At Sean (Diddy) Combs trial, ex-employee testifies she was threatened, kidnapped

A former top aide to Sean (Diddy) Combs testified Tuesday at his sex trafficking trial that the music mogul threatened her with death on her first day on the job and later kidnapped her at gunpoint as he sought to kill rapper Kid Cudi.

Capricorn Clark's account of Combs's volatile, violent tendencies launched the third week of testimony at his sex trafficking trial in federal court in Manhattan.

Prosecutors called Clark, the former global brand director for Combs's Bad Boy Entertainment, to testify as they work to prove Combs led a racketeering conspiracy spanning two decades that relied on beefy bodyguards, death threats and a code of silence among frightened staff to ensure he got what he wanted.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of an indictment accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward his longtime girlfriend Casandra Ventura — an R&B singer known as Cassie — and others. If convicted, he could face 15 years to life in prison.

Clark's testimony came days after Kid Cudi, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi, testified that Clark called him from a car outside his home in December 2011 and told him that Combs, angered because Cudi was dating Cassie, had kidnapped her and forced her to ride him with him to Cudi's home.

Clark — who mostly referred to Combs as "Puff" during her testimony — said he came to her home that morning with a gun in his hand, demanded that she get dressed and come with him because "we're going to kill Cudi."

She said they rode in a black Cadillac Escalade to Cudi's Los Angeles home, where Combs and a bodyguard entered the residence while Clark sat in the car and called Cassie.

Clark testified she told Cassie that Combs "got me with a gun and brought me to Cudi's house to kill him."

Clark said she heard Cudi in the background of the call asking, "He's in my house?" She told Cassie, "Stop him, he's going to get himself killed."

Cassie told her she couldn't stop Cudi, she recalled.

Combs returned to the vehicle and asked Clark who she was talking to, Clark testified. He grabbed the phone and called Cassie back, she said.

They then heard Cudi's vehicle coming up the road, she said. Combs and his bodyguard got back in the vehicle and chased after Cudi, finally giving up when they passed police cars that were heading for Cudi's house.

After the break-in, Clark said, Combs told the people with him that they had to convince Cudi "it wasn't me."

"If you don't convince him of that, I'll kill all you," he said, punctuating his threat with an expletive, according to Clark.

Clark said she and Cassie then went to Cudi's home, telling jurors: "We needed to talk to him. We needed to make sure he wasn't going to make a police report about Puff."

After that, she said, she watched in shock as Combs viciously assaulted Cassie over her relationship with Cudi.

Combs kicked Cassie with "100 per cent full force" to the legs and back, as she curled on the ground outside his home in a fetal position and wept silently, Clark said.

Clark said her "heart was breaking from seeing her get hit like that" and that neither she nor Combs's bodyguard intervened.

The answer prompted an objection from Combs's lawyers; Judge Arun Subramanian told jurors to disregard it.

On Thursday, Cudi testified that he dated Cassie briefly in December 2011, believing that she had broken up with Combs. But they agreed over the holidays to end the relationship after all that had happened.

Assistant U.S. attorney Mitzi Steiner questioned Clark about her off-and-on employment with Combs between 2004 and 2018, beginning with the first day on the job when she said Combs and a security staff member took her to Central Park after 9 p.m. and said he wasn't aware of her past history working with other rappers.

Clark, her voice shaky at times, testified that Combs told her that if her past work for rap rivals became an issue, he'd have to kill her.

She said she was only weeks into the job when she was tasked with carrying some diamond jewelry on a flight to Miami, and it went missing.

As a result, she said, she was taken to a largely empty building in Manhattan where, over a five-day stretch, she was repeatedly given a lie detector test by a man who seemed five times larger than her own size.

"He said, 'If you fail this test they're going to throw you in the East River,"' she recalled.

Clark said they eventually let her return to work.