Capricorn Clark testifies about Diddy's gunpoint quest to kill Kid Cudi
The former assistant turned executive is the third former employee of Sean “Diddy” Combs to testify in his federal racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking trial.
A former employee of Sean “Diddy” Combs described in testimony on Tuesday an abusive boss who threatened to kill her on her first day of work then nine years later forced her at gunpoint to join him on a trip to kill rapper Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi.
Capricorn Clark said the visit to Mescudi’s home in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon area on Dec. 22, 2011, ended with Mescudi losing Combs in a car chase and Combs ordering Clark to call his now-former girlfriend Cassie Ventura from a Sunset Boulevard nightclub.
Combs said “once you get Cassie, you guys need to go talk with Cudi and convince him to not tell the police that it was me,” Clark testified in a Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday morning, according to a court reporter’s transcript obtained by Legal Affairs and Trials.
“He says, ‘If you guys don’t convince him of that, I’ll kill all you motherfuckers,” Clark continued.
Clark said she picked up Ventura from the Sunset Marquis hotel and they went to Mescudi’s home “to make sure that he wasn’t going to make a police report about Puff.” When they saw Combs later at his home on Beverly Crest, “he immediately began kicking Cassie … 100 percent full force.”
“Each kick, she would crouch into more and more of a fetal position,” Clark testified.
Ventura “wasn’t doing anything.”
“She was crying silently,” Clark said.
Clark is the third former employee of Combs to testify in his federal sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and prostitution trial in Manhattan. She described her relationship with Combs as “1,000 percent” platonic but also rife with threats and chaos that she dutifully recounted in an all-day witness stand appearance that kept jurors later than scheduled.
Prosecutors say Combs led a years-long organized crime ring that used drugs, guns, forced labor, violence and coercion to satisfy his sexual fetishes and victimize women. His lawyers say he’s on trial for his private sex life, and they’ve worked to portray Ventura as an eager participant in the elaborate sex parties with escorts that she said Combs demanded and called “freak offs.”
Combs’ former personal assistants David James and George Kaplan testified earlier in trial about securing drugs for Combs at his request and setting up hotel rooms they knew would be used for freak offs. Kaplan confirmed in cross-examination on May 22 that prosecutors had granted him immunity for his testimony.
James also testified about accompanying Combs and his security guard Damion “D-Roc” Butler to Mel’s Drive-In diner in Los Angeles in fall 2008 to confront Death Row Records executive Suge Knight, then fleeing when they saw Knight with a gun.
Knight, who was close with the slain rapper Tupac Shakur, a rival of Combs and the slain rapper Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, currently is in California state prison for voluntary manslaughter. He was mentioned in testimony again on Tuesday when Clark said she worked at Death Row and Knight “is the father of my best friend’s children.”
Clark said Combs didn’t take kindly to her connection to Knight: About 9 p.m. on her first day as his personal assistant in 2004, he took her to Central Park in New York City with his security guard Paul “Paulie” Offord and “told me he didn’t know that I had anything to do with Suge Knight and if anything happened he would have to kill me.” She said he was “calm and stoic.”
“I said, ‘We’ll just have to see,’” Clark testified.
“What did you mean by that?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitzi Steiner asked.
“I meant there was nothing I could do in Central Park to convince him that I was a trustworthy person. I knew my character. I knew that I didn’t have anything to do with any of that stuff that he would possibly have any,” Clark said before Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo objected. U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian of the Southern District of New York sustained and told jurors to disregard Clark’s answer.
Fail a lie detector test, ‘get thrown in the East River’
Steiner questioned Clark about Combs’ statements about guns — she said he mentioned them when discussing a problem with rapper 50 Cent — before asking about Combs accusing her of stealing jewelry a couple months into her employment.
Clark, who grew up in Los Angeles and interned at Def Jam Records after high school, said Combs gave her a diamond necklace with a cross, a diamond bracelet and a diamond watch to take on a plane to Miami, but she lost them so Combs had his security guard search her home and take her to a building to take a lie detector test.
