NICKI TO TESTIFY FOR BRO
LI kid-rape trial starts
Nicki Minaj will be the star witness at her brother’s child-rape trial, The Post has learned.
The rap star is set to be the crux of Jelani Maraj’s defense.
In opening statements Thursday in Nassau County court, Maraj’s attorney argued that the whole case was an attempt to extort $25 million from the hugely successful “Anaconda” rapper.
Jacqueline Robinson, the mother of the alleged victim, “related to Nicki that, ‘I can make the charges go away for $25 million,’ ” attorney David Schwartz told jurors.
Robinson and Maraj had just married when her then11-year-old daughter told officials that her new stepfather was raping her as often as four times a week, prosecutors say.
In her own opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Emma Slane told jurors that the girl’s brother, then 8, was the first to come forward to authorities.
The boy told school officials that his mother, Robinson, was often drunk and would beat him and his big sister.
Child-welfare workers were called in to interview the boy, and he told them that he had been beaten by Maraj after walking in on him having sex with the girl in a spare bedroom, prosecutor al- leged on Thursday.
“Did you see anything?” Maraj demanded, allegedly smacking the kid three times in the face and asking again when the boy was silent, “Did you see anything?”
Child-welfare workers called the cops, and a search warrant at the house recovered a pair of the girl’s purple pajama pants, soiled with the stepdad’s DNA, the prosecutor said.
“He had sex with that 11-year-old girl sometimes four times a week,” the prosecutor told jurors.
Schwartz claimed on Thursday that the mother put the DNA on the pants herself and made sure cops found them in an attempt to frame him.
“Why would [Robinson] lie and force her children to lie? I can give you 25 million reasons why,” the defense lawyer told jurors.
Minaj, 34, has stuck by her older brother, posting $100,000 bond when he was busted in December.
Neither the defense nor prosecutor would confirm on Thursday that Minaj would testify.
But defense private investigator Les Levine told The Post that Minaj would be called on. He would not specify which day.
The girl, now 14, will also face direct and cross-examination about what both sides described as a life of abuse.