Cassie’s diva rivalry with Beyoncé exposed at Diddy trial as stylist admits ‘She could never compete’: Live updates

Diddy’s defense asked designer Bryana Bongolan why her womenswear collaboration with Cassie and Diamond Supply Co. did not work out during cross-examination.

‘It didn’t work because you were competing against people like Beyoncé? And Rihanna?’ lawyers asked.

To hear all the explosive testimony from singer Cassie Ventura and the other witnesses in Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs’ trial, tune in to Daily Mail’s hit podcast The Trial.

From sworn testimony to video evidence and the rapper’s every subtle move, our team of journalists take you inside the courtroom of the world’s biggest celebrity case.

Daily Mail has been following Diddy’s downfall from the very beginning. Join us as we hear from experts involved in the case, and members of the rapper’s inside circle.

Bongolan said Combs gave her drugs on three or four occasions, including ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and G, a substance she understood was the depressant GHB.

She said she also did drugs about once a week with Cassie when Combs wasn’t around.

Bongolan, testifying in response to a subpoena from prosecutors, was granted immunity after she initially said she would refuse to answer questions and invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She was at least the third witness given immunity to testify.

Nicole Westmoreland is talking in a loud voice, to the point it’s causing the mike to crackle in court because it’s overloaded as she cross-examines Bryana Bongolan.

Bongolan is speaking in a very quiet voice as the defense attorney grills her on the statements she made to prosecutors.

‘It wouldn’t make sense for Mr Combs to just walk in the door and throw a knife?’ Westmoreland asked Bongolan.

‘He throws a knife and once he left you weren’t going to worry?’ Westmoreland pressed.

A former escort forced to have sex with Diddy’s ex Cassie Ventura at the disgraced mogul’s notorious ‘Freak Off’ parties has broken his silence to give ‘some credence’ to her testimony.

Ventura took the stand as a star witness in Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs’ sex trafficking trial, breaking down in tears as she told how she was forced to participate in elaborately choreographed sex marathons that routinely involved male escorts.

Shawn Dearing was among the more than 10 men hired to perform at Diddy’s parties, it was revealed during the R&B singer’s testimony.

Bryana ‘Bana’ Bongolan admitted on the stand that she and Cassie ‘had a drug problem’ and would often use when they were together.

Diddy’s attorney asked her if ‘Coco Puffs’ was one of their favorite drugs.

‘[It’s] When you take a blunt, open a blunt, put weed in there and sprinkle cocaine in it,’ Bongolan, pictured below,explained.

Prosecutors have finished direct examination of Bongolan, and defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland is now questioning her.

One of Westmoreland first questions was: ‘Who decides if you’re lying?’

Bongolan replied: ‘The prosecutors?’

Bryana ‘Bana’ Bongolan confirmed on Wednesday that she demanded $10million from Diddy in a civil lawsuit.

She said she was left with lasting nightmares and paranoia from the alleged balcony incident.

Bongolan sued the disgraced music mogul for $10 million, claiming he also molested her and detailed his frequent alleged abuse of his then-girlfriend Ventura.

The designer’s lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claimed the near-death experience was on September 26, 2016, after one of Diddy’s notorious ‘freak offs’.

‘The only purpose of dangling someone over a balcony is to actually kill them or to intentionally terrorize them and rob them of any concept of dominion over their own bodily autonomy and safety,’ Bongolan lawsuit read.

‘It should be no surprise that is exactly what happened to Ms Bongolan.’

Diddy’s ex-assistant Capricorn Clark exposed the mogul’s list of celebrities enemies and many other A-listers have come up in testimony.

The trial has even inspired deep fake videos that use AI-generated images to falsely claim that certain celebrities, such as Oprah and Jennifer Lawrence, have been mentioned in the mogul’s sex-trafficking case.

Here is a list of all the celebrities talked about in the trial so far:

Bryana ‘Bana’ Bongolan said that a day or two after Diddy allegedly dangled her over a balcony, she received a FaceTime call from ‘him or someone on his team.’

