NOTE: The next article accommodates disturbing particulars and video footage. Please learn at your individual discretion.
Grammy-winning rapper Child Cudi was anticipated to testify on the Sean “Diddy” Combs intercourse trafficking and racketeering trial on Wednesday to inform the jury about his transient relationship 14 years in the past with Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.
Prosecutors corrected this expectation, saying the 41-year-old artist, whose full title is Scott Mescudi, gained’t start his direct examination till Might 22 on the earliest.
In the meantime, particular agent Gerard Gannon of Homeland Safety Investigations was again on the witness stand for a second day on Wednesday, discussing what investigators discovered after they raided Combs’ dwelling close to Miami in March 2024, six months earlier than his arrest final September.
Gannon informed the court docket on Might 20 that the brokers executing a search warrant for the property used an armoured automobile to bust via Combs’ safety gate and had groups on boats close by.
Along with weapons, he stated they discovered platform excessive heels and gadgets that prosecutors say Combs incessantly used throughout his freak-off intercourse marathons, together with lingerie, intercourse toys, child oil, lubricant and condoms.
Jurors additionally noticed components of two AR-15 rifles that federal brokers discovered final 12 months whereas looking Combs’ mansion on Star Island.
Day 8
Gannon was questioned about gadgets seized from one of many closets in the course of the raid of Combs’ dwelling final 12 months. He stated he seized a pair of purple pump excessive heels and found cellphones stuffed inside a Balenciaga boot.
He additionally testified that there was a Gucci bag contained in the closet that contained white residue that examined constructive for cocaine and ketamine. Gannon stated the bag additionally contained smaller baggage of various colored drugs, together with some stamped with a Tesla image that examined constructive for MDMA and Xanax.
Gannon stated that investigators additionally discovered a plastic bag of drugs that examined constructive for the primary ingredient of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He stated they had been found in a picket field marked, “Puffy.”
Authorities additionally discovered a bin containing 25 bottles of child oil, 31 bottles of Astroglide lubricant and rubber geese in a closet within the hallway between Combs’ bed room and closet in his Miami dwelling. A photograph of that closet and the gadgets discovered had been proven to the jurors.
Police and Homeland Safety officers are seen at a waterfront mansion belonging to Sean Combs in Miami throughout a bi-coastal raid on March 25, 2024, in Miami Seashore, Fla.
MEGA/GC Photographs
Gannon stated {that a} .45-calibre handgun was present in a purple suitcase on the entrance of Combs’ visitor home on the Miami property.
Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos described the search as overkill.
“So, HSI decided it will are available in by land and by sea to safe the property?” Geragos requested. Gannon stated Homeland Safety Investigations waited to go looking the property till Combs was on a flight out of city along with his household.
The agent confirmed that the federal investigation started simply after Ventura filed a lawsuit in opposition to Combs, alleging years of abuse and involvement in lots of of freak-off performances with male escorts, which Combs watched and typically participated in.
Combs’ authorized workforce advised that the variety of weapons present in his Miami dwelling weren’t as important or as harmful as they seem.
Gannon agreed that lots of the firearms, together with some with serial numbers eliminated, had been wrapped up in tape, not loaded and inoperable. He additionally agreed with Geragos that weapons with out serial numbers might nonetheless be linked to homeowners by fingerprints and different DNA.
Forensic psychologist says home violence victims typically stick with their abusers
As soon as Gannon wrapped up his testimony, prosecutors known as Daybreak Hughes, a medical and forensic psychologist, to the stand.
Hughes has taken the witness stand in different high-profile sexual misconduct trials together with the NXIVM intercourse cult chief Keith Raniere’s trial in 2019, R. Kelly’s federal trial and the Johnny Depp–Amber Heard defamation trial.
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Hughes stated she was testifying as a “blind knowledgeable” to offer the jury with some details about home violence, sexual assault, rape and traumatic stress. She added that she has not assessed any of the victims or witnesses within the case.
She testified that she is being paid $600 an hour for her work and $6,000 for a day of testimony in court docket.
