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The decide within the federal intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs threatened to take away the music mogul from courtroom for wanting and nodding on the jury throughout testimony on Thursday.
Throughout a lunch break after the jury left the room on Thursday, Decide Arun Subramanian stated that he noticed Combs wanting on the jury and “nodding vigorously” in the course of the cross-examination of Bryana Bongolan, a former graphic designer for Combs and a longtime good friend of Combs’s former girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura.
The decide warned Combs’s legal professionals that if he noticed it once more, it “may consequence within the exclusion of your consumer from the courtroom”.
“There ought to be no efforts in anyway to have an interplay with this jury,” the decide added.
Combs’s lawyer stated that it will not occur once more.
Earlier on Thursday, Bongolan resumed the testimony she started on Wednesday. Bongolan beforehand testified about her friendship with Ventura and described an alleged incident from 2016 during which she says that Combs dangled her from the balcony of Ventura’s Seventeenth-floor residence in Los Angeles for 10 to fifteen seconds, earlier than throwing her on to some balcony furnishings.
She testified that the incident left her bruised and emotionally scarred and that she experiences nightmares and paranoia.
Throughout cross-examination, Combs’s legal professionals challenged Bongolan’s credibility, citing inconsistencies between her present testimony and prior statements she gave relating to the alleged balcony incident.
On Thursday morning, Combs’s legal professionals pressed her on the timeline. They claimed that the alleged balcony incident couldn’t have occurred when she alleged as a result of Combs was acting on the east coast for a lot of September 2016.
Earlier than concluding the cross-examination, Combs’s lawyer prompt that Bongolan was mendacity concerning the balcony incident and the accidents.
“I can’t agree with you,” Bongolan responded, including that she couldn’t recall the precise date of the alleged incident, however she “will always remember him holding me on that balcony”.
One other former girlfriend of Combs, who alleges she was abused and made to take part in drug-fueled intercourse periods often known as “freak-offs”, can be anticipated to be known as to the stand on Thursday.
Testifying beneath the pseudonym “Jane”, the girl has been described by prosecutors as a single mom who started relationship Combs in 2020.
Her testimony is anticipated to be just like that of Ventura, Combs’s former longtime girlfriend, who testified throughout the primary week of the trial.
Ventura, who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018, informed jurors final month that she was subjected to years of bodily and emotional abuse in the course of the relationship. She alleged she was coerced, by way of violence, and blackmail, into participating within the so-called freak-offs which she stated have been orchestrated and directed by Combs and concerned medicine and male intercourse staff.
Throughout cross-examination, Combs’s attorneys sought to painting Ventura as a keen participant within the freak-offs, framing the encounters as a part of a “swingers way of life”.
Now in its fourth week, the trial has featured graphic and emotional testimony from a number of witnesses. Up to now, greater than 16 witnesses have testified, together with the singer Daybreak Richard, three of Combs’s former assistants, Ventura’s mom, and rapper Scott Mescudi, additionally identified as “Child Cudi”.
Combs, 55, was arrested in September 2024 and faces federal fees of intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to interact in prostitution. He has pleaded not responsible to all counts.
Prosecutors allege that Combs ran a legal enterprise since no less than 2004 that engaged in or tried to interact in crimes together with intercourse trafficking, kidnapping, compelled labor, arson, bribery, enticement to interact in prostitution and obstruction of justice, with the assistance of his associates and workers.
Whereas Combs’s legal professionals have acknowledged his historical past of home violence, they argue that the ladies participated within the freak-offs consensually and so they keep that Combs is not responsible of intercourse trafficking or racketeering, or of working a legal enterprise.
Prosecutors have stated that they could relaxation their case subsequent week, with the protection anticipated to start calling its personal witnesses quickly after.
Nevertheless, Combs’s legal professionals have signaled that their presentation could take longer than anticipated, probably extending the trial into early July.
If convicted on all counts, Combs may face life in jail.
The Related Press contributed reporting
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