The man who administered the test told her, “If you fail these tests, they’re going to throw you in the East River,” Clark testified.
Agniflo objected, and told Judge Subramanian during a sidebar outside the jury’s presence that “this is just incendiary testimony about her being threatened about thrown in the East River.”
“Which even if it’s believed, and I’m not here to quarrel with that at this point, there’s nothing that say that Mr. Combs wanted any of this to happen,” Agnifilo said.
Judge Subramanian said he indicated earlier that “there was a [2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals] case that indicated that if there are threats, that that’s not hearsay … and there was silence from the defense.” He overruled Agnifilo’s objection, and Steiner returned to the lectern to ask Clark about the demeanor of the man “when he made the threat that they would throw you in the East River.”
“Very serious, very direct, no frills. This was a very serious conversation,” Clark answered.
“How did you react?” Steiner asked.
“I was petrified,” Clark answered.
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James, who was Combs’ personal assistant from May 2007 to May 2009, testified on May 20 that he took two lie detector tests during his employment and passed both.
Clark testified on Tuesday that she was told her test results were “inconclusive.”
“You need to calm down. You’re going to be in the East River if I can’t get a reading on this,” she recalled the man telling her. She said Offord took her to the same building the next day for a second test.
In the five days between losing the jewelry and taking the tests, Clark said she didn’t tell anyone where she was. because “I was in a different head space.”
“I was just trying to survive it,” Clark testified.
She said she didn’t tell police because she “worked under an NDA,” referring to a non-disclosure agreement, but Judge Subramanian sustained Agnifilo’s objection and told jurors to disregard Clark’s answer.
Under her normal job duties, she said she would have spent those days shadowing Combs, waking him up and “I would have been there through the course of the day until about 4 a.m.” But she never heard from Combs when she was taking the tests, and she didn’t see him until she returned to work on Monday.
Clark testified she continued to work for Combs because “I felt if I would have left, it would have been written off as I stole anyway.”
Some of Steiner’s questions appeared to get at the forced labor allegations that support the racketeering conspiracy charge: Like James and Kaplan, Clark testified to working long hours and getting little sleep. “On a good night,” she’d sleep four hours, Clark said, and “on a bad night, too.” Her salary was $65,000 a year, but a human resources employee who considered overtime pay said she was owed $80,000 for a three-month period.
Combs, however, “ripped up the paper” and never paid the extra money, she said.
Clark testified she developed alopecia while working for Combs, “a stress-induced condition where you get bald patches on your head.”
She also testified Combs assaulted her, including in 2006 at his mansion on Miami’s Star Island. Music producer Pharrell Williams “was dropped off by boat on the back dock for a quick meeting,” and Combs “had me return Rob Walker to Palm Island, where they were shooting a video.” She’d been on the other island for about an hour when Combs called and asked, “Where the fuck are you?” Clark testified.
He told her not to leave the home when she returned, then the next morning Clark remark to his chef, “I hate it here” and the chef told Combs.
Combs “charged me,” Clark testified, and “ran towards me with his hands open and pushed me, my shoulders, and he started pushing me back.” Clark said Combs pushed her “25, 30 yards,” and said repeatedly, “You hate it here? Get the fuck out of my house.”
Offord intervened and “told Puff to stop and he told me to go pack my things,” Clark said.
Mescudi loses Combs in a car chase
Clark testified she quit working for Combs after he assaulted her because “that was a crossing my boundary,” but she returned to work for him as a marketing director and then global brand director.
At the time, she was working at Samba Records, but “Puff was very impressed with my work at my new place and was, like, I’m starting a women’s line. You wouldn’t have to work directly with me, but you can work for me, and it will be something right up your alley. And it was paying more than Samba Records was.”
She was 28 in 2011 and “didn’t want that close proximity of his personal orbit like that anymore,” Clark testified.
“I didn’t want to be in his house. I didn’t want to be trapped in a house. I was growing,” she said.
