Rapper Kid Cudi expected to testify at Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial
[May 21, 2025]
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — Rapper and actor Kid Cudi is expected to testify at the
Sean “Diddy” Combs sex trafficking trial, taking the witness stand
either Wednesday or Thursday to tell the jury about his brief
relationship 14 years ago with Combs ex-girlfriend, the R&B singer
Cassie.
Cassie testified last week that Combs was enraged when she left him for
a period of time in 2011 and began dating Cudi, whose legal name is
Scott Mescudi. She said Combs left a large bruise on her back where he
kicked her as she left his Los Angeles home for the last time that year.
Prosecutors have contended in court filings that Combs was so upset that
he arranged to have Cudi's convertible firebombed.
A prosecutor said at the end of Tuesday's court session that Mescudi
will be the third witness after a federal agent finishes testifying
about what investigators found last year when they raided Combs’ home in
Florida.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges that he leveraged his fame and
fortune to oversee a two-decade-long racketeering enterprise that
controlled Cassie and others through threats and violence.
His lawyers say evidence in the case reflects domestic violence, not
anything amounting to a criminal racket or sex trafficking.
Cassie testified last week that Combs arranged for her to meet Cudi
several times in 2011 to work on music. She said her relationship with
Cudi began late in the year and she got a burner phone so the two could
communicate without Combs learning about it.
Cassie said she and Combs had broken up at the time, although they still
engaged in so-called “freak-offs” that involved sexual performances with
male escorts that Combs watched and sometimes participated in. It was
during one of those “freak-offs” that Combs picked up her regular phone
and noticed communications that revealed Cassie was seeing Cudi, Cassie
said.
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Kid Cudi appears at the Los Angeles premiere of "Sonic The Hedgehog
2," on April 5, 2022. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
 On Tuesday, Cassie's mother, Regina
Ventura, testified that she received an email in December 2011 from
Cassie saying that Combs was so angry about her relationship with
Cudi that he planned to release sexually explicit videos of her and
send someone to hurt Cassie and Cudi.
Afterward, Regina Ventura said, she received a demand from Combs for
$20,000. Scared for her daughter's safety, she went to the bank and
sent Combs the money, only to have it returned by Combs days later.
Cassie testified that Cudi came to visit her at her mother's
Connecticut home around Christmas in 2011 and stayed for three or
four days. She said she broke up with him.
“It was just too much,” she said. “Too much danger, too much
uncertainty of, like, what could happen if we continued to see each
other.”
Cassie said she told her family she was going to Los Angeles after
the holidays to “get to work.” But instead, she said, she traveled
after New Year's to meet Combs in Arizona, where he had gone to
visit a college with his son. They resumed their relationship.
When Cassie and Combs were out of the country, Combs told her that
Cudi's car would be blown up and Combs wanted Cudi's friends there
to see it, Cassie said.
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