Hughes stated that it’s frequent for victims of home violence to stick with their abusers. She defined that abusers typically use strategies, past bodily violence, to make victims really feel trapped within the relationship.
“It’s in regards to the energy and management that the abuser has over the sufferer,” Hughes stated.
Forensic psychologist Daybreak Hughes arrives for the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs intercourse trafficking trial at Manhattan Federal Courtroom on Might 21, 2025, in New York Metropolis.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs
Hughes stated that sexual abuse is “a really personal hurt,” which may make it tough for victims to talk up about what they’re experiencing and to hunt assist.
“They expertise an amazing quantity of disgrace, humiliation, degradation,” Hughes stated. “They don’t wish to discuss it. They don’t even wish to give it some thought in their very own mind.”
The psychologist additionally testified {that a} sufferer’s monetary dependence on an abuser can play an enormous function of their resolution to remain in an abusive relationship.
“For those who don’t have cash, you’re left with a sense of ‘The place am I going to go?’ How are you to depart in case you don’t have entry to these tangible assets?” Hughes stated.
She additionally spoke about “trauma bonds,” which she describes as when any person is hooked up to their associate regardless of violence and abuse, making a sufferer unwilling to depart the scenario.
Hughes stated that abusive relationships can even have love and kindness, along with the abuse sample.
“The sufferer desires that, they need that again. So when that’s proven to the sufferer, that’s very reinforcing,” Hughes stated.
Hughes stated that it typically takes a number of makes an attempt for victims to depart an abusive relationship. “There’s this sample of returning and reconciliation, after which returning once more,” she informed the court docket.
She stated victims might wish to come again to “the great model of their associate that they nonetheless do love.”
Hughes stated that it’s frequent for abuse victims to make use of substances to “numb” themselves by taking medication or consuming alcohol earlier than seeing their associate to “thrust back different bodily or psychological ache to come back.”
She stated that it’s very unusual for victims of abuse to debate it with others across the time it happens.
“Many victims will wait months, even years, earlier than telling about what occurred to them,” Hughes testified.
“They don’t wish to label themselves … a sufferer. They don’t wish to label their abuser as abuser,” Hughes stated. “It’s too painful to confess that indisputable fact that, ‘Anyone who beloved me did this to me.’ They’re nonetheless in self-blame.”
Combs’ former govt assistant says ‘defending’ Combs’ ‘public picture’ was a part of his job
George Kaplan, a former govt assistant to Combs, took the stand because the thirteenth witness known as by the prosecution.
Kaplan obtained a subpoena requiring him to testify however earlier Wednesday he invoked his Fifth Modification proper to not testify on the grounds of potential self-incrimination. Choose Arun Subramanian stated he was going to signal an immunity order that might require Kaplan to nonetheless testify.
Throughout his testimony, Kaplan stated his day would sometimes begin round 9:30 a.m. as Combs’ assistant, and he would be certain that the chef and housekeeping employees had been prepared for the day.
He stated he would be certain that Combs’ rest room was arrange along with his medicines and toiletries. He additionally revealed that he sometimes labored 80 to 100 hours per week and was paid round $125,000.
Former worker George Kaplan arrives for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs intercourse trafficking trial at Manhattan Federal Courtroom on Might 21, 2025 in New York Metropolis.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs
Kaplan, who started working at Combs Enterprises in 2013, reported to Kristina Korram, Combs’ former chief of employees, who he stated principally ran Combs’ life.
He stated that he communicated with Combs every day by way of textual content messages, calls and emails a number of instances a day about issues he wanted, which included “clothes or doubtlessly meals from someplace or medication or liquor or an iPad or a speaker.”
Kaplan additionally famous that Combs threatened his job virtually month-to-month. He testified that Combs would say that he needed to be surrounded by the most effective and “these round him on the time weren’t acting at that degree.”
The previous assistant stated that he travelled to varied places with Combs, together with New York, Miami and Atlanta, the place he was instructed to arrange Combs’ resort rooms.
