi about his sex life with Ventura. A prosecutor called the attempted questioning “outrageous.”
“The line was crystal clear and … the line was crossed,” the judge said. “Is it going to happen again?” the judge pressed. Steel said no.
On Thursday afternoon, Mescudi posted a video message saying people had been “checking in” on him leading up to his testimony, and he appreciated the support. “I’ve been seeing all the love and support, and I just wanna say, thank you so much,” Mescudi said. “It really means a lot to me, man. You guys are the best. I love y’all. This is a stressful situation. I’m glad it’s behind me. And yeah, I love y’all, man. Big love.”
Last year, Rolling Stone obtained a Los Angeles City Fire Department report that confirmed Mescudi was the owner of a Porsche that was set on fire by an “incendiary device” on the morning of Jan. 9, 2012. The cause of the ignition was listed as “intentional.” The report did not mention any suspects. A fire official told Rolling Stone that the vehicle was not fully engulfed upon the department’s arrival.
According to prosecutors, Combs’ volatile reaction to Ventura’s short-lived romance with Mescudi, was an example of the methods he used to control Ventura. Southern District of New York prosecutors allege that throughout a decade-long relationship, Combs coerced Ventura into participating in highly choreographed, days-long sexual encounters with male exotic dancers and escorts, which Combs dubbed “freak-offs.” Prosecutors allege Combs kept Ventura locked in the abusive dynamic through frequent physical beatings, threats to release explicit tapes of her, and control over her career.
In her own testimony, Ventura said she and Mescudi struck up their short-lived romance in late 2011 during a rough patch in her on-off relationship with Combs. She told jurors that Combs discovered the dalliance when he went through her phone during a freak-off and found emails where Ventura disclosed the relationship to Capricorn Clark.
Combs flew into a rage, Ventura testified. “I just remember him putting like a wine bottle opener between his fingers and, like, lunging at me,” she said. “His eyes blacked out, super angry. And I just had to get out of there.” Ventura fled the freak-off and returned to her hotel, using a burner phone to contact Mescudi, who picked her up, she said.
Ventura attempted to lie low but said she ultimately went to see Combs. “I just felt like [the] better [way] to resolve it in that moment was to go there and just speak to him,” she said. But Ventura alleged that Combs was not in the mood to smooth things over. “He was irate,” she explained. “He was just so angry, and when I was in the room, he told me about videos that he had that he was going to release and how he was going to hurt Scott and I.”
Upon leaving Combs’ house, Ventura was assaulted, she said. Combs kicked her in the back, sending her flying to the ground, she said. Jurors saw photos of a large, purple bruise on her lower back.
As she was flying back to Connecticut for the holidays that year, she emailed her mother, Regina Ventura, and Capricorn Clark, on Dec. 23, 2011. Ventura testified that she wanted to memorialize Combs’ threats. “The threats that have been made towards me by Sean “Puffy” Combs are that he is going to release 2 explicit sex tapes of me,” Ventura wrote from an email account under her alias Veronica Bang.
She claimed Combs threatened to release “one [recording] on Christmas Day, maybe before or right after, and another one some time soon after that.” She said Combs also threatened to have “someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi physically,” adding, “He made a point that it wouldn’t be by his hands; he actually said he’d be out of the country when it happened.”
Due to the overwhelming situation, Ventura said she ended up breaking up with Mescudi a few days later, believing it would be safer for the both of them. “I mean, Sean said to me, before I left L.A. that he was going to hurt the both of us,” Ventura told the court. “I, at least, took that in my mind, like, if I stay in this situation, we both will be hurt. If I don’t, then no one will be.”
Although she returned to Combs, Ventura testified that Combs was still fuming over Mescudi and continued to make threats. “He mentioned that when we were out of the country, that Scott’s car would be blown up,” she said. “He wanted [Mescudi’s] friends to be there to see it.”
Combs also allegedly retaliated against Ventura by demanding money from her parents. Her mother, Regina Ventura, testified earlier this week that an “angry” Combs contacted her in an attempt to “recoup money that he had spent on [Ventura] because he was angry that she had a relationship with Scott Mescudi.” Regina said she took out a $20,000 home equity loan in order to wire the money to Combs because “I was scared for my daughter’s safety.”
After the lunch break on Thursday, prosecutors called celebrity makeup artist Mylah Morales to the stand. She told jurors her clientele included superstars Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez, and that she worked for Combs for years. Morales, who previously spoke out in The Fall of Diddy, the ID docuseries from Maxine Productions and Rolling Stone Films, then recalled an alleged attack on Ventura during the weekend of the 2010 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Morales said she was asleep in a room at a Beverly Hills hotel when Combs stormed in, demanding to know, “Where the fuck is she?” (In her prior testimony, Ventura told jurors that Combs beat her in the hotel bedroom because he was furious she attended a party at Prince’s Los Angeles home.)
Morales recalled hearing Combs screaming at Ventura in an adjoining room. She said when Ventura finally emerged, she had “knots on her head,” a swollen eye and a fat lip. Morales testified that she packed up Ventura’s things and arranged for a doctor to examine Ventura privately at Morales’ home, to see if she had a concussion. Morales said the doctor also examined Ventura’s stomach and ribs, advising her to go to the emergency room.
“I was afraid of Sean,” Morales told the jury of why neither she nor Ventura reported the incident to authorities. “I feared for my life.”
Speaking in The Fall of Diddy, Morales added that, “If we called the police, what would happen? He’s a very powerful person in the business, and he can do things that will make you go away. And many people are afraid of him till this day.”
George Kaplan, a former assistant to Combs, also testified Thursday, telling jurors he witnessed Combs become violent with two women. He said in the first instance, Combs allegedly assaulted Ventura on a private jet in 2015. He recalled hearing a “tremendous commotion” and glass shattering, but he looked away, and no one got up to intervene, he testified. “It shook me tremendously,” he said.
“Isn’t anybody seeing this?” Ventura allegedly screamed, according to Kaplan. He said eventually, he looked back and saw Ventura lying on her back, using her legs to “create space” between her and Combs.
Kaplan said that another time, he saw an angry Combs hurling what looked like green apples at another girlfriend named Gina. He said Combs was throwing the apples “hard,” and that Gina was “trying to shield herself” with her arms. Later that night, Kaplan said he awoke to Gina “screaming” at members of Combs’ security team as she seemed to be trying to leave Combs’ Miami mansion.
Kaplan, who testified under immunity, said he resigned from his job because he felt bad about helping cover up the alleged assaults. “I was unwilling to stand by the behavior,” he told Combs’ chief of staff, describing his reason for quitting.
Also giving testimony earlier in the week was former Danity Kane and Diddy-Dirty Money member Dawn Richard; exotic male dancer Sharay Hayes, a.k.a. “The Punisher”; Combs’ former personal assistant David James; and expert witness Dr. Dawn Hughes, a clinical and forensic psychologist.
Hughes testified Wednesday that many victims remain in relationships with intimate partner violence for a variety of reasons. She said perpetrators use a range of tactics to assert dominance and hold it, often interspersing abuse with kindness and “love bombing.” She said abusers use affection to build emotional attachment, which feeds into a powerful “trauma bond.”
Hughes said it’s also common for victims to minimize abuse and delay reporting it until they gain distance or receive psychological counseling. “[Victims] don’t remain because they want to be abused,” she testified. Instead, they often feel love for their perpetrators, and “hope for change,” she testified.
This article was updated at Thursday, May 22 at 4:35 p.m. to include Kid Cudi’s social video message.
From Rolling Stone US.
