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\n\tA civil trial involving allegations Cardi B assaulted a female security guard inside a Beverly Hills medical building seven years ago started Monday, with jurors hearing dramatically different accounts of what allegedly happened.<\/p>\n
\n\tTaking the stand as the first witness, plaintiff Emani Ellis claimed she was conducting her routine rounds on Feb. 24, 2018, when she saw the Grammy-winning artist exit an elevator outside a fifth-floor obstetrician\u2019s office. Ellis said she exclaimed something like, \u201cWow, that\u2019s Cardi B,\u201d and that the rapper, born Belcalis Alm\u00e1nzar, turned and accused her of using her phone to spread news of her private medical visit. (Alm\u00e1nzar was four months pregnant with her first child with Migos rapper Offset at the time. The pregnancy was still a secret.)<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cShe was extremely upset,\u201d Ellis testified. \u201cShe put her finger in my face.\u201d The guard claimed under oath that she wasn\u2019t using her phone, and that she tried to tell Alm\u00e1nzar that. Ellis claimed Alm\u00e1nzar yelled at her, cut her left cheek with a three-inch fingernail, and spit on her. \u201cI was deeply traumatized about what happened,\u201d Ellis testified.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen it was his turn to cross-examine Ellis, Alm\u00e1nzar\u2019s lawyer, Peter Anderson, confronted Ellis with an incident report she submitted to her supervisor two days after her alleged assault. He said it contradicted her testimony that she wasn\u2019t using a phone during the confrontation. In the report, Ellis admitted she was pressing her personal cell phone to her ear around the time the encounter started. In the report, Ellis told her supervisor she had been checking her voicemail because her mother was ill. <\/p>\n
\n\tAnderson also grilled Ellis over another alleged inconsistency between her direct testimony and the Feb. 28, 2018, report to her boss. \u201cYou said in the incident report that she scratched you on your nose, [but] you testified in this trial that Cardi B cut your cheek,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cYou changed your story.\u201d (<\/strong>The incident report did not appear to mention an injury to Ellis\u2019 cheek, according to the line of questioning, but Ellis testified that she received plastic surgery to treat a cut on her cheek.)<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\t\u201cShe touched my nose, but she scratched my cheek,\u201d Ellis replied, not backing down.<\/p>\n \n\tIn his opening statement, Anderson said Alm\u00e1nzar was visiting Los Angeles for work that weekend when she became concerned about her pregnancy and \u201ctook special steps\u201d to set up a highly confidential appointment with an OB-GYN. It was a Saturday, and the office was closing early to accommodate her without any other patients present, he said. When Alm\u00e1nzar stepped off the elevator and heard Ellis call out her name with a phone to her ear, she was justifiably concerned, he said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cCardi turned around and saw the plaintiff holding up the phone, filming or photographing her,\u201d Anderson told the jury. He said Alm\u00e1nzar tried asking Ellis why she thought it was okay to photograph her in such a private setting, and Ellis allegedly gave the \u201cbelligerent\u201d response, \u201cBecause I can.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnderson said it was true that a verbal argument ensued \u2014 one that was so loud, people from the nearby office came out to calm the situation. He said Ellis was the one who posed a physical threat.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cCardi B was facing someone who, with all respect, testified she was 240-250 pounds. [She was] wearing black military boots, hovering over her, yelling and screaming at her, taking swings at her, trying to get to her,\u201d he said. \u201c[Alm\u00e1nzar] feared for her unborn baby. This is her first. And a very large woman was advancing toward her. She was utterly confused that a security guard could be her attacker.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tAlm\u00e1nzar, 32, is due to testify in the case on Tuesday. As she left the courthouse in Alhambra, California, on Monday, the now mother of three pulled out her phone to FaceTime with her 11-month-old daughter, Blossom.<\/p>\n \n\tEllis first sued Cardi in February 2020. In her 13-page complaint, she claimed Alm\u00e1nzar physically attacked her and then \u201cused her celebrity status to get [her] fired.\u201d As the trial started Monday, Ellis and her lawyer said they were dropping the employment claim related to the alleged plot to get her fired. Alm\u00e1nzar had denied the allegation.<\/p>\n \n\tIn an April 2018 medical history report previously filed in the case, a psychologist wrote that the security guard said Alm\u00e1nzar \u201cput her finger in [Ellis\u2019] face,\u201d in a manner \u201calmost touching [Ellis\u2019] nose.\u201d The psychologist described the confrontation as a \u201cscreaming match.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlm\u00e1nzar and her lawyers claim that\u2019s what happened. They admit Alm\u00e1nzar used some strong language, but they\u2019re adamant she never touched Ellis. In his opening, Anderson described his client as a loving mother of three who grew up in poverty but worked very hard to become a \u201ccritically acclaimed,\u201d self-made superstar. (Alm\u00e1nzar is set to release her second studio album, Am I the Drama?<\/em>, on Sept. 19.)<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tIn addition to Anderson, Alm\u00e1nzar\u2019s defense team includes prominent trial lawyer Lisa F. Moore, the attorney who helped the rapper score a $4 million jury verdict against gossip blogger Latasha Kebe, professionally known as Tasha K. Moore also helped Alm\u00e1nzar win at a California-based federal trial where she was accused of\u00a0using a portion of a man\u2019s back tattoo\u00a0on the cover of her early mixtape\u00a0Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tIn September 2022, Alm\u00e1nzar accepted a no-jail plea deal and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges linked to a bottle-tossing brawl inside a Queens strip club in 2018. \u201cPart of growing up and maturing is being accountable for your actions. As a mother, it\u2019s a practice that I am trying to instill in my children, but the example starts with me,\u201d she said in a statement at the time. \u201cThese moments don\u2019t define me, and they are not reflective of who I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A civil trial involving allegations Cardi B assaulted a female security guard inside a Beverly Hills medical building seven years ago started Monday, with jurors hearing dramatically different accounts of what allegedly happened. Taking the stand as the first witness, plaintiff Emani Ellis claimed she was conducting her routine rounds on Feb. 24, 2018, when<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[10793,1471,10792,2376,2782,1242,2131],"class_list":{"0":"post-17811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-battering","9":"tag-begins","10":"tag-cardi","11":"tag-denies","12":"tag-guard","13":"tag-security","14":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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