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When Celebrity Romance Collides With a Courtroom: Cardi B Mentioned During Stefon Diggs Trial
Jamila Adams testified that she had a personal and sexual relationship with Stefon Diggs before being hired as his chef and described being excluded from an Art Basel trip as Diggs courted Cardi B. Diggs has pleaded not guilty to felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault.
Celebrity relationships have always been a kind of public theater — red carpets, paparazzi flashes, and gossip columns that stretch the arc of a romance into a storyline. That spectacle crept into a Manhattan courtroom this week, where the private life of Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs and his public association with Cardi B became part of the testimony in a criminal case.
On Monday, May 4, Jamila Adams took the stand in a case that accuses Diggs of slapping and choking her in an incident last December. Adams, who says she was hired as Diggs’ personal chef in February 2025, told the court she’d had both a personal and sexual relationship with Diggs prior to her employment. Her testimony moved between domestic details and the kinds of social friction that come with mixing romance, work, and celebrity.
“We had a personal and sexual relationship before I became his chef,” Adams told the court, according to the transcript. “I was hired in February 2025. He was dating Cardi B publicly while also involved with another woman who worked for him. There were times I wasn’t allowed to be part of trips with the group—like the Art Basel trip last November—when Cardi and I had plans to match outfits. After I tried to make some of his alleged infidelities public, he became angry.”
The passage—short, blunt, and staged against the kind of celebrity details that drive clicks—underscored how personal disputes can be amplified when one party dates an A-list performer. Adams described being excluded from a November trip to Miami during Art Basel, a moment she said was emblematic of how the professional boundary between employer and employee blurred with their private relationship.
Elsewhere in her testimony on Day 2, Adams struggled with a question about a text message she allegedly sent to Cardi B. Prosecutors say an exchange of messages and the revelation of infidelities are central to why Diggs allegedly became violent. Defense lawyers have pushed back against the timeline and the framing, and Diggs has pleaded not guilty to felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault and battery.
Speaking to the press after parts of the session were opened to media, courtroom observers noted the unusual mix of gossip-adjacent detail and stark criminal allegations. Photographers and media outlets have been following the case closely not only because it involves a professional athlete but because the public association with Cardi B raises the profile of what would otherwise be a private dispute.
Cardi B and Stefon Diggs made their relationship public last May after months of rumors. The couple’s timeline has followed a familiar entertainment-industry arc: high-profile outings, social-media attention, then the announcement of a child. Cardi B welcomed a son with Diggs last November, and by February there were signs on social media and in interviews that the pair had parted ways.
Legal filings make no reference to Cardi B as a party in the case; she has not been accused of wrongdoing. But her public presence in the narrative changes how testimony is consumed. The courtroom record, which is being live-streamed by legal outlets and summarized by entertainment press, now doubles as a document of how intimate relationships intersect with celebrity and the law.
Diggs’ legal team has repeatedly denied the assault allegations. In court he pleaded not guilty and has maintained his innocence throughout pretrial hearings. Prosecutors are proceeding on a felony strangulation count—one of the more serious domestic violence charges in New York—and a misdemeanor assault and battery charge.
The trial’s early days have been devoted to laying out backgrounds and timelines: when Adams began working for Diggs, the nature of their interpersonal relationship, and specific incidents Adams says culminated in the December confrontation. That sequence included the Art Basel exclusion and the alleged exchange of messages that preceded the December incident.
For observers, the case is part procedural and part cultural. It’s a reminder that a public-facing romance can alter the stakes of private disputes, elevating them from personal quarrel to headline. It also highlights how figures from music and sports intersect in today’s media ecosystem—how an athlete’s conduct becomes inseparable from the celebrity orbit around a pop star.
The trial will continue in the coming days as both sides parse text messages, witness credibility, and the chronology of events that led to last December. Until a jury reaches a verdict, the proceedings will remain a messy mix of intimate detail and legal argument—a case study in what happens when personal lives are played out under the glare of fame.
