New York (AFP) – Sean “Diddy” Combs’s legal team sought to cast doubt Thursday on a witness who claimed the hip-hop mogul dangled her off a balcony before throwing her onto furniture. Bryana Bongolan testified in the music icon’s ongoing federal criminal trial in New York that she was staying over with her friend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura — Combs’s ex and a key trial witness — when the alleged assault happened. Bongolan, a designer, said Combs repeatedly shouted with expletives that “you know what you did” — and she said she repeatedly told him she did not.
Defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland probed inconsistencies between civil lawsuits, pre-trial interviews with the government, and Bongolan’s testimony this week — a common tactic defense teams deploy when trying to portray witnesses as unreliable. Westmoreland even suggested Combs could have been on tour on the East Coast when Bongolan had said the balcony incident took place. “You came in here and you lied to the ladies and gentleman of the jury, isn’t that true?” Westmoreland asked. “I can’t agree with you,” Bongolan retorted. The prosecution asked Bongolan if she had an exact memory of when the event took place, to which she replied that she did not.
But she said that “I have no doubt” when asked if she was certain Combs had dangled her off a balcony. Bongolan told prosecutors she did not go to the police out of fear: “I was just scared of Puff,” she told the court, using another nickname for Combs. The defense team for the musician, who faces racketeering and sex trafficking charges, has sought to cast Bongolan as a drug abuser.
Bongolan is among dozens of people who have filed civil suits against Combs in recent years, legal action she told jurors Wednesday she took “because I wanted to seek justice for what happened to me on the balcony.” Bongolan, who remains friends with Ventura, said the incident left her with post-traumatic stress, including recurring nightmares and paranoia. “Sometimes I scream in my sleep,” she told jurors, testifying under an immunity order that protects her from prosecution for anything she discloses in her testimony.
Ventura alleged that she suffered harrowing abuse under Combs, her former on-and-off partner of more than a decade, opening the floodgates against the one-time music powerhouse when she first filed suit against him in November 2023. That suit was settled out of court in less than 24 hours. Combs, 55, faces upwards of life in prison if convicted of crimes of sex trafficking and racketeering. On Tuesday, a hotel security guard said he received $100,000 in a brown paper bag from Combs in exchange for now-infamous surveillance footage that showed the artist-entrepreneur violently kicking and dragging Ventura in a hotel.
The prosecution is next expected to call Jane, a woman who will speak under a pseudonym in relation to one of the sex trafficking charges against Combs. Combs, 55, faces upwards of life in prison if convicted of crimes of sex trafficking and racketeering. Prosecutors say he ran a criminal enterprise of high-ranking employees and bodyguards who enforced his power with illicit acts including kidnapping, bribery, and arson.
© 2024 AFP
