In testimony that has been anticipated for months, a woman took the stand on Wednesday in Sean Combs’s federal trial to accuse him of holding her over a 17th-floor apartment balcony, making her fear for her life.
The allegation, which was first made public in Casandra Ventura’s bombshell lawsuit in late 2023, paints a vividly menacing portrait of Mr. Combs. But the accusation made by Bryana Bongolan, a longtime friend of Ms. Ventura, came under intense cross-examination by a lawyer for Mr. Combs, who pressed Ms. Bongolan repeatedly on inconsistencies in her account.
Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which involves accusations that an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees helped him commit a series of crimes over two decades. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and his lawyers have said that he and his employees were involved in legitimate business operations, not a criminal conspiracy.
Here are some takeaways from the day in court.
A harrowing account of an attack on a balcony.
Ms. Bongolan said she was staying at Ms. Ventura’s apartment in Los Angeles early one morning in September 2016 when she was awakened by Mr. Combs pounding on the door.
Ms. Ventura was sleeping in her bedroom, Ms. Bongolan testified, and she headed to the apartment’s balcony in an attempt to “act casual.” After entering the apartment, Mr. Combs headed right to her. He picked Ms. Bongolan up by the armpits, held her above the balcony’s railing and yelled at her, she testified.
“For a split second,” Ms. Bongolan said, “I was thinking about if I was going to fall.”
Ms. Bongolan said Mr. Combs told her, “you know what you did,” using an expletive, but that she did not know what he meant.
Mr. Combs then pulled her down and threw her onto the balcony furniture, she said. Jurors were shown photographs she took of herself later that day that showed a large bruise on her leg, bandages on her back and a neck brace.
Ms. Bongolan testified that she is 5 foot 1 and weighed between 100 and 115 pounds at the time. Mr. Combs, she said, was “bigger.”
Since the incident, Ms. Bongolan said, “I have nightmares, and I have a lot of paranoia and I used to scream a lot in my sleep, but it’s dissipated a little bit.”
The defense challenges her account.
In a cross-examination, Nicole Westmoreland, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, challenged Ms. Bongolan repeatedly about inconsistencies in accounts she has given, with Ms. Bongolan often saying she had difficulty remembering details.
Ms. Westmoreland asked about an allegation that Ms. Bongolan had made in a legal letter that Mr. Combs had groped her breasts before lifting her onto the balcony railing.
“Didn’t you accuse Mr. Combs of actually sexually assaulting you on that balcony?” Ms. Westmoreland asked.
“I don’t remember,” Ms. Bongolan answered, in a weary voice.
The lawyer also questioned Ms. Bongolan about her descriptions of where on the balcony Mr. Combs had held her. In a lawsuit that Ms. Bongolan filed over the incident, Ms. Bongolan said she had been dangled over the banister, “with only Combs’ grip keeping her from falling to her death.” On the stand, she said her feet were resting on the railing, suggesting perhaps a less extreme degree of danger.
“Isn’t it true,” Ms. Westmoreland asked, “that just two days ago you told the prosecution you just don’t recall the details of the balcony allegation?”
After a pause, Ms. Bongolan said, “I don’t remember.”
Ms. Bongolan testified that Mr. Combs once entered Ms. Ventura’s apartment and threw a knife at her in a hallway. It missed, as did Ms. Ventura’s throw back, and Mr. Combs “left swiftly,” Ms. Bongolan said.
Ms. Westmoreland said that Mr. Bongolan had once told the government that the knives had been thrown in a kitchen, not a hallway.
“You really don’t remember this?” Ms. Westmoreland asked.
“I just saw the knife get thrown and the knife get thrown back,” Ms. Bongolan answered.
Ms. Bongolan described an ongoing friendship with Cassie.
Ms. Bongolan said she met and befriended Ms. Ventura around 2014. They remain close, she said, and have communicated while the trial has been underway.
The two women developed a friendship that revolved around frequent drug use. Ms. Bongolan said they took marijuana, cocaine, ketamine, Ecstasy and other drugs, including “cocoa puffs,” or marijuana sprinkled with cocaine. Ms. Bongolan said she also sold drugs to Ms. Ventura.
On cross-examination, Ms. Westmoreland asked if she and Ms. Ventura had drug problems.
“Yeah, we had a problem,” Ms. Bongolan said.
Ms. Bongolan testified under an immunity order by the court, after telling the government that she intended to assert her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.
During the early days of their friendship, Ms. Bongolan said, she was wary of meeting Mr. Combs because she had seen how upset Ms. Ventura would get while on the phone with him, and had also seen Ms. Ventura with a black eye. But she agreed to meet him because Ms. Ventura begged her, Ms. Bongolan said.
On the stand, Ms. Bongolan described a number of incidents of violence and threats involving Mr. Combs.
Once, she said, the mogul accosted her near a photo shoot outside his home in the Los Angeles area. “He came up really close to my face,” Ms. Bongolan testified, “and said something along the lines of, like, ‘I’m the devil and I could kill you.’”
Madison Smyser, a prosecutor, asked Ms. Bongolan whether she called the police. She said no, because she was scared. “Why?” Ms. Smyser asked.
After a long pause, Ms. Bongolan answered, “I was just scared of Puff,” using a nickname for Mr. Combs.
After many views, a security video is still powerful evidence.
The 16th day of testimony in Mr. Combs’s trial began with testimony about the surveillance video from a Los Angeles hotel in 2016, which captured Mr. Combs physically assaulting Ms. Ventura — a piece of evidence that has been shown to jurors repeatedly.
Frank Piazza, a forensic video analyst, walked jurors through a series of videos drawn from that footage. Selections from the videos were broadcast by CNN last year, months before Mr. Combs’s arrest in September, and they drew wide condemnation. After that footage was broadcast, Mr. Combs apologized on social media, saying, “my behavior on that video is inexcusable.”
The footage has become a key part of the government’s case, but Mr. Combs’s lawyers have raised questions about how CNN’s video was edited, saying that some of the events were depicted out of sequence, and parts were sped up.
Mr. Piazza showed a “corrected” compilation of the videos that standardized the speed of the footage and put the events in order, matched to a time code that had been set by the hotel’s security system when it was recorded.
When asked by Ms. Smyser, the prosecutor, whether the video sources he used for his compilation were “reliable depictions” of what the hotel surveillance system captured, Mr. Piazza agreed, and said that they showed no signs of tampering.
Even though the footage has been shown in court numerous times since the start of the trial, it still has a visible effect on people in the courtroom.
At the point when Mr. Combs drags Ms. Ventura, a female juror wiped her brow and nodded with her lips pursed. When the jury again saw Mr. Combs throw Ms. Ventura to the ground, Mr. Combs, seated with his legal team, sighed.
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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