Why Diddy trial witness Capricorn Clark is key to his racketeering and sex-trafficking charges

Sean “Diddy” Combs, pictured in 2010, will hear testimony from his former personal assistant and marketing executive, Capricorn Clark, on Tuesday at his Manhattan sex-trafficking and racketeering trial

During the first two weeks of testimony in the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial in Manhattan, her name was dropped two dozen times. Now, Capricorn Clark is set to take the stand on Tuesday, kicking off the third week of the government’s sex-trafficking and racketeering case against the millionaire hip-hop entrepreneur.

As Combs’ former personal assistant and a top marketing exec at his record company, Clark will be the highest-ranking employee to testify in the trial so far. (Tony Abrahams, the former CFO for Combs Enterprises, is scheduled to testify as early as this week.)

Prior trial testimony has cited Clark as a witness to acts of violence, a $20,000 extortion, and kidnapping, all elements in the September indictment Combs is fighting at trial.

Once on the stand, she could bolster the top two federal charges against the music mogul: sex trafficking and racketeering, each carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The violence Clark may have witnessed includes an incident at a 2010 dinner in West Hollywood. The singer Dawn Richard testified earlier that Combs punched his former girlfriend turned key accuser, Cassie Ventura, in front of other guests. Clark, Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre, and other top Combs employees at the dinner appeared to do nothing, she told jurors last week.

“Mr. Combs punched Cassie in the stomach,” Richard, a singer for Bad Boy groups Danity Kane and Diddy Dirty Money, testified, recalling the violence.

Sean “Diddy” Combs, seated at the defense table, raised both hands as he was identified from the witness stand by the former Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard.

Richard described Ventura doubling over, then being ordered by Combs to leave the dinner. “No one intervened,” she testified.

Clark is expected to corroborate that account and could describe other violence she witnessed against Ventura. Clark was a longtime friend and confidant of Ventura, who called her “Cap.”

Eyewitnesses and Ventura herself have described more than a dozen instances of violence by Combs, nearly all of them against Ventura throughout their on-and-off relationship between 2007 and 2018.

Prosecutors allege that Combs sex trafficked Ventura by forcing her to take part in “freak offs,” elaborately staged, often videotaped sex performances involving male escorts, by beating and threatening her.

Clark was cc’d on a Blackberry message from December 2011 in which Ventura, using the alias “Veronica Bang,” told her mother, Regina Ventura, about Combs’ threats to release explicit sex tapes and to have “someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi,” a reference to the rapper Kid Cudi. Ventura and Mesudi dated briefly in 2011.

A 2011 Blackberry message from Cassie Ventura to her mother said Combs had threatened to release revenge porn and to physical harm her and Scott Mescudi, known as Kid Cudi. 

Eyewitnesses and Ventura herself have described more than a dozen instances of violence by Combs, nearly all of them against Ventura throughout their on-and-off relationship between 2007 and 2018.

Prosecutors allege that Combs sex trafficked Ventura by forcing her to take part in “freak offs,” elaborately staged, often videotaped sex performances involving male escorts, by beating and threatening her.

Clark was cc’d on a Blackberry message from December 2011 in which Ventura, using the alias “Veronica Bang,” told her mother, Regina Ventura, about Combs’ threats to release explicit sex tapes and to have “someone hurt me and Scott Mescudi,” a reference to the rapper Kid Cudi. Ventura and Mesudi dated briefly in 2011.

Clark could be asked about receiving the message and about any independent knowledge she may have had about the threats.

She could also help the prosecution prove the racketeering charge, which alleges that Combs’ employees enabled his crimes, including by obstructing justice when they witnessed violence but did nothing to stop it.

Prosecutors say other underlying crimes of the Combs criminal “racket” include arson and kidnapping, and here again, Clark’s testimony could prove key.

According to prior testimony, Clark had information about the dispute with Kid Cudi in 2011.

The rapper Kid Cudi, whose given name is Scott Mescudi, exited federal court in Manhattan after testifying at the Sean “Diddy” Combs sex-trafficking and racketeering trial. 

Jurors heard two weeks ago from Ventura that Clark helped keep Combs from learning about the brief romance.

Ventura testified that he found out anyway during a freak off in Los Angeles. Going through Ventura’s phone, Combs saw an email Ventura sent Clark asking her to deliver Ventura’s toiletries bag to Mescudi’s address.

Ventura told jurors that Combs was so enraged, he lunged at her with a corkscrew in his fist.

Mescudi added more details on Thursday, telling jurors that a jealous Combs broke into his Hollywood Hills home and rifled through his Christmas presents.

Mescudi testified that Clark called to tell him, in real time, that she was sitting in a car outside his house and that Combs and an unnamed “affiliate” were inside.

“She told me that Sean Combs and an affiliate came to her apartment and made her get in the car to come up to my house,” Mescudi testified.

Asked how Clark was forced into the car, Mescudi said, “They forced her physically.”

Prosecutors may present this to jurors as an instance of the underlying racketeering crime of kidnapping.

Prosecutors allege Ventura was a repeated victim of kidnapping, including in 2016, when security cameras captured her being kicked and dragged by Combs in the hallway of the InterContinental hotel.

Ventura told jurors that she was trying to leave a freak after being slugged in the eye by Combs — and that Combs was trying to drag her back inside their room.

Combs and Ventura at the Met Gala in 2015.

Prosecutors also say Ventura was forced by Combs to remain in a Los Angeles hotel for a week.

In testimony corroborated by a former personal assistant last week, Ventura told jurors she was kept hidden at the hotel so that her face could heal after being brutally stomped on by Combs as she cowered on the floor of his SUV.

Combs has denied all allegations of coercive sex. During pretrial and trial proceedings, his attorneys have repeatedly tried to show that Combs’ accusers are disgruntled employees, rejected musical artists, and spurned girlfriends, many of whom sought big paydays by filing civil lawsuits against him.