Why Diddy trial witness Capricorn Clark is key to his racketeering and sex-trafficking charges

Business Insider

7 days ago

During the first two weeks of testimony in the Sean "Diddy" Combs trial in Manhattan, her name was dropped two dozen times. Now, Capricorn Clark is set to take the stand first thing Tuesday, kicking off the third week of the government's sex-trafficking and racketeering case against the millionaire hip-hop entrepreneur.
As Combs' former personal assistant and top marketing exec, Clark will be the highest-ranking employee to testify so far. (Tony Abrahams, former CFO for Combs Enterprises, is on deck to testify as soon as later this week.)
Prior trial testimony has cited Clark as a witness to acts of violence, a $20,000 extortion, and kidnapping, all elements in the September indictment Combs is fighting at trial.
Once on the stand, she could bolster the top two federal charges against the music mogul: sex trafficking and racketeering, each carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The violence Clark possibly witnessed includes an incident from a 2010 dinner in West Hollywood. At the dinner, Combs punched girlfriend-turned-key-accuser Cassie Ventura in front of other guests, witness Dawn Richard testified. Clark, Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre, and other top Combs employees at the dinner appeared to do nothing, she told jurors last week.
"Mr. Combs punched Cassie in the stomach," Richard, a singer for Bad Boy groups Danity Kane and Diddy Dirty Money, testified, recalling the violence.
Richard described Ventura doubling over, then being ordered by Combs to leave the dinner. "No one intervened," she testified.
If successfully corroborated by Clark and others, that stomach punch — and any lack of intervention by Combs' staff — could support both top counts.
The same goes for any additional violence witnessed by Clark, a longtime friend and confidant of Ventura, who called her "Cap."
So far, more than a dozen instances of violence, nearly all of them against Ventura throughout their on-and-off, 2007-2018 relationship, have been described by eyewitnesses, including Ventura herself.
Prosecutors allege that Combs sex-trafficked Ventura via force and threats throughout those years, beating and threatening her into complying with a decade's worth of "freak offs," elaborately-staged, often videotaped sex performances involving himself, male escorts, and interstate travel.
Prosecutors say the threats that kept Ventura compliant include one from December 2011, when Combs found out that she was dating rival rapper Kid Cudi.
Clark is cc'd on a Blackberry message in which Ventura, using the alias "Veronica Bang," tells mom Regina Ventura about Combs' threats to release explicit sex tapes and to have "someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi," a reference to Kid Cudi's given name.
Clark could be asked Tuesday about receiving this message, and about any independent knowledge she may have about its underlying threats.
She could also help the prosecution prove the racketeering charge, which alleges that Combs' employees enabled his crimes, including by obstructing justice through doing nothing, as at the 2010 dinner Richard said they both attended.
Prosecutors say other underlying crimes of the Combs criminal "racket" include arson and kidnapping, and here again, Clark's testimony could prove key.
According to prior testimony, Clark was enmeshed in the 2011 Kid Cudi flareup as both a top Combs employee and a Ventura confidant.
Jurors heard two weeks ago, from Ventura, that Clark helped keep Combs from learning about the brief romance.
Ventura testified that he found out anyway during a freak-off in Los Angeles. Going through Ventura's phone, Combs saw an email Ventura sent Clark asking her to deliver Ventura's toiletries bag to Mescudi's address.
Ventura told jurors that Combs was so enraged, he lunged at her with a corkscrew in his fist.
Mescudi added more details on Thursday, telling jurors that a jealous Combs broke into his Hollywood Hills home and rifled through his Christmas presents.
Mescudi testified that Clark called to tell him, in real time, that she was sitting in a car outside his house and that Combs and an unnamed "affiliate" were inside.
"She told me that Sean Combs and an affiliate came to her apartment and made her get in the car to come up to my house," Mescudi testified.
Asked for details of just how Clark was forced into the car, Mescudi said, "They forced her physically."
Prosecutors may present this to jurors as an instance of the underlying racketeering crime of kidnapping.
Prosecutors allege Ventura was a repeated victim of kidnapping, including in 2016, when security cameras captured her being kicked and dragged by Combs in the hallway of the InterContinental hotel.
Ventura told jurors that she was trying to leave a freak-off at the time, after being slugged in the eye by Combs — and that Combs was trying to drag her back inside their room.
In another kidnapping alleged by prosecutors, Ventura was forced by Combs to remain for a week in a Los Angeles hotel.
In testimony corroborated by a former PA last week, Ventura told jurors she was kept hidden at the hotel so that her face could heal from being brutally stomped on by Combs as she cowered on the floor of his SUV.
Combs has denied all allegations of coercive sex. During pretrial and trial proceedings, his attorneys have repeatedly tried to show that Combs' accusers are disgruntled employees, rejected musical artists, and spurned girlfriends, many of whom sought big paydays by filing civil lawsuits against him.