But Combs also paid Clark’s rent in a gated development in Los Angeles, and Clark was working as Ventura’s creative director and manager, which required close contact with Combs because he insisted on approving Ventura’s “schedule, hair, makeup” and other choices.
The job also meant Ventura frequently texted her about personal issues, including her relationship with Mescudi. When Ventura said she wanted Mescudi to join them on a hike in Runyon Canyon, Clark said she responded, “I don’t think we should go to Runyon. There is too many people there. If he comes, we need to go to Fryman Canyon. Delete this text.”
Clark said she was “very concerned” about Combs learning of Mescudi.
“Mr. Combs paid for my phone. She’s texting me on the phone he pays for on a phone he pays for. It’s not a good idea,” she testified.
Clark said she took Ventura to a Best Buy “to buy a burner phone” that Combs couldn’t trace because “the way she was moving, she was going to get us all killed.”
Judge Subramanian sustained Agnifilo’s objection and told jurors to disregard Clark’s statement about Ventura getting them killed.
Combs returned to Los Angeles “not long after” Ventura bought the new phone, and he and Ventura visited the Cipriani Hotel. The next morning, “I heard a loud banging at my door.” It was Dec. 22, 2011, and Combs was at her door demanding she go with him to kill Mescudi.
Clark testified on Tuesday she looked through her peephole and saw, “A very upset Puff. He was pacing. He was moving around a little bit. He was just anxious, I could tell. But he was furious, that was evident.
She said Combs had a gun and looked “furious.”
“He said, Why didn’t you tell me?” Clark testified. Clark said Combs asked, “Who is Scott,” and she said she didn’t know any Scott, so he said, “Kid Cudi,” and she said, “Oh, Cassie’s friend.”
“He just said, ‘Get dressed. We’re going to go kill this n****,” Clark testified.
Clark said she “didn’t want to go,” but Combs told her, “I don’t give a fuck what you want to do. Go get dressed.”
“I had never seen anything like this before. He had never come to my house in the entire time I’d known him,” Clark testified. “I’ve never seen him with a weapon. I’ve never seen him making me do something like this.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial deals with serious issues of domestic violence, sexual coercion and sex trafficking. If you need help or know someone who does, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233.
Clark said Combs’ security guard Ruben Sandy drove the Escalade to Mescudi’s home on Hollywood Hills Road in Laurel Canyon’s Wonderland neighborhood. Once there, she stayed in the Escalade and saw Combs and Sandy “fidget around, trying to gain access [to the home], and they gained access.”
She said she called Ventura on her burner phone from the Escalade and told her, “Cassie, what the fuck?”
”And I asked her where she was at,” Clark testified.
She said she saved the number under a fake name, but Combs still took her phone when he returned to the Escalade and called back the last number she dialed.
“And what did he say when he called back that number?” Steiner asked.
“Bitch, what the fuck is this number?” Clark answered.
“And how, if at all, did Mr. Combs react to Cassie having or Ms. Ventura having a new number?” Steiner asked.
“He livid. More so than already,” Clark answered.
Mescudi arrived in his Porsche convertible as Combs was on the phone with Ventura, Clark said.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that it was Cudi. Puff looked at my face. I guess I gave him a visual cue that it was him. And he goes, There’s that n**** right there,” Clark testified.
“What happened next?” Steiner asked.
“Cudi pulled up next to the Cadillac Escalade, came to a complete stop, looked, and then took off and sped up the hill. Puff and Rube jumped in the car and we started chasing him,” Clark answered.
“How long was this chase?” Steiner asked.
“It felt like forever but couldn’t have been longer than a minute,” Clark answered.
They lost sight of Mescudi, and police cars sped past on their way to Mescudi's home. Clark said the sight calmed Combs, and that’s when they went to the Key Club on Sunset Boulevard to call Ventura and he ordered them to make sure Mescudi didn’t tell police about him.
Clark said she and Ventura met with Mescudi at his home and, “We all kind of told each other what had happened that morning while we were sitting there, smoking weed, trying to get our spines together to go.”
