Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' ex-assistant tells jury mogul kidnapped her to help ‘kill Cudi'

Yahoo

27-05-2025

NEW YORK — Sean 'Diddy' Combs' former assistant Capricorn Clark, her voice quivering, told a Manhattan jury Tuesday that the armed rap mogul kidnapped her late one night in 2011 to help him 'kill [Kid] Cudi.'
Taking the stand as the 17th witness, Clark bolstered testimony from Combs' ex, Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, and Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, about a disturbing incident in late 2011 that saw Mescudi's Hollywood Hills house burgled by Combs when he found out he'd been dating Ventura.
'[Combs] came to my house with a gun and told me I had to go with him to kill Cudi,' Clark, Combs' assistant from 2004 to 2012, testified in Manhattan federal court.
Clark said she was driven to Mescudi's home by a security guard with Combs, against her will and called Ventura while he was inside, warning her that the Bad Boy Records co-founder was out for blood.
The jury heard from Mescudi last week that upon hearing from Ventura, he brought her to the Sunset Marquis hotel to stay safe and then called Combs, who told him he just wanted to talk. When Mescudi got home, Combs was not there, but he discovered his house had been burgled, with Christmas gifts torn open and his dog locked in the bathroom.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitzi Steiner, Clark said Tuesday that around a day later, she went to pick up Ventura from the Sunset Marquis and brought her to Combs' sprawling Los Angeles mansion, where the mogul began mercilessly beating Ventura upon their arrival.
'Puff was standing there in a robe and his underwear, and he immediately began kicking Cassie,' Clark testified. 'One-hundred percent full force, in her legs to begin with.'
Asked to describe the beating in greater detail, Clark said, 'He kept kicking her. He never used his hands.'
Sounding on the verge of tears as she recounted the chilling scene, Clark said she was too scared to contact the cops, as 'the mission of the day was to get [Kid] Cudi not to call the police.'
' He told me if I jumped in, he was gonna f--k me up too.'
When Combs did not let up, Clark said she called Combs' security team and eventually Ventura's mother, Regina Ventura, telling her, 'He's beating the s–t out of your daughter. I'm in over my head … I can't call the police, but you can.'
Jurors have already heard how weeks after the burglary, Mescudi's Porsche was blown up in his driveway in an apparent Molotov cocktail attack. Clark said she informed Combs that authorities were probing the arson and had contacted her.
Earlier in her testimony, the former assistant, who started out working for Def Jam and then Death Row Records, described experiencing an extremely hostile workplace during her employment for Combs, including him aggressively shoving her when she expressed dissatisfaction with her work. After a lapse in working for Combs, which she said involved grueling and untenable hours, Clark returned as a marketing director for his Sean John clothing line in 2006. Clark said she was fired in 2012 over supposed issues related to vacation time and would work for him again in 2016 as Ventura's creative director until 2018.
At one juncture, when the mogul's jewelry went missing, she said he subjected her to five days of lie detector tests on the sixth floor of an abandoned skyscraper near Times Square. When she arrived there, an unnamed bodyguard chain-smoking cigarettes threatened her.
'He said if you fail this test, they're going to throw you in the East River.' She would pass the test.
After the burglary incident at Mescudi's, Clark said Combs' threats against her only increased, estimating he threatened her around 50 times between December 2011 and the following summer, usually in the presence of his longtime security guard, D-Roc, and Ventura.
Kid Cudi's Porche is pictured after it was hit with a Molotov cocktail. (Department of Justice) Combs, 55, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted in the case. He's pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment, including counts of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transporting individuals for prostitution.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office alleges the rap entrepreneur, whose net worth has been estimated at close to a billion dollars, compulsively coerced women into humiliating sexual performances with male escorts for years with assistance from a network of high-ranking employees, akin to a mafia family who resorted to sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice to facilitate his desires. Prosecutors have presented extensive evidence of Combs' violent and unpredictable temper.
A heavily pregnant Ventura spent four days on the stand during the first week of testimony, describing in devastating detail being trapped in a cycle of violent abuse, recovery, and humiliation during their 11-year relationship. The now 39-year-old singer said she was frequently beaten bloody and coerced into hundreds of degrading sexual performances with other men that Combs dubbed 'freakoffs,' tapes of which the mogul used against her as blackmail.
_____