‘I remember [Diddy] putting his hands over his head and looking back into the camera and breathing,’ she said.

When asked why she did not call police, she replied: ‘I was scared… because everything I’d seen and gone through at that point.’

She added that she the made ‘a commitment to get sober and not go back.’

Designer Bryana ‘Bana’ Bongolan told the court she and her then-girlfriend were at Cassie Ventura’s apartment in 2016 when Diddy began pounding on the door.

Bongolan said she told her then-girlfriend to hide, because she did not want her to be exposed to a raging Diddy.

She told the jury that she then went to the balcony and tried to act ‘casual.’

‘He came up from behind me… He lifted me up and then put me on top of the rail,’ Bongolan said, gesturing to the jury.

She said her feet were left ‘on the rail.’

‘I was trying not to slip and [was] pushing back on him,’ Bongolan added, saying she was scared to fall.

‘For the most part he was yelling at me so I was trying to answer him. He kept repeating, “you know what the f**k you did.”‘

Bongolan said Diddy held her over the balcony for ‘over 10 to 15 seconds.’

Bryana ‘Bana’ Bongolan sued the rap mogul for $10million in 2024, accusing him of sexual battery and physical abuse.

She claimed Diddy force-fed her ecstasy and during a photoshoot told her ‘I’m the mother******g devil. I could kill you’.

Bongolan’s lawsuit further included stories she heard while working with Combs, including that he threatened to blow up rapper Kid Cudi‘s car after he slept with Ventura.

Her complaint also featured a rumor that Diddy previously ‘skinned a rival’s dog’, although she admitted she did not know if there was any truth to the story.

The judge, lawyers and Diddy are back in the courtroom after a lunch break.

Prosecutors will continue questioning witness Bryana Bongolan, one of Cassie Ventura’s best friends.

A video of Diddy berating Cassie over a less-than-stellar performance of her hit song Me & U on BET in 2006 has been making the rounds as his trial continues in Manhattan.

Cassie had an infamously poor performance on the iconic BET show 106 and park; she said on the stand that Diddy supported her after it, which made them closer.

‘Cassie right here, she had a a whack show… she had a pretty whack show on BET,’ the music mogul said as the singer nervously smiled next to him.

‘She did not perform at the level of the Bad Boy excellence… but at Bad Boy we’re with our artists through their growth periods.. through their bad shows and good shows.’

Designer Bryana Bongolan will be back on the stand after a lunch break.

She is one of Cassie Ventura’s close friends and is telling the jury about her relationship with Diddy.

Bongolan told the court she would often see Cassie with black eyes and scared of Diddy.

Witness Bryana Bongolan told the court that she once woke up at Cassie’s apartment in Los Angeles with ‘Puff banging on the door.’

She said Cassie left the bedroom and Diddy eventually got inside the house.

‘I remember seeing a knife get thrown in her direction,’ Bongolan said.

Cassie then threw the knife back at him, according to the witness.

The knife did not hit him, and he left shortly after. Bongolan did not call he police because she was scared of Diddy and everything she was seeing.

A security guard told how Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs counted out $100,000 from a brown paper bag to buy the only copy of a video showing him beating up his ex-girlfriend on the second day of the fourth week of the disgraced rap mogul’s sex trafficking trial.

Eddy Garcia, who worked at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, told in vivid detail how the hip hop mogul used a counting machine to add up the money for the bribe in 2016.

Garcia said that Diddy called him ‘Eddy, my angel’ for deleting it from the servers and giving it to him on a USB stick.

Taking the stand as a witness, Bongolan, 33, told the court on Wednesday she is the creative director for her own art agency in September, 2016

‘I was held over a 17-story balcony [by Diddy],’ she told the court just moments after taking the stand.

Bongolan, who is a close friend of Cassie Ventura, said Diddy then ‘Threw me onto the balcony furniture.’

