Ex-Diddy Staffer Capricorn Clark Alleges Kidnapping, Blackmail During Court Testimony

Sean "Diddy" Combs' sex trafficking and racketeering trial continued on Tuesday with a full day of emotional, often tearful testimony from Capricorn Clark, the Bad Boy founder's former assistant. She recounted numerous shocking tales of alleged blackmail, kidnapping, threats, and much more from her 14 years spent as an on-and-off employee of the mogul.

Capricorn Clark's relationship with Diddy

Clark became friendly with Diddy in 2002 after moving from the west coast to New York City. Though young, she was a music business veteran already, having interned at Def Jam in 1996 and working at Death Row after college.

So when the opportunity came up to be her friend's personal assistant in 2004, she jumped. But Clark testified that her very first day on the job showed her a dark side of the man she called "Puff" that she didn't know was there.

In her telling, Diddy wasn't initially aware of her time at Death Row—and was none too happy when he found out. He and a large, "menacing" bodyguard took her for a walk in Central Park.

"He told me he didn't know that I had anything to do with [Death Row head] Suge Knight, and if anything happened he would have to kill me," Clark remembered.

That threatening, violent side of Diddy was something she said she saw frequently. One notable occasion happened just a few months into her tenure, when some jewelry Combs had out on loan from Jacob Arabo, aka Jacob the Jeweler, went missing.

In the aftermath, Clark testified that the same menacing bodyguard from Central Park, known as "Uncle Paulie," took her to an abandoned office building in Manhattan. She claimed she was locked in and subjected to around eight hours of near-continuous lie detector tests about whether she stole the bling, while being threatened that they'd "throw [her] in the East River" if she failed.

Capricorn claimed that she went through this routine—trapped in that same building for a full work day's worth of lie detector tests—for five straight days before the subject was dropped.

Capricorn Clark's role as Diddy's assistant

Even when she wasn't being threatened with violence, Clark's time as Diddy's assistant, she testified, consisted of 19-hour days for a salary of $65,000 and no overtime pay. When she raised the idea of OT, she said, Diddy was presented by his own HR department with a document listing the amount she was owed ($80,000 for just three months' work) and just "ripped up the paper."

Much of Clark's testimony seemed intended to elicit the ways in which Diddy's business dealings were indistinguishable from his personal life, and the alleged illegal activities that were a part of it.

She recounted setting up hotel rooms for Diddy, when she would unpack baby oil and lubricant, and testified that she always brought his medicine bag, which contained Ecstasy.

After a hotel stay, she said, she would sometimes see "handprints left in oil" on the wall.

"It was a lot of baby oil," she said. "It was just everywhere."

She also said that the mogul asked her to get him Ecstasy numerous times over the years, and one time to get cocaine (though that, she explained, was for a friend of the mogul's and not Diddy himself).

Another view of the Kid Cudi incident

Kidnapping is one of the acts Diddy is charged with in this case, and a good portion of Clark's testimony dealt with exactly that. She shared her memory of the time she said Diddy kidnapped her in December 2011, just after he found out about his girlfriend Cassie Ventura's relationship with Kid Cudi.

The courtroom had already heard about this incident from both Cassie and Cudi's perspectives, but this was the first time hearing it from someone who was with Diddy during the alleged events.

Clark recalled hearing banging at her door at around 5:30 in the morning. A furious, disheveled, and armed Diddy was at the door, she said, demanding to know why Clark had held back information that Cassie was seeing someone else.

At that point, she remembered, Diddy told her: "Get dressed. We're going to go kill this n*gga."

She didn't want to go, she continued, but Combs answered, "I don't give a fuck what you want to do."

From there, she said that she and Combs, driven by one of Combs' security guards, went to Cudi's house. While Combs and the security guard went into the house, she said she called Lauren London ("I just wanted somebody to know where I was...I called her for my protection") and Cassie.

After that, she continued, Cudi arrived—a scene that led to a brief car chase, with Diddy's car pursuing Cudi's Porsche through the Hollywood Hills.

In the aftermath of that day (which also included, she said, an incident where Diddy assaulted Cassie so violently that Clark called Cassie's mother to say, "She's beating the shit out of your daughter"), Capricorn said that Diddy made numerous threats, once saying about her and Cassie, "I should kill you bitches, and I should cut her face."

She also told a story intended to illustrate Diddy's near-complete control over Cassie.

Clark recalled a time in 2010 when she was with Diddy and Lauren London in Los Angeles. The mogul, she said, was opining about why she and London "didn't have a man like him."

"He said, 'Let me show you something,'" Clark continued.

"He called Cassie over and he asked her to sit down, stand up, turn around, turn the other way, walk over there, grab that, hand me that, walk back, turn around, go back in the other room."

Ventura followed the instructions.

After that, Clark recalled, "He said, 'Did you see that? You bitches won't do that. That's why you don't have a man.'"

The cross examination

Clark was cross-examined by Diddy's lead attorney Marc Agnifilo. He leaned into critiques of Cassie, getting Clark to admit that as a vocalist, she was "more of a studio artist" and "less of a live performer." Clark also said that, after she rejoined Combs' orbit in 2016 after several years away to become Cassie's creative director, "[Cassie's] drug use was preventing her from the opportunities that were before us... Most of the time, she preferred to be with her boyfriend."

It was towards the very end of the day, under Agnifilo's questioning, that Clark got most emotional. After being fired from Combs' businesses in 2012, she had trouble finding work until becoming Ventura's creative director four years later. She attributed that to Combs "blacklisting" her.

When she was discussing her inability to land a job in the music business, she began tearing up.

"I wanted my life back," she said. "I wanted to work in the music industry."

Asked why she returned to Combs' world in 2016 after all that had happened, she answered: "At this level of business, he holds all the power related to me."

The trial continues on Wednesday. Among the expected witnesses is the pseudonymous "Mia," a former assistant of Diddy's who alleges that the mogul sexually assaulted her.