The construction worker suing Kanye West over the gutting of a $57 million Malibu mansion faced aggressive cross-examination Wednesday and repeatedly denied accusations that he was trying to defraud the Grammy-winning artist now known as Ye.
“A most heinous fraud has occurred upon this court,” Ye’s lawyer, Andrew Cherkasky, argued while the jury was outside the courtroom. “I’m asking for this case to be tossed.”
Cherkasky claimed the plaintiff, Tony Saxon, committed perjury when he denied deleting a case-relevant Instagram video during a break in the trial on Tuesday. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brock T. Hammond declined to immediately rule on the request, saying Cherkasky could question Saxon about the issue on the witness stand.
“Over lunch yesterday, you deleted the video after I showed it to you in my morning questioning, didn’t you, sir?” Cherkasky demanded in a hostile tone. When Saxon said he had “no idea” what the lawyer was referring to, Cherkasky again accused him of surreptitiously scrubbing the video. The judge told Cherkasky to “lower the temperature.” Saxon said he had no “recollection” of deleting anything on Tuesday.
“What are you willing to do for a paycheck?” Cherkasky continued. “Are you willing to lie?”
Saxon called the question “loaded.” When Cherkasky asked him to explain, Saxon said the trial had taken a toll. “I’m here to answer your questions to the best of my recollection. But this has been a very traumatic time in my life, a very traumatic trial,” Saxon said. “Every night of the last two weeks has been hell for me.”
Saxon, 35, sat stiffly on the witness stand and frequently said he could not recall details from events nearly five years ago. He strongly denied telling a psychiatrist in December 2021 that he voluntarily quit his job working for Ye. When Cherkasky confronted him with the psychiatrist’s notes, Saxon held firm.
“He assumed that. That’s not what I told him,” Saxon testified.
Saxon sued Ye in 2023, claiming he was unfairly fired after a seven-week stint performing demolition work at the contemporary concrete home designed by the Pritzker Prize–winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Saxon says he was misclassified as an independent contractor, severely injured his back and neck on the project, and is still owed substantial compensation.
At one point Wednesday, Cherkasky asked whether Saxon had spoken to any “humans with first names and last names” in 2022, “in the English language,” about his alleged on-the-job injuries. Saxon objected on his own behalf and invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, saying he would not identify anyone not already named in the case. The judge stepped in and directed him to answer. Saxon said he had described his pain to “various friends and acquaintances” but did not provide new names.
Cherkasky pressed Saxon about the allegedly deleted video because it showed Saxon telling an ABC News Nightline reporter that he poured his “body and soul” into working for Ye and was left with a “broken” neck. In the interview, Saxon also said that after leaving the project, he bought 27 boxes of vintage vinyl records for $2,500 and turned the purchase into a $100,000 payday that helped pay his bills for years.
“You didn’t break your neck, sir, did you?” Cherkasky asked. Saxon told jurors he was speaking colloquially during the interview and meant that he had injured his neck on the job.
“If something’s not 100 percent working, it’s broken,” Saxon said. “It’s an expression like, ‘I broke my ass.’ Something happened to cause prolonged pain that got worse and worse over time.”
The questioning about the Nightline video followed an earlier exchange about the money Saxon received while working for Ye. Cherkasky suggested to the jury on Tuesday that Saxon “embezzled” money from the Ando house job and covered his tracks by telling people he made his money selling a record collection. Saxon denied the allegation.
In his lawsuit, Saxon said he was promised $20,000 a week to serve as a project manager and provide round-the-clock security at the coastal construction site. In early court filings, Saxon said he received one $20,000 payment on Sept. 29, 2021, for his services and a second payment of $100,000 on Oct. 1, 2021, as the weekly project budget.
During cross-examination, Cherkasky repeatedly questioned Saxon about a third wire transfer of $120,000 that Ye’s accountant sent to another bank account Saxon opened while on the job. With that amount included, Saxon acknowledged receiving $240,000 in wire payments during the seven weeks he worked at the Ando house.
Saxon previously addressed the third payment while testifying under questioning from his own lawyer. He said he had closed the second account, with First Bank, after he was fired, and he did not regain access to those records until recently, when he visited the bank to retrieve them. The records were turned over to Ye’s lawyers on Feb. 12, 2026, he testified. Ye’s legal team had initially discovered the payment while reviewing Ye’s banking records, court filings reveal.
Saxon said “a mistake” was made in earlier court filings listing only the two payments totaling $120,000. “There was an error made a couple years ago,” Saxon testified Tuesday. “I had forgotten about [the third payment]. I had no access to those bank statements.”
Cherkasky pressed the point. “On what day did you realize there was a more than $100,000 error?” he asked. Saxon said he realized the discrepancy when he retrieved the statements from First Bank.
“I think a lot of things got forgotten,” Saxon replied, a comment he directed at the defense. He and his lawyer have repeatedly reminded jurors that Ye’s camp failed to produce any text messages on their end. He also called out Ye for what he characterized as Ye failing to secure legal representation earlier in the case.
During opening statements, Saxon’s lawyer, Ronald Zambrano, said Saxon used much of the $240,000 to pay for materials, laborers, and debris removal. Zambrano said roughly $160,000 of the full amount was spent on project costs. Saxon testified that he believes he is still owed $60,000 for the job, in addition to damages for medical expenses and lost wages tied to his alleged injuries.
Ye and his wife, Bianca Censori, are expected to be called as witnesses later this week. Saxon’s lawsuit is the first among a wave of civil complaints filed by former Ye associates in recent years to reach a jury trial.
Ye faced more than a dozen lawsuits after making antisemitic remarks in 2022. He later issued multiple public apologies. In January, he paid for a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal that again apologized for his comments and linked his behavior to bipolar disorder and past head trauma.
At the trial now underway and expected to end next week, jurors will have to decide whether Saxon was an employee protected by certain laws or an independent contractor. Saxon testified he was clear during his first meeting with Ye that he was not a licensed contractor. When Ye later decided to sell the property, Saxon placed a $1.8 million lien on the house that a judge released after Saxon failed to enforce it. Cherkasky has argued that the type of lien Saxon pursued was only available to independent contractors.
Ye eventually sold the house for $21 million in September 2024. The buyer, Steve “Bo” Belmont, told the Los Angeles Times that his goal was to restore the architectural gem, “to make it as though Kanye was never there.”