“I told them they came to my house with a gun and told me that I had to go with him to kill Cudi,” Clark testified.
Clark answered “mind blown,” when Steiner asked how Mescudi reacted, but Judge Subramanian sustained Agnifilo’s objection and told jurors to disregard the answer. (Mescudi testified last week that he was “confused” to learn Combs was upset because “I didn’t think [Ventura] was still dealing with him.”)
Steiner moved into questions about Combs assaulting Ventura when they went to his home on Beverly Crest after leaving Mescudi’s home.
“Every time she got kicked, she moved back” and ended up “all the way to the street,” Clark testified, a distance of “maybe 20 feet.”
“Whatever was revealed, what was ever off the ground side, he was kicking her,” Clark said.
“Did you intervene?” Steiner asked.
“I did not,” Clark answered.
“Why not?” Steiner asked.
“I had never seen him do that, and I was in shock. … My heart was breaking for seeing her get hit like that,” Clark answered.
Judge Subramanian again sustained Agnifilo’s objection and told jurors to disregard Clark’s last sentence.
She said Combs told her to leave after she told his security he was assaulting Ventura, so she left his home on foot and could hear him continue to kick Ventura.
Once off the property, Clark said she called Ventura’s mother, Regina Ventura, and told her, “He’s beating the shit out of your daughter. I’m in over my head. Please help her. I can’t call the police, but you can. Please help her.”
“She said, ‘I’ll handle it’. And we hung up,” Clark testified.
Steiner displayed an email Ventura wrote her mother and Clark that was already in evidence. The subject line is “Threats” and the body reads, “The threats that have been made towards me by Sean Puffy Combs are that he is going to release two explicit sex tapes of me. 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 Scott Mescudi physically. He made a point that it wouldn’t be by his hands, he actually said he'd be out of the country when it happened.”
Clark said a law enforcement officer called her in summer 2012 about Mescudi, but not about Combs’ home break in: He was asking about the burning of Mescudi’s Porsche a couple weeks later.
Clark testified she didn’t say anything and hung up, but she never knew the details of the Porsche fire and never discussed it with Combs. Clark said Combs continued to fume about Mescudi, including telling her, “I should kill you bitches and I should cut her face.”
Clark estimated Combs threatened her 50 times between December 2011 and summer 2012. She said Butler, the security guard nicknamed D-Roc, often was with Combs and “just doubled down on whatever Puff was saying in the moment.”
Clark said her relationship with Ventura changed because Combs said “we weren’t to really be friends anymore. I could just see her for work.”
Clark said she reported Combs’ violence to Harve Pierre, the now-former president of Bad Boy Records, in Miami in March 2012.
“I told him that Puff kidnapped me with a gun and came to take me to kill Kid Cudi, and he beat up Cassie all in one day,” Clark said.
She said Pierre told her, “That’s crazy,” and assured her, “It’s going to be OK.”
A short while later, however, she was given a 30-day notice, then fired in August 2012 and “accused of not properly putting in for the vacation that I was on.” (Clark testified in cross-examination she was vacationing with singer Rihanna in the South of France and Italy when she learned she’d been fired, and she got another job as 50 Cent’s “day-to-day manager.”)
Clark said Combs told her after she was fired, “That I would never work again, that he would show me that all these people weren't my friends, that he would make me kill myself.”
She settled a wrongful termination claim against Combs in October 2012; she didn’t say in court for how much money.
Still, after all that, Clark returned to work for Combs in 2016 as Ventura’s creative director. She left in 2018 and said she hasn’t worked with Ventura since.
She decided to hire a lawyer in December 2023 after Ventura sued Combs because “it traumatized me.” She met with Combs’ lawyers in April 2024 and told them “that I wanted my life back.”
“I told them that he kidnapped me and I went through the events of the day,” Clark testified on Tuesday.
Cross-exam highlights recent contacts
In cross-examination, Agnifilo confirmed with Clark that she told prosecutors she wanted to be Combs chief of staff.
