In Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial, Kid Cudi Testifies to His Car Being Torched

The rapper testified on Thursday about the chaotic aftermath of Mr. Combs discovering his relationship with Casandra Ventura.

The rapper Kid Cudi testified on Thursday at Sean Combs’s federal trial about becoming a focus of the music mogul’s jealous rage, recounting what he viewed as Mr. Combs’s break-in at his home and his suspicion that the music mogul also arranged for the firebombing of his sports car.

His testimony is important to the government’s narrative that Mr. Combs used violence as a tool while running a criminal enterprise that engaged in sex trafficking and racketeering. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

On the stand at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, the rapper, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said he believed that Mr. Combs was responsible for the Molotov cocktail that exploded inside his Porsche 911. Mr. Combs’s lawyers have said he was “simply not involved” in the arson incident outlined in the indictment. On cross-examination, Mr. Mescudi agreed when a defense lawyer stated that no witnesses had placed Mr. Combs at the scene of the fire.

The rapper recounted that one morning in December 2011, he got a frightened phone call from Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, whom he was dating, and who also had an off-and-on relationship with Mr. Combs.

Mr. Mescudi said Ms. Ventura told him that Mr. Combs had found out about their relationship and was upset. Soon, Mr. Mescudi said, he got another call, this time from an employee of Mr. Combs’s, who said that the mogul and an associate of his were inside Mr. Mescudi’s Los Angeles home. The rapper testified that he had left the door to his house unlocked, but that he viewed entering without permission as having “crossed a line.”

Mr. Mescudi said he called Mr. Combs, cursed at him and asked whether he was at his house. He testified that Mr. Combs replied, “I’m over here waiting for you.”

Returning to his house, Mr. Mescudi said, he found that his dog was shut in the bathroom but that Mr. Combs had left.

“I wanted to confront him,” he testified. “I wanted to fight him.”

He said he then called the police.

Tensions continued, though, Mr. Mescudi said. In January 2012, he testified, his dog’s babysitter called to tell him that his blue Porsche was on fire in his driveway. (Ms. Ventura testified last week that Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy and Puffy, had threatened at one point to blow up Mr. Mescudi’s car in his driveway.)

The jury was shown pictures of Mr. Mescudi’s damaged car. While prosecutors questioned Mr. Mescudi about the photos, Mr. Combs, wearing a gray sweater, yawned from his chair.

Shortly after the fire, Mr. Mescudi said on Thursday, he met Mr. Combs at a club in Los Angeles. They shook hands, he said, and then Mr. Mescudi asked, “What are we going to do about my car?”

“He looked right back at me — very cold stare,” Mr. Mescudi continued, “and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

Mr. Mescudi, who appeared in court in a leather jacket, white shirt and jeans, said he thought that the denial was a lie.

About three years later, Mr. Mescudi said, they met again, and Mr. Combs said he wanted to “apologize for everything,” though he was not specific.

“That’s the last thing I expected to get from him,” Mr. Mescudi said.

On Thursday afternoon, Frédéric Zemmour, the manager of a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills, read from notes compiled by his staff that detailed the conditions in which Mr. Combs had left rooms over the years, including damage from candle wax and “excessive amounts of oil.” The government has described candles and baby oil as among the accouterments Mr. Combs used in staging “freak-offs,” the marathon sex sessions he often engaged in with Ms. Ventura.

Ms. Ventura has said she continued to participate in such sessions because she was afraid of Mr. Combs, who often beat her, and on the stand on Thursday, Mylah Morales, a makeup artist, recalled seeing Ms. Ventura injured.

She described one incident around the time of the Grammy Awards in 2010. In a hotel suite, Ms. Morales said, she saw Mr. Combs enter a bedroom where Ms. Ventura was staying; behind a closed door, Ms. Morales said, she heard yelling and screaming.

After he left, Ms. Ventura emerged with a swollen eye, a “busted” lip and knots on her head, Ms. Morales said. The makeup artist said she brought Ms. Ventura to her house and had a friend who was a doctor examine her. The friend recommended going to an emergency room but Ms. Ventura declined.

Maurene Comey, a prosecutor, asked how Ms. Morales felt after seeing Ms. Ventura’s injuries. She said she was afraid of Mr. Combs.

“I feared for my life,” Ms. Morales testified. “Because if he could do that to her ——” she said, before being cut off by an objection from Mr. Combs’s lawyers.

The day began with prosecutors questioning George Kaplan, a former personal assistant to Mr. Combs. In 2015, Mr. Kaplan said, he was on Mr. Combs’s private jet along with several other employees when he heard the sound of glass shattering in a private compartment.

The door to the compartment was ajar, Mr. Kaplan said, and he added that he saw Ms. Ventura on the floor and Mr. Combs standing over her with a whiskey glass in his hand.

“There was tremendous commotion and scuffle,” Mr. Kaplan testified, “and then after the glass crashed Cassie screamed, ‘Isn’t anybody seeing this?’”

No one came to Ms. Ventura’s aid, he said. When asked by Ms. Comey why he did not help or call the police, Mr. Kaplan, who was 23 at the time, said, “It would not have been in keeping with what I was trying to accomplish professionally.”

Under cross-examination by Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, Mr. Kaplan said he did not see any injuries on Ms. Ventura at the time, nor later that same evening.

Mr. Kaplan said that he had been subpoenaed to appear at the trial, and that he was testifying under an immunity order from the court. “I desperately did not want to come here today,” he said.

On another occasion in 2015, Mr. Kaplan said, he was in Mr. Combs’s home in Los Angeles when his boss summoned him by intercom. Heading to Mr. Combs’s bedroom, Mr. Kaplan said, he found Ms. Ventura crying on the bed, “whimpering,” with bruising on her right eyebrow. Mr. Kaplan said he went straight to Mr. Combs, who sent him to a drugstore to get remedies to reduce swelling.

After witnessing another incident when Mr. Kaplan said that Mr. Combs threw apples at another woman, he gave notice that he would be leaving Mr. Combs’s employ.

“I was not comfortable or aligned with the physical behavior that had been going on that I had seen pieces of,” Mr. Kaplan said.

He still expressed admiration for Mr. Combs, and gratitude for the business lessons he learned from the mogul.

“This is a god among men talking to me,” Mr. Kaplan said.

Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.