A judge warned Diddy that he could be thrown out from the courtroom for the rest of his sex trafficking and racketeering trial.
TMZ caught that Judge Arun Subramanian issued a firm warning to Diddy on Thursday (June 5), threatening to remove him from the courtroom if he continued staring at the jurors.
The judge addressed Diddy’s defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, after jurors had stepped out for a break. Subramanian criticized the 55-year-old music mogul for “nodding vigorously” while staring at the jury.
Though he didn’t explicitly say it, the judge appeared concerned that Diddy’s behavior could influence the jury by signaling agreement with his legal team or with the testimony being given.
Earlier in the day, Diddy’s legal team continued their cross-examination of fashion designer Bryana Bongolan, who claimed Diddy held her over the edge of a 17-story balcony at Cassie Ventura’s Los Angeles apartment in late September, 2016 — an incident she says left her with night terrors and paranoia. She shared a photo that she said was taken the day of the event, and metadata on the photo identified it as being taken on September 26 of that year.
The defense challenged that timeline, arguing that Diddy couldn’t have been in L.A. at the time because he was traveling on the East Coast for his Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour.
They also pointed out that both Diddy and Ventura attended an event in New York City during that period, with a hotel room booked under his “Frank Black” alias at the Trump International in Manhattan from September 24 to 29.
On redirect, prosecutors got Bongolan to clarify that didn’t recall the exact date of the alleged incident.
The prosecution later pointed to a text message Ventura sent to longtime Diddy assistant and chief of staff Kristina Khorram’s phone discussing the incident, which was dated September 30.
During her testimony on Wednesday (June 4), Bongolan also said that in early 2016, while on a beach in Los Angeles with Ventura and a photographer, Diddy approached her, came close to her face, and said something along the lines of, “I’m the devil, and I could kill you.”
“I was terrified, but because of the cocaine [that she had taken earlier that day] I had a little confidence,” Bongolan said.
Bongolan filed a $10 million lawsuit against Diddy last year in order to “seek justice for what happened to me on the balcony.”
