May 22 (UPI) — Rapper Kid Cudi will take the stand Thursday in the closed door federal sex-trafficking trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs in a big day for prosecutors.
The 41-year-old Grammy Award-winning rapper, whose birth name is Scott Mescudi, is expected to share details about his romantic past from more than 10 years ago with Combs’ ex-partner, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, particularly the allegations that Combs allegedly was behind the blowing up of Mescudi’s car.
The trial began on May 5 at the U.S. District Court for Southern New York courthouse in Manhattan in a trial where cameras are prohibited.
Combs is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and two counts of sex trafficking by force. He has pleaded not guilty and could be sentenced to up to life in prison if a jury finds him guilty on one or more charges.
On Tuesday, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was the first to open testimony in the trial during the morning hours as a handful of other witnesses took the stand, including a board-certified forensic and clinical psychologist and Ventura’s mother.
Ventura, in a 2023 civil lawsuit settled privately without Combs admitting any wrongdoing, alleged that Combs told her that he would blow of Mescudi’s car.
“Around that time, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway,” court documents read, adding that Ventura was “terrified, as she began to fully comprehend what Mr. Combs was both willing and able to do to those he believed had slighted him.”
Meanwhile, Ventura testified in court last week and said she kept a burner phone to hide her relationship with Cudi.
The prosecution will likely try to prove that Combs used his considerable influence and wealth to execute the bombing of Cudi’s vehicle, according to a former federal prosecutor for New York’s Southern District.
Calling Mescudi to the witness stand could help the prosecution if it can demonstrate Combs used his considerable financial and business resources to carry out the bombing, said Rachel Maimin, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.
“The burden of proof is on the federal government, so they’ll have to show this was part of the racketeering,” Rachel Maimin, now a criminal defense attorney with Lowenstein Sandler LLP, told NBC.
“This may be a way of explaining how he used his business empire to further the prosecution’s goal of proving the racketeering enterprise,” she added.