‘I had a bruise on the back of my leg and back and neck pain,’ she said of the aftermath of the alleged assault.

‘I had night terrors and paranoia and I screamed in my sleep.’

A woman identified as MTA worker Jaqueline Williams told DailyMail.com why she stood up and yelled that people were laughing at Diddy, which got her kicked out of the courtroom on Tuesday.

‘I said, “Diddy, everybody thinks this is funny, everyone’s laughing at you,”‘ Williams said.

‘And there’s nothing funny about everybody laughing at this black man going through what he’s going through…. it’s an important case.’

Jane is the third alleged victim brought by prosecutors to the stand.

She will be testifying under a pseudonym after the state requested that her identity be kept private.

Prosecutors say Diddy ‘used lies, drugs, threats, and violence’ to coerce Jane into so-called freak-offs – sexual performances where she would be forced to have sex with male escorts as Diddy watched.

Jane is said to be a single mom who was allegedly victimized by Diddy in 2020.

‘The defendant pursued and romanced Jane, who fell in love with him quickly,’ prosecutor Johnson said during opening statements.

‘Jane was not seeing other men, but the defendant was seeing other women at the time, so his relationship with Jane was not at all public.’

Diddy put his head on his hand as the court was repeatedly shown footage of the mogul assaulting Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016.

The music executive calmly watched the monitor in front of him as a video expert answered questions about the now infamous footage.

The defense team has tried to keep the footage from the evidence the jury will get to analyze in the jury room as they reach a verdict.

Prosecutors seem to be making a point of playing the video over and over again in court, as their sex-trafficking case highly hinges on it.

The fourth week of Diddy‘s infamous sex trafficking trial kicked off with a bang as his former assistant took the stand and more A-list celebrities were named – only to face a relentless cross-examination by the disgraced mogul’s attorney, Brian Steel.

Hollywood heavyweights like Mick Jagger, Leonardo DiCaprio and Madonna were pulled into the spotlight as Diddy’s legal team sifted through a trove of text messages between the disgraced rap mogul and his former assistant, aggressively questioning her about past employers and connections.

‘Mia’, a former personal assistant to the hip hop mogul, even revealed that she was once propositioned by the Rolling Stones singer while in Paris but ‘ran away’.

Read the full recap here:

On Monday, Diddy’s lawyer Brian Steel highlighted a post from 2013 celebrating Combs’ 44th birthday, showing a still image from a comedy video featuring Combs as a doctor helping Mia give birth to a fake baby.

Below it, Mia wrote: ‘Shout out to my mentor. Thank you for always letting me give birth to my dreams.’

‘Here, you have posted on your personal account your rapist delivering the baby,’ Steel said.

Mia testified Thursday that, just months after Combs forcibly kissed her at his 40th birthday party in 2009, he woke her up then raped her in a bunk bed in his Los Angeles home.

The ex-assistant said sexual assault continued sporadically enough that she thought it wouldn’t happen again. She is the second of three women expected to testify at the federal trial in Manhattan that they were sexually abused by Combs.

The notorious ‘freak off’ videos at the center of Diddy‘s trial will not be released to the public.

Judge Arun Subramanian sided with lawyers for Combs and alleged victim Cassie Ventura, both of whom both asked that the explicit content remain private.

The videos are said to show Cassie and another woman referred to only as ‘Jane’ in the throes of horrendous sex acts with prostitutes they say Diddy forced on them.

They are central to the prosecution’s case that Diddy abused and trafficked the women, and have long been speculated over by the public.

Video expert Frank Piazza told the court that his conclusion was that the cellphone and survailance videos he analyzed were not manipulated.

The testimony is significant because Diddy’s lawyers have argued that surveillance footage of the assault against Cassie in 2016 was altered.

Piazza also said he analyzed ‘sex videos’ obtained from a device Cassie Ventura provided to the government.

The jury has not yet been shown any sex videos, but they did see screengrabs of the so-called ‘freak offs’ showing Cassie and male escorts.

