Cardi B testifies she didn't touch security guard who's suing her
alleging assault
[August 28, 2025]
By ANDREW DALTON
ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) — Cardi B testified Wednesday that she didn't
touch a security guard who alleges the rapper cut her face with a
fingernail and spat on her in an altercation outside an obstetrician's
office during the hip-hop star's not-yet-public first pregnancy.
“She couldn’t get a scratch from me because I didn’t touch her,” Cardi
said on the stand in her second day of testimony in a Los Angeles County
court.
Ron Rosen Janfaza, lawyer for the plaintiff, Emani Ellis, asked her if
she had been angry.
“Yes I was angry!” Because I’m pregnant!" Cardi replied. “And this
girl’s about to beat my ass!”
She acknowledged that the argument got very heated — repeating in court
much of the swearing the two did — and that they were chest-to-chest at
one point, but said the fight never became physical.
“She didn’t touch me," Cardi said. "She was going to touch me, but she
didn’t get to touch me.”
Cardi said she had been visiting Los Angeles doing promotional work in
February 2018 around that year’s NBA All-Star Game. She was four months
into her pregnancy with the first of her three children with rapper
Offset. She had told her inner circle she was having a baby, but not the
public or her parents.
The obstetrician’s office had been closed to other patients on a
Saturday for her privacy.
She said Ellis, a security guard for the building, followed her to her
fifth-floor appointment. Cardi said she heard Ellis say her name into a
phone and appeared to be filming her. Cardi feared Ellis would out the
fact that she was pregnant.
“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?’” Cardi testified, “and she said,
’Oh my bad.' She practically apologized.'”
But the argument grew increasingly heated, she said.
“As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi
said.
Both women are 32 years old and about the same height, but Cardi said
Ellis was bigger than her.
“She is like, security-heavy," Cardi said. "She just looks a little,
like she could protect the building.”
Under friendlier questioning from one of her own attorneys, Cardi
explained why she was keeping her pregnancy secret at the time, seven
months after the release of her first major label single and major hit,
“Bodak Yellow," when she was still in her “freshman year” of stardom.
“I was getting used to things,” she said. “I was just so worried about
what everybody was saying and thinking. I thought I was letting a lot of
people down.”
[to top of second column]
|
Cardi B appears at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills,
Calif., on March 12, 2023. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP,
File)
 But she said, beyond that, she
treasures her privacy on all medical matters, “especially something
so sacred as a pregnancy. It’s yours.”
A significant chunk of the testimony was spent on the acrylic nails
with rhinestones Cardi had that week, and whether they could do the
damage that’s alleged.
“It wasn’t a shape that was harming, it was coffin-shaped,” she
said. “They weren’t sharp.”
Ellis testified earlier in the trial that the incident left her
humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required
cosmetic surgery. Ellis, who lost her job over the incident, is
seeking damages that include medical expenses, compensation for
emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with
punitive damages. She does not specify a total amount in the lawsuit
but Cardi said from the stand that she is “suing me for $24
million."
Tierra Malcolm, the receptionist from the doctor's office who got
between the two women and broke up the argument, gave testimony
Wednesday that mostly supported Cardi's account.
She said she came into the hallway after hearing a ruckus outside
but saw no physical fighting. She later noticed a scratch on her own
face that she assumed came from Ellis, because she had been facing
her with her back to Cardi.
Asked to characterize the argument, Malcolm said she wasn't sure if
she could swear in court.
“We’ve heard just about everything so far, so it’s OK,” Judge Ian C.
Fusselman said to laughs from much of the courtroom.
The testimony came at a small courthouse outside Los Angeles in
Alhambra, where trials involving celebrities are very rare. The
trial is taking the rest of the week off and is expected to resume,
and conclude, next week.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
