- Nicki Minaj paid a $500,000 default judgment to avoid her $20M mansion being sold.
- Minaj’s past claims of being an ‘illegal immigrant’ contrast with her current support for Trump’s administration.
- Minaj’s actions suggest a possible ploy to gain favor and U.S. citizenship.
Nicki Minaj has managed to avoid the sale of her $20 million Hidden Hills mansion.
Back in October, Us Weekly reported that the rapper’s Los Angeles mansion was at risk of being sold off due to a massive unpaid debt she and her husband, Kenneth Petty, refused to pay.
The alleged debt came after Thomas Weidenmuller was awarded $503,000 from the couple earlier in a lawsuit over an alleged assault by Petty in 2019. According to the outlet, he asked the court to order the rapper’s home to be sold to help him collect on the money owed.
At the time of the initial reports, Nicki went on a social media rampage, taking to X to blame Roc Nation for the negative headlines about her. She insinuated that the publications reporting the news were doing so because they’re on Roc Nation’s payroll, retweeting a fan who called the story “fabricated.”
But, it looks like the reports weren’t fabricated as Nicki ended up paying the $500,000 default judgment that a security guard won after suing the “Starships” rapper.
“She has satisfied the judgment,” the guard’s lawyer, Paul Saso, told Rolling Stone this week. “It required us going to the one-yard line.”
Saso confirmed the news just as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Cindy Pánuco was set to enter a blockbuster decision to sell the home at a hearing on Thursday afternoon. Plaintiff Thomas Weidenmuller nearly won the ruling in November, but he faced a delay because he lacked a bank statement detailing Minaj’s payments on her $13.3 million mortgage and the daily interest accrual.
When Saso informed the court of the “eleventh-hour development,” Judge Pánuco seemed relieved.
“I wanted to make sure we got this right. It was a big thing,” she said. “I’m glad this was resolved in a way that makes sense for all of the parties,” the judge said.
Saso said his client was relieved as well while speaking to reporters outside the courthouse.
“He’s incredibly gratified and happy. It’s been a long time coming to have justice finally done here,” the lawyer said, per Rolling Stone. “He’s very happy for himself. He suffered a very heinous attack, years ago, and not only did it take years to achieve the judgment, but it then took nearly two years in order to enforce that judgment.”
The lawyer went on to say that he never expected the case to require that he “put a levee on a multimillionaire’s house, and go to the last 24 hours before she decides to satisfy the judgment.”
Weidenmuller filed his application for the order last October, telling the court he tried to enforce his default judgment through less extreme measures, but Minaj and her husband, Kenneth Petty, hadn’t responded.
This news comes as an old Facebook post of Nicki’s has been recirculating, in which she admits to being an “illegal immigrant” before asking Donald Trump’s administration to stop detaining undocumented people.
“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant @ 5 years old. I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place & having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5. This is so scary to me,” she wrote in 2018, per TMZ. “Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?”
The post is accompanied by a photo of kids on mats in a large, chain-link fenced-in cage.
Of course, the sentiments expressed in this post are quite different from her feelings today. Minaj has become an outspoken supporter for Trump, VP JD Vance, and the entire administration, recently responding positively to a clip of Katie Miller — White House Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller’s wife — promoting the SAVE Act, a bill meant to prevent “illegal aliens” from “voting and engaging in our democracy.”
Nicki has said as recently as 2024 that she’s still not a U.S. citizen, making all of her current actions all the more confusing. However, some folks–including one of her latest targets, Don Lemon–seem to think this is all a ploy to get in Trump’s good graces for a chance at citizenship.
