Kid Cudi Testifies Diddy ‘Messed With’ His Dog

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Around 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, a pregnant silence fell upon the courtroom where Sean “Diddy” Combs’s sex-trafficking trial is playing out in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors had just called Kid Cudi to the stand. Those seated in the gallery turned en masse to watch him walk through the door. Diddy also turned around fully in his seat to view the “Day ’N’ Nite” rapper’s grand entrance. What felt like a long moment passed. And then another. No Kid Cudi quite yet. Combs turned back around to face the front of Judge Arun Subramanian’s courtroom. Kid Cudi then crossed into the courtroom, in a black leather biker jacket, denim jeans, and white T-shirt. Cudi was sworn in and, as directed, stated and spelled out his legal name, Scott Mescudi. A few minutes after prosecutor Emily Johnson asked Kid Cudi to describe his relationship with Diddy’s ex Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. “We were friends and we dated briefly,” Kid Cudi said plainly. 

Kid Cudi’s name has come up repeatedly during this trial because alleged acts of violence relating to his relationship with Cassie are part of how the prosecution plans to prove Diddy maintained control over her through a criminal enterprise. Cassie’s allegations that Diddy coerced her into sex with escorts at “Freak Off” events — while he watched and masturbated — are the center of prosecutors’ case against him. Kid Cudi said that he and Cassie — who met at an event in 2008 and worked together in 2010 — started going out in 2011. Cassie told him “she and Sean Combs had some problems and they weren’t dating anymore,” he told jurors. In late December 2011, however, Cassie’s entanglement with Sean “Diddy” Combs spilled into Kid Cudi’s life. He got a call from Cassie around 5:30 a.m. “She told me that Sean Combs found out about us. She asked me to pick her up,” Kid Cudi testified. “She sounded very stressed on the phone, nervous, scared.” Kid Cudi picked Cassie up and brought her to a hotel where she could lie low. He was confused. He didn’t realize she was still dealing with him and recalled Cassie saying she was worried Diddy would go to his house.  

Then came a call from Capricorn Clark, Diddy’s then-assistant, one of Cassie’s friends who had hung out with her and Kid Cudi on various occasions. Clark sounded like she was on the “verge of tears.” She said she was in a car, outside Cudi’s house, and that Diddy and another person were inside. “She was forced to go along with them over there,” he testified. Kid Cudi got in his Porsche 911 Cabriolet and took off, calling Diddy from the road. 

“I’m going to be very candid,” Kid Cudi told the court. “I said, ‘Motherfucker, you in my house?’” 

“Mr. Combs said, ‘I’m over here, waiting for you,’” Cudi recalled, adding Diddy sounded “calm.” When Cudi arrived, Diddy wasn’t there, but Christmas presents for his family with items he’d gotten from Chanel were opened. “My dog was locked up in my bathroom,” Kid Cudi continued. Typically Cudi “just let him roam.” 

What, if any changes, did Kid Cudi see in his dog after the incident? “Very jittery, kind of like, on edge all the time.” He called Diddy. He wanted to confront and fight him, then reality sank in. Kid Cudi didn’t know what situation he’d be walking into, so he called the cops. That month, Kid Cudi went to Connecticut and spent the holidays with Cassie and her family. “He hit me a couple times,” Kid Cudi said. Asked to explain what that meant, Kid Cudi clarified that Diddy texted him, but he didn’t want to engage. Diddy, he believed, had broken into his house and “messed with” his dog. 

Early in the next year, Kid Cudi said, his relationship with Cassie petered out. The drama ramped up, however. He received a call from his “dog’s babysitter” early in the morning saying his “car was on fire.” Kid Cudi, who was at his ex-girlfriend’s sister’s house, drove home to find the interior of his car was smoke damaged. There was a giant gash in the cloth convertible roof. Photos shown in court revealed the charred, red car interior. As Kid Cudi recalled the property damage, Diddy looked forward. The fallen mogul, wearing a heather-gray sweater and coordinating pants, seemed attentive.

