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NOTE: The following article incorporates disturbing particulars and video footage. Please learn at your personal discretion.
Grammy-winning rapper Kid Cudi was anticipated to testify on the Sean “Diddy” Combs intercourse trafficking and racketeering trial on Wednesday to inform the jury about his temporary relationship 14 years in the past with Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.
Prosecutors corrected this expectation, saying the 41-year-old artist, whose full identify is Scott Mescudi, received’t start his direct examination till May 22 on the earliest.
Meanwhile, particular agent Gerard Gannon of Homeland Security Investigations was again on the witness stand for a second day on Wednesday, discussing what investigators discovered once they raided Combs’ house close to Miami in March 2024, six months earlier than his arrest final September.
Gannon instructed the court docket on May 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.
In addition to weapons, he stated they discovered platform excessive heels and gadgets that prosecutors say Combs continuously 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 yr whereas looking out 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’ house final yr. He stated he seized a pair of pink 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 tablets, 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 tablets that examined constructive for the principle ingredient of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He stated they had been found in a wood 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 house. A photograph of that closet and the gadgets discovered had been proven to the jurors.
Police and Homeland Security officers are seen at a waterfront mansion belonging to Sean Combs in Miami throughout a bi-coastal raid on March 25, 2024, in Miami Beach, Fla.
MEGA/GC Images
Gannon stated {that a} .45-calibre handgun was present in a pink suitcase on the entrance of Combs’ visitor home on the Miami property.
Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos described the search as overkill.
“So, HSI determined it would come in by land and by sea to secure the property?” Geragos requested. Gannon stated Homeland Security Investigations waited to go looking the property till Combs was on a flight out of city together 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 a whole lot of freak-off performances with male escorts, which Combs watched and generally participated in.
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Combs’ authorized workforce prompt that the variety of weapons present in his Miami house weren’t as vital 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 may nonetheless be linked to homeowners by fingerprints and different DNA.
Forensic psychologist says home violence victims usually stick with their abusers
Once Gannon wrapped up his testimony, prosecutors known as Dawn 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.
Hughes stated she was testifying as a “blind expert” to supply 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 widespread for victims of home violence to stick with their abusers. She defined that abusers usually use strategies, past bodily violence, to make victims really feel trapped within the relationship.
“It’s about the power and control that the abuser has over the victim,” Hughes stated.
Forensic psychologist Dawn Hughes arrives for the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs intercourse trafficking trial at Manhattan Federal Court on May 21, 2025, in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Hughes stated that sexual abuse is “a very private harm,” which may make it tough for victims to talk up about what they’re experiencing and to hunt assist.
“They experience a tremendous amount of shame, humiliation, degradation,” Hughes stated. “They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t even want to think about it in their own brain.”
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.
“If you don’t have money, you are left with a feeling of ‘Where am I going to go?’ How are you to leave if you don’t have access to those tangible resources?” Hughes stated.
She additionally spoke about “trauma bonds,” which she describes as when someone is hooked up to their accomplice regardless of violence and abuse, making a sufferer unwilling to depart the state of affairs.
Hughes stated that abusive relationships can even have love and kindness, along with the abuse sample.
“The victim wants that, they want that back. So when that is shown to the victim, that’s very reinforcing,” Hughes stated.
Hughes stated that it usually takes a number of makes an attempt for victims to depart an abusive relationship. “There’s this pattern of returning and reconciliation, and then returning again,” she instructed the court docket.
She stated victims may need to come again to “the good version of their partner that they still do love.”
Hughes stated that it’s widespread for abuse victims to make use of substances to “numb” themselves by taking medicine or consuming alcohol earlier than seeing their accomplice to “ward off other physical or psychological pain to come.”
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, before telling about what happened to them,” Hughes testified.
“They don’t want to label themselves … a victim. They don’t want to label their abuser as abuser,” Hughes stated. “It’s too painful to admit that fact that, ‘Somebody who loved me did this to me.’ They’re still in self-blame.”
Why is Kid 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 satisfy Mescudi a number of occasions in 2011 to work on music. She stated her relationship with him started late within the yr and she or he obtained a burner telephone so the 2 may 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 onerous sufficient to depart a bruise as she was exiting his Los Angeles house for the final time that yr.
Ventura stated that though she and Combs broke up, they nonetheless engaged in so-called freak-offs. It was throughout a kind of episodes that Combs picked up her common telephone and observed communications that exposed Ventura was seeing Mescudi, Ventura stated.
On Tuesday, Ventura’s mom, Regina Ventura, testified that she acquired an e-mail in December 2011 from her daughter saying that Combs was so indignant about her relationship with Mescudi that he deliberate to launch sexually express movies of her and ship somebody to harm the pair.
Kid 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 acquired 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 angry that he had spent money on her and she went with another person,” she stated.
Ventura testified that Mescudi came around her at her mom’s Connecticut house round Christmas in 2011 and stayed for 3 or 4 days. She stated she broke up with him.
“It was just too much,” she stated. “Too much danger, too much uncertainty of, like, what could happen if we continued to see each other.”
Ventura stated she instructed her household she was going to Los Angeles after the vacations to “get to work.” But as a substitute, she stated, she travelled to satisfy Combs in Arizona, the place he had gone to go to a university together with his son. They resumed their relationship.
When Ventura and Combs had been in another country, Combs instructed her that Mescudi’s automotive 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 sex performances that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded.”
Numerous 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.
Although 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 a substitute.
If discovered responsible within the New York court docket, he may face life in jail.
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Global News will likely be masking the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please examine again for updates.
— With recordsdata from The Associated Press