“Do you remember saying he wouldn’t be in this mess had he kept me around?” Agnifilo asked.
“I probably said something like that, yes,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo confirmed Clark never called Combs “Mr. Combs” then said, “So if it’s okay with you, just since that’s what you called him, can we call him Puff? Is that all right?”
Judge Subramanian interjected.
“Let’s call him Mr. Combs,” said the judge, a 2023 Joe Biden appointee.
“OK, judge. That ends that,” Agnifilo said.
Angiflo asked Clark about texting Combs in 2021, “Totally unrelated to our current conversation, but did you ever know that I had the biggest crush on you before I started working for you. … We hung out all the time. I played it super cool. Jeanette might be the only one who knew. … I don’t think you knew. I couldn’t tell if it was mutual. I just knew for sure that you liked to have me around.”
“That’s what it says I wrote, yes,” Clark testified.
“Do you have any memory of this at all?” Agnifilo asked.
“I really don’t,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo also tried to counter Clark’s testimony about being fired after reporting Combs to the company president by asking about him supporting her getting a job at Samba Records.
Clark recalled talking to Combs as they walked through Central Park. She said earlier in the day, they were in the park and ran into Nas the rapper and Kelis the singer.
“You said that this was earlier in your career there, so he was kind of giving you the lay of the land?” Agnifilo asked.
“We were talking. Yeah, he was giving me the lay of the land. And then we ran into them in the middle of the park,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo also asked Clark about how Ventura changed during her relationship with Combs.
Clark said Ventura “got a little bit more bravado as being his girlfriend, the longer it lasted.”
“Her expectation level was increasing,” Clark said. “She went from more being a sweet model to, um, a feisty girlfriend.”
Clark also said, “Talented to me is Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey. Very talented is that level of performer, entertainer. Cassie was more of a studio artist.”
“I obviously don’t know this terrain very well. So, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, get up in front of a microphone, belt it out, and the world says, ‘Wow, that was amazing,’ right?” Agnifilo asked.
“True,” Clark answered.
“That’s not Cassie?” Agnifilo asked.
“No,” Clark answered.
Clark said when she returned to working with Ventura in 2016 “I could see that her drug use was preventing her from the opportunities that were before us.”
She also said Ventura stopped working as hard when she moved to Los Angeles around 2009 and was “developing more of her relationship with Puff.”
Agnifilo eventually mentioned Mescudi and the “burner phone” that Clark testified in direct she bought Ventura.
“And where did you get that idea from? I know it sounds naive, but where did you get the idea from?” Agnifilo asked.
“My parents died when I was 17. I’m from Los Angeles. I don’t know how to answer that question. I’m smart,” Clark answered.
“OK. Have you ever used a burner phone?” Agnifilo asked.
“No,” Clark answered.
“OK. So you never used one yourself?” Agnifilo asked.
“But I know of them,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo confirmed with Clark that Combs had traveled to a Russian orphanage before the incident with Mescudi in December 2011. He also questioned her about previous statements regarding Combs allegedly showing up her home and forcing her to go with her to Mescudi’s home, including that he was pointing a gun at her.
“Do you remember telling the government that Mr. Combs was pointing the gun at you?” Agnifilo asked.
“It says or waved around in that text you let me read,” Clark answered.
“Did you tell the government that Combs was pointing a gun at her or waving it around; is that what you told the government?” Agnifilo asked.
“I said he was waving it around,” Clark answered.
“So you didn’t say that Combs was pointing a gun at you. You didn’t say that to the government?” Agnifilo asked.
“I clarified multiple meetings that he did not point the gun at me,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo also questioned Clark about choosing to go with Combs.
“The case was I didn’t want to go. He told me it wasn’t up to me, sir,” Clark testified.
“Now, you were concerned he could do something stupid, right?” Agnifilo asked.
“Yeah,” Clark answered.
“Right. Because he’s a jealous guy; you knew that, right?” Agnifilo asked.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘jealous.’ I would use he has a very bad temper,” Clark answered.