Kid Cudi knew he and Diddy needed to meet up and put an end to this. They met a day or two later at Soho House in Los Angeles. He was led into a conference room with a large picture window. Diddy was looking out. “Sean Combs was standing there with his hands behind his back — like a Marvel supervillain,” he remembered, describing Diddy as gracious and calm, repeatedly offering water. Cudi declined. They discussed their respective confusion around Cassie — Kid Cudi thought that they had split, Diddy said “that was his girl,” Cudi said, and both felt played. Then, Cassie came. “I was upset that she had kind of went back to him,” he said. Kid Cudi and Diddy shook hands. Their palms entwined, Cudi looked Diddy in the eyes: “I said, what are you gonna do about my car?” Diddy said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Diddy was calm, but Kid Cudi was dissatisfied, feeling that he was being misled during a handshake. A few years later, Kid Cudi said Diddy apologized to him in general terms. After he got the apology, he “kind of felt at peace with it.”  

On direct testimony, Kid Cudi’s demeanor on the stand was straightforward. During a brief break, he leaned back in his chair, held his hands behind him, and yawned. During that same break, Diddy had a visit from a fan. A man in the gallery held up paper from a legal pad that appeared to read in par “cast the first stone.” The supporter and Diddy made eye contact and the rapper, who has been wearing glasses off and on, intimated that he couldn’t see. The man then got up from his seat and walked as close to the well as possible, before being interdicted by a marshal. Diddy managed to mouth “thank you” to this supporter and tapped his chest. The man was ultimately kicked out of court. 

Defense attorney Brian Steel, of Young Thug fame, tried to cast whatever conflict went down as a romantic dispute on cross-examination. “You were in love with her, right?” Steel asked of Cassie. Steel’s questions seemed to lack a gotcha quality. More, Kid Cudi’s playfulness came out. At one point, he smiled widely. At various junctures, there was laughter in the courtroom when Kid Cudi’s warm candor came through. At the end of Johnson’s re-direct (when she got to question him again), she landed a blow against Diddy. Why did Kid Cudi fear for their safety if they stayed together? “I knew Sean Combs was violent,” Kid Cudi said. 

Cassie told jurors last week that Combs lunged at her with a bottle opener during a Freak Off when he found out she was seeing Kid Cudi. “His eyes blacked out,” Cassie said. Diddy purportedly told Cassie that Cudi’s “car would be blown up.” Diddy said he “wanted [Cudi’s] friends to see his car blown up in the driveway,” she alleged. Cassie said that she and Cudi started seeing each other when she and Diddy were on a break in late 2011, but split because being in the relationship seemed too dangerous. 

On cross-examination, Diddy’s attorney Anna Estevao suggested that her client’s rage was rooted in romantic jealousy — not criminal conspiracy.  “This was particularly offensive to Mr. Combs because of [Cudi’s] stature in the industry?” Estevao asked Cassie of her time with Cudi. “To my knowledge, yeah,” Cassie said. “You would frequently have text arguments about cheating, and he would bring up Kid Cudi all the time, right?” Estevao pressed. Cassie answered in the affirmative. Would Diddy just bring up Cudi if she accused him of seeing other women? “Not always,” but frequently, Cassie said. While Estevao tried to reframe the Diddy-Cudi beef, testimony from Cassie’s mom undermined that effort. 

Regina Ventura said that Cassie sent her and Clark, a onetime Diddy assistant, a frantic email in late 2011 detailing alleged 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,” Cassie wrote. “One on Christmas Day, maybe before or right after and another one some time soon after that. He has also said that he will be having someone hurt me and [Kid Cudi] physically. He made a point that it wouldn’t be by his hand, he actually said he’d be out of the country when it happened.” Regina said she understood that Diddy demanded to be repaid $20,000 he spent on Cassie “because he was angry that she had a relationship with [Kid Cudi.]” Regina and her husband took out a home-equity loan and wired the money to Diddy’s label, Bad Boy Records, over the threats. The money was ultimately returned to them.