The trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs continued in New York City on Tuesday, May 27, with testimony from his former assistant Capricorn Clark, who worked for him from 2004 to 2012.
Diddy, 55, is on trial for sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied all of the allegations against him.
Clark testified on Tuesday that she began her career with Diddy as his personal assistant before coming back to work as his then-girlfriend Cassie’s creative director from 2016 to 2018. She claimed that her former boss threatened to kill her while she worked for him — and threatened to kill Kid Cudi, who started dating Cassie, 38, while she was on a break from Diddy.
Clark alleged that “a very upset” Diddy showed up at her door in December 2011 with a gun in his hand, wearing pants that were split open at the crotch. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Clark recalled Diddy asking, referring to the fact that Cudi, 41, had been dating Cassie.
Diddy then allegedly told Clark to get dressed and said, “We’re gonna go kill this n****.”
Clark told the jury that she’d “never seen anything like this before,” adding that Diddy had never come to her house before and she’d never seen him with a weapon. “The way he was acting, I just felt like anything could happen,” she noted.
Clark then rode with Diddy and a security staffer to Cudi’s home in the Hollywood Hills. She said she stayed in the car while Diddy and the security guard allegedly broke into the residence, although Cudi was not there at the time. While in the car, she called Cassie (who was with Cudi) to tell her what was happening and said Diddy had brought her to the house “to kill him.”
After getting Clark’s call, Cudi went to the house and a brief car chase ensued. Clark testified that Diddy then asked her to call Cassie and to tell her that “he has me and that he wasn’t going to let me go until he comes to get her.” Diddy allegedly then told Clark to convince Cudi and Cassie not to call the police because if they did he would “kill all y’all motherf***ers.”
Cudi testified last week that Diddy allegedly broke into his home in December 2011 after discovering that Cassie was dating him. The following month, Diddy allegedly blew up Cudi’s Porsche with a Molotov cocktail.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Diddy’s legal team asked Judge Arun Subramanian to strike a portion of Cudi’s testimony, claiming that the “Day ‘n’ Nite” rapper’s allegations about the 2012 car explosion were “mere speculation” and posed “significant dangers of unfair prejudice.”
Diddy’s team said a “witness generally cannot testify that in his opinion, a declarant was lying when making a statement,” referring to Cudi’s claims on the stand last week that Diddy “was lying” when he denied involvement in the explosion of his Porsche vehicle during a meeting in Los Angeles.
In addition to telling her own side of the Cudi story, Clark testified on Tuesday that Diddy threatened her early in her employment because she hadn’t disclosed that she previously worked for his rival Suge Knight. Clark alleged that in 2004 Diddy and a bodyguard known as Uncle Paulie brought her to Central Park, where Diddy told her “if anything happened [with Suge] he would have to kill me.”
On another occasion, Clark said she was accused of stealing jewelry from Jacob Arabo, known as Jacob the Jeweler. She alleged that Uncle Paulie searched her house and claimed she was given a lie detector test by another man who told her if she failed that she would be thrown into the East River. “I was petrified,” she recalled.
Clark claimed that she underwent five days of lie detector tests related to the alleged theft. After those five days, she was told to return to work, where Diddy allegedly never mentioned the incident or the status of the jewelry. When asked why she didn’t quit at that point, she said she felt that leaving would make it look like she was guilty of something she didn’t do.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support. If you or someone you know is a human trafficking victim, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