“OK. He has a very bad temper. You know he has a very bad temper, and you did not want him to do something stupid?” Agnifilo asked.
“I did not want to go and it was not my choice, sir,” Clark answered.
“Because if he did something stupid, you would be out of a job?” Agnifilo asked.
“Myriad of things were happening, but I did not want to go, sir,” Clark answered.
“So you walked down and you get in the Escalade, correct?” Agnifilo asked.
“Yes, sir,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo went over details of the car chase and call to Ventura at the Key Club, then asked about police visiting Mescudi’s home.
“I don’t really know the reality of what’s going on at Cudi’s house, sir,” Clark testified.
Agnifilo asked if she’s sure she saw Combs assault Ventura after they arrived at his home, and she answered, “Yes.”
“And so you’re absolutely positive that you saw Mr. Combs kicking Cassie and Cassie was in fetal position in the street?” Agnifilo asked.
“Yes, sir,” Clark answered.
“No doubt in your mind?” Agnifilo asked.
“No doubt,” Clark answered.
Jurors saw an email Clark wrote Combs on Sept. 30, 2014, asking, “Are you OK? Is your mom OK? Hope all is well. XX.”
Combs replied, “Yes, we’re great. How are you?” and Clark replied, “Hopefully you’ll forgive me soon. It’s been long enough. I feel like you forgave everyone but me. Anyways, be well. XX.”
Agnifilo displayed another email Clark wrote Combs on Jan. 5, 2015: “Sending you blessings and love for a new year. Hope I finally see you this year. XX.”
A third email on Feb. 28, 2015, said, “Hope you are well. Your grace period to be mad at me is long — has long exceeded the agreed upon time, man. LOL.”
Another said, “My hope for this year is you make good on your promise to get other things and actually be my friend again. Hopefully retrospect has taught you that I just minded my own business and grown people did what they wanted to ... she was clearly never my real friend cause she didn’t clarify that to you. So many of your other so-called friends knew things too and you still fuck with them. She just musta wanted me, in particular, gone. I realized that later.”
Clark testified in cross that she “felt that I was somewhat of a protector for Puff.”
“And if you could get me away from him, he wouldn’t have someone looking after his back that actually was really looking out for him, so — and that e-mail is me pleading, like, dude, let it go,” Clark said.
Clark said she believes Combs only hired her again because “Cassie wanted me back.”
“Did that hurt, that he would only take you back because that’s what Cassie wanted?” Agnifilo asked.
“Yes, absolutely. This is my whole life and their shenanigans. I have no parents. My son has autism. He's nonverbal. My stakes are higher, sir,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo displayed another email Clark wrote Combs in November 2018, and a request for a reference letter she sent him in June 2021. Clark said Combs didn’t fulfill her request.
In re-direct, Steiner asked about Clark’s job search after Combs fired her in 2012.
She said Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Records, called and invited her to discuss job opportunities with Senior Vice President Larry Jackson. But when she got there, “It wasn’t about job opportunities.”
“They were there to tell me to leave Puff alone and that this wasn’t going to end well for me,” Clark testified.
Judge Subraminan sustained Agnifilo’s objection and told jurors to “disregard everything except the first sentence of the witness's answer, which was that Mr. Iovine was the chairman of Interscope Records.”
Steiner asked Clark about continuing to seek a job with Combs.
“It was a better strategy, given that he had his house just raided and he was under criminal investigation, for him to see me as not a threat,” Clark testified.
In re-cross, Agnifilo asked Clark about telling prosecutors that she told Cassie she should leave Combs and date other people.
“And she said to you that Jay-Z was taken, who would she date?”
“True,” Clark answered.
“She said that?” Agnifilo asked.
“She did,” Clark answered.
Agnifilo had no more questions, and Clark left the witness stand.
Testimony continues Wednesday about 9 a.m. EST in Judge Subramanian’s courtroom in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in lower Manhattan. An arson investigator with the Los Angeles Fire Department is expected to testify.
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