By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Rapper and actor Kid Cudi is expected to testify at the Sean “Diddy” Combs sex trafficking trial, taking the witness stand either Wednesday or Thursday to tell the jury about his brief relationship 14 years ago with Combs ex-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie.
Cassie testified last week that Combs was enraged when she left him for a period of time in 2011 and began dating Cudi, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi. She said Combs left a large bruise on her back where he kicked her as she left his Los Angeles home for the last time that year.
Prosecutors have contended in court filings that Combs was so upset that he arranged to have Cudi’s convertible firebombed.
A prosecutor said at the end of Tuesday’s court session that Mescudi will be the third witness after a federal agent finishes testifying about what investigators found last year when they raided Combs’ home in Florida.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges that he leveraged his fame and fortune to oversee a two-decade-long racketeering enterprise that controlled Cassie and others through threats and violence.
His lawyers say evidence in the case reflects domestic violence, not anything amounting to a criminal racket or sex trafficking.
Cassie testified last week that Combs arranged for her to meet Cudi several times in 2011 to work on music. She said her relationship with Cudi began late in the year and she got a burner phone so the two could communicate without Combs learning about it.
Cassie said she and Combs had broken up at the time, although they still engaged in so-called “freak-offs” that involved sexual performances with male escorts that Combs watched and sometimes participated in. It was during one of those “freak-offs” that Combs picked up her regular phone and noticed communications that revealed Cassie was seeing Cudi, Cassie said.
On Tuesday, Cassie’s mother, Regina Ventura, testified that she received an email in December 2011 from Cassie saying that Combs was so angry about her relationship with Cudi that he planned to release sexually explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt Cassie and Cudi.
Afterward, Regina Ventura said, she received a demand from Combs for $20,000. Scared for her daughter’s safety, she went to the bank and sent Combs the money, only to have it returned by Combs days later.
Cassie testified that Cudi came to visit her at her mother’s Connecticut home around Christmas in 2011 and stayed for three or four days. She said she broke up with him.
“It was just too much,” she said. “Too much danger, too much uncertainty of, like, what could happen if we continued to see each other.”
Cassie said she told her family she was going to Los Angeles after the holidays to “get to work.” But instead, she said, she traveled after New Year’s to meet Combs in Arizona, where he had gone to visit a college with his son. They resumed their relationship.
When Cassie and Combs were out of the country, Combs told her that Cudi’s car would be blown up and Combs wanted Cudi’s friends there to see it, Cassie said.