The rapper Kid Cudi testified on Thursday at Sean Combs’s federal trial about the events after he became a focus of the music mogul’s jealous rage, recounting what he called a break-in at his home followed by his sports car being set on fire with a Molotov cocktail.
His testimony is viewed as an important part of the government’s narrative in the sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial of Mr. Combs, who 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 bore responsibility for the explosion. Mr. Combs’s lawyers have said he was “simply not involved” in any arson incident put forward by prosecutors. 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. Combs had found out about their relationship, Mr. Mescudi said she told him.
After picking her up, he got another call, this time from an employee of Mr. Combs’s, who said that the mogul and an associate of his had entered 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, who sat in the witness box wearing a leather jacket, a white shirt and jeans, said he then 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, which normally roamed free in the house, had been shut in his bathroom, and that wrapped Christmas presents had been opened. Mr. Mescudi said he went looking for Mr. Combs but found he had already 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, he got a call from his dog’s babysitter, who told him that his blue Porsche 911 was on fire in his driveway. He was at a friend’s house about 45 minutes away and left to return to his house, he said.
The jury saw pictures of Mr. Mescudi’s damaged car, which he said had been caused by a Molotov cocktail. While prosecutors were questioning Mr. Mescudi about the photos, Mr. Combs, wearing a gray sweater, yawned from the defendant’s chair.
Ms. Ventura testified last week that Mr. Combs had threatened at one point to blow up Mr. Mescudi’s car in his driveway. In his testimony, Mr. Mescudi made clear that he believed that Mr. Combs was responsible for the arson attack. Shortly after the fire, he said, he met Mr. Combs at a private club in Los Angeles, where he found Mr. Combs staring out a window “with his hands behind his back like a Marvel supervillain.”
They shook hands, and Mr. Mescudi said he told him, “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 testified that he believed 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.
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a criminal enterprise for two decades, and leading up to the trial have said that his associates set fire to a rival’s car by slicing open the convertible top and dropping in a Molotov cocktail during a feud between the men that occurred in late 2011 and early 2012.
After Ms. Ventura filed the lawsuit in 2023 that kicked off Mr. Combs’s legal troubles, Mr. Mescudi confirmed that his car had exploded. But before his testimony on Thursday, he had not spoken publicly about the details.
While on the witness stand last week, Ms. Ventura recalled the chaotic aftermath once Mr. Combs learned about her budding relationship with Mr. Mescudi in late 2011. She said Mr. Combs made the discovery while looking through her phone at the site of a “freak-off,” the sex marathons with male prostitutes at the center of the case.
Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs lunged at her with a wine bottle opener and, later that day, threatened to release sexually explicit videos of her in retaliation.
“He was just so angry,” Ms. Ventura testified, “and when I was in the room, he told me about videos that he had that he was going to release, and how he was going to hurt Scott and I.”
Before Mr. Mescudi’s testimony, prosecutors questioned George Kaplan, who was a personal assistant to Mr. Combs from 2013 to 2015.
In 2015, Mr. Kaplan said, he was on Mr. Combs’s private jet with several of the mogul’s other employees when he heard the sound of glass shattering in a private compartment where Mr. Combs was with Ms. Ventura.
The door to the compartment was ajar, and Mr. Kaplan, sitting nearby, said he looked through the door to see Ms. Ventura on the floor with her legs up, 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 on the plane came to Ms. Ventura’s aid, he said. When asked by Maurene Comey, a prosecutor, 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.
Mr. Kaplan said he also once witnessed Mr. Combs throwing green apples — he was not sure whether the fruit was real or decorative — at another girlfriend of Ms. Combs’s, who is being identified in court only as Gina. Late that night, Mr. Kaplan said, he heard another commotion near the property’s front gate between Gina and some men who Mr. Kaplan said he thought were members of Mr. Combs’s security team.
After that, Mr. Kaplan said, 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,” he said, adding that he did not want to be responsible for “fixing” interactions like those he witnessed on the plane or Ms. Ventura’s bruises in the bedroom.
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.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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