NOTE: The next article incorporates 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 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, gained’t start his direct examination till Could 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 once they raided Combs’ dwelling close to Miami in March 2024, six months earlier than his arrest final September.
Gannon informed the court docket on Could 20 that the brokers executing a search warrant for the property used an armoured automobile to bust by Combs’ safety gate and had groups on boats close by.
Along with weapons, he mentioned they discovered platform excessive heels and gadgets that prosecutors say Combs regularly used throughout his freak-off intercourse marathons, together with lingerie, intercourse toys, child oil, lubricant and condoms.
Jurors additionally noticed elements 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 through the raid of Combs’ dwelling final yr. He mentioned he seized a pair of crimson 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 optimistic for cocaine and ketamine. Gannon mentioned the bag additionally contained smaller luggage of various colored capsules, together with some stamped with a Tesla image that examined optimistic for MDMA and Xanax.
Gannon mentioned that investigators additionally discovered a plastic bag of capsules that examined optimistic for the principle ingredient of hallucinogenic mushrooms. He mentioned 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 mentioned {that a} .45-calibre handgun was present in a crimson 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 by land and by sea to safe the property?” Geragos requested. Gannon mentioned Homeland Safety Investigations waited to look 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 towards Combs, alleging years of abuse and involvement in a whole bunch of freak-off performances with male escorts, which Combs watched and generally participated in.
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Combs’ authorized staff prompt that the variety of weapons present in his Miami dwelling weren’t as important or as harmful as they seem.
Gannon agreed that most 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 house owners 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.
Hughes mentioned 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 mentioned 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 concerning the energy and management that the abuser has over the sufferer,” Hughes mentioned.
Forensic psychologist Daybreak Hughes arrives for the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs intercourse trafficking trial at Manhattan Federal Courtroom on Could 21, 2025, in New York Metropolis.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs
Hughes mentioned that sexual abuse is “a really non-public hurt,” which may make it tough for victims to talk up about what they’re experiencing and to hunt assist.
“They expertise an incredible quantity of disgrace, humiliation, degradation,” Hughes mentioned. “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 position of their resolution to remain in an abusive relationship.
“In case you don’t have cash, you’re left with a sense of ‘The place am I going to go?’ How are you to go away should you don’t have entry to these tangible sources?” Hughes mentioned.
She additionally spoke about “trauma bonds,” which she describes as when any individual is hooked up to their companion regardless of violence and abuse, making a sufferer unwilling to go away the state of affairs.
Hughes mentioned that abusive relationships can even have love and kindness, along with the abuse sample.
“The sufferer needs that, they need that again. So when that’s proven to the sufferer, that’s very reinforcing,” Hughes mentioned.
Hughes mentioned that it typically takes a number of makes an attempt for victims to go away an abusive relationship. “There’s this sample of returning and reconciliation, after which returning once more,” she informed the court docket.
She mentioned victims may wish to come again to “the great model of their companion that they nonetheless do love.”
Hughes mentioned that it’s frequent for abuse victims to make use of substances to “numb” themselves by taking medication or ingesting alcohol earlier than seeing their companion to “push back different bodily or psychological ache to come back.”
She mentioned 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 mentioned. “It’s too painful to confess that incontrovertible fact that, ‘Someone who beloved me did this to me.’ They’re nonetheless in self-blame.”
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 concerning the relationship that he organized to have Mescudi’s convertible firebombed, in line 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 mentioned her relationship with him started late within the yr and he or she acquired a burner telephone so the 2 may talk with out Combs studying about it.
She mentioned Combs grew to become enraged when she left him, and he kicked her within the again laborious sufficient to go away a bruise as she was exiting his Los Angeles dwelling for the final time that yr.
Ventura mentioned 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 seen communications that exposed Ventura was seeing Mescudi, Ventura mentioned.
On Tuesday, Ventura’s mom, Regina Ventura, testified that she acquired 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 express 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 mentioned, 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 offended that he had spent cash on her and he or she went with one other particular person,” she mentioned.
Ventura testified that Mescudi came visiting her at her mom’s Connecticut dwelling round Christmas in 2011 and stayed for 3 or 4 days. She mentioned she broke up with him.
“It was simply an excessive amount of,” she mentioned. “An excessive amount of hazard, an excessive amount of uncertainty of, like, what may occur if we continued to see one another.”
Ventura mentioned she informed her household she was going to Los Angeles after the vacations to “get to work.” However as a substitute, she mentioned, she travelled to satisfy 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 in another country, Combs informed her that Mescudi’s automotive could be blown up and Combs wished Mescudi’s buddies there to see it, Ventura mentioned.
What Combs is on trial for
U.S. prosecutors allege that for 20 years, behind the scenes, Combs was coercing and abusing ladies with assist from a community of associates who helped silence victims by 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 sometimes electronically recorded.”
Quite a few witnesses have come ahead to accuse Combs of terrorizing individuals into silence by choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, in line 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 ladies.
Combs is charged with intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to interact in prostitution. He has denied all the fees towards 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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Day 7 testimony
Day 6 testimony
Day 5 testimony
Day 4 testimony
Day 3 testimony
Day 2 testimony
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International Information can be overlaying the Diddy trial in its entirety. Please test again for updates.
— With information from The Related Press