He stated that the primary time he was informed to take action, he was given a bag and informed to unpack it. The bag contained “garments, a speaker, candles, liquor, child oil and Astroglide in it,” Kaplan stated.
Kaplan testified that after Combs would go away a resort room, his job was to pack up his belongings and clear the place up.
“Defending him and defending his public picture was crucial and that was one thing I used to be very eager on doing,” Kaplan stated.
Kaplan recounted two instances he stated he picked up medication for Combs. He stated each instances Combs gave him cash and a cellphone quantity to name.
The jury was dismissed for the day shortly after Kaplan started his testimony. He will likely be again on the witness stand for direct examination on Thursday and prosecutors plan to name 5 witnesses after him, together with Mescudi.
Why is Child Cudi anticipated to testify?
Scott Mescudi is predicted to take the witness stand later this week to inform the jury about his relationship with Ventura.
Prosecutors say Combs was so upset in regards to the relationship that he organized to have Mescudi’s convertible firebombed, in keeping with court docket filings.
Ventura testified final week that Combs organized for her to fulfill Mescudi a number of instances in 2011 to work on music. She stated her relationship with him started late within the 12 months and she or he bought a burner cellphone so the 2 might talk with out Combs studying about it.
She stated Combs grew to become enraged when she left him, and he kicked her within the again laborious sufficient to depart a bruise as she was exiting his Los Angeles dwelling for the final time that 12 months.
Ventura stated that though she and Combs broke up, they nonetheless engaged in so-called freak-offs. It was throughout a type of episodes that Combs picked up her common cellphone and seen communications that exposed Ventura was seeing Mescudi, Ventura stated.
On Tuesday, Ventura’s mom, Regina Ventura, testified that she obtained an electronic mail in December 2011 from her daughter saying that Combs was so offended about her relationship with Mescudi that he deliberate to launch sexually specific movies of her and ship somebody to harm the pair.
Child Cudi seems on the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Sonic The Hedgehog 2,’ on April 5, 2022.
Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File
Afterward, Regina stated, she obtained a requirement from Combs for $20,000. Scared for her daughter’s security, she went to the financial institution and despatched Combs the cash, solely to have it returned by Combs days later.
“He was offended that he had spent cash on her and she or he went with one other individual,” she stated.
Ventura testified that Mescudi came around her at her mom’s Connecticut dwelling round Christmas in 2011 and stayed for 3 or 4 days. She stated she broke up with him.
“It was simply an excessive amount of,” she stated. “An excessive amount of hazard, an excessive amount of uncertainty of, like, what might occur if we continued to see one another.”
Ventura stated she informed her household she was going to Los Angeles after the vacations to “get to work.” However as an alternative, she stated, she travelled to fulfill Combs in Arizona, the place he had gone to go to a school along with his son. They resumed their relationship.
When Ventura and Combs had been overseas, Combs informed her that Mescudi’s automobile can be blown up and Combs needed Mescudi’s pals there to see it, Ventura stated.
What Combs is on trial for
U.S. prosecutors allege that for 20 years, behind the scenes, Combs was coercing and abusing girls with assist from a community of associates who helped silence victims via blackmail and violence.
Combs faces an indictment that features descriptions of freak-offs, that are outlined within the court docket doc as “elaborate and produced intercourse performances that Combs organized, directed, masturbated throughout, and infrequently electronically recorded.”
Quite a few witnesses have come ahead to accuse Combs of terrorizing folks into silence by choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, in keeping with prosecutors. One indictment alleges that Combs dangled somebody from a balcony.
Though dozens of women and men have alleged in lawsuits that Combs abused them, this trial will spotlight the claims of 4 girls.
Combs is charged with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to have interaction in prostitution. He has denied all the costs in opposition to him and has rejected a plea deal, selecting to go to trial as an alternative.
If discovered responsible within the New York court docket, he might face life in jail.
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International Information will likely be protecting the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please test again for updates.
— With information from The Related Press