The woman who was escorted out of Diddy’s trial after yelling a message of support has been named as Jaqueline Williams, an MTA worker.

On Tuesday, the woman yelled in court: ‘Diddy these motherf***ers are laughing at you in every courtroom,’ the woman yelled.

In court on Wednesday, the jury saw text messages between Diddy and his former security guard D-Roc after an incident of violence in a Las Vegas hotel room in September 2015.

Diddy assaulted Cassie following an argument after a party.

In one message to D-Roc, Diddy claimed it was ‘time for the ice’ and ‘say on top of Cassie’ before asking the bodyguard if her eye looked better.

He then became worried that Cassie was not ‘hiding’ after the assault.

‘Rio and Justin saw her. We said at fight broke out in the club,’ D-Roc told Diddy. ‘She aint tripping, she aint tell nobody. I’m about to call you.’

So far, the blockbuster trial has consisted of a number of bombshell testimonies from his ex-girlfriend and main accuser Cassie Ventura, rapper Kid Cudi, Dawn Richard, a former member of Combs’ pop group Danity Kane, and his former executive assistant George Kaplan, among others.

After court wrapped up on Tuesday, prosecutors asked the judge to turn the livestream in the overflow room when alleged victim Jane testifies on Wednesday.

They said they want to avoid a situation where nonredacted information is shown to those in the overflow and press rooms.

Jane will be testifying under a pseudonym.

Diddy’s team of star lawyers again asked the judge on Tuesday to allow them to have more time with the mogul before he has to go back to the Brooklyn jail where he has been since September.

The attorneys have told the judge the conditions of visiting at the jail are not appropriate to discuss the trial with Diddy.

‘We need to be able to sit in a place with a desk with no separation so we can go through these text messages,’ lead attorney Marc Agnifilo said on Tuesday.

Agnifilo said a ‘Very, very important witness is going’ on the stand tomorrow, likely referring to alleged victim Jane.

Judge Arun Subramanian pointed out that he already agreed to allow Diddy and his lawyers to use a side room in the courthouse to discuss the case from 3pm until 6pm.

Diddy also gets to court early and is able to discuss the case with his lawyers from 7 to 8.30am.

‘If you’re here in the courtroom, there’s going to be marshals here,’ the judge told the defense.

‘I have no issue with the marshals,’ Agnifilo replied.

Bongolan, a fashion designer, was brought into the courtroom Wednesday morning to be given immunity before she takes the stand.

Cassie Ventura’s friend will likely testify about being dangled over the side of a building by Diddy.

She told the court she would have otherwise invoked the 5th amendment to avoid incriminating herself.

Several witnesses including one of Diddy’s former assistants have requested immunity before testifying in the trial.

The music mogul is in the courtroom as the prosecution and defense argue over evidentiary matters.

The judge has not yet called the jury in as the procedural issues are discussed.

Lawyers are debating which text evidence should and should not be entered to the court.

Charlamagne Tha God has urged Diddy to take the stand and ‘throw himself at the mercy of the court.’

The radio personality made the comments on The Breakfast Club on Tuesday.

‘Diddy should be the defense’s number one witness… he should just be honest about everything thats happened in his life,’ Charlamagne said, adding that the mogul should play up the trauma he has been through to the jury.

He echoes the words of Diddy’s archnemesis Suge Knight, who also told Diddy to testify.

Knight told CNN: ‘I feel if he do tell his truth, he really would walk…

‘If Puffy goes up there and says, “Hey … I did all the drugs, I wasn’t in control of my life at the time, or myself” – he can humanize his old self and the jury might give him a shot.’

Diddy’s trial took a dramatic turn this week as a second and third alleged victims told the court they were sexually assaulted by the disgraced mogul.

Diddy’s lawyers have repeatedly asked the judge to keep a compilation of the 2016 footage of Diddy attacking Cassie from the evidence the jury gets to review when they are deliberating on a verdict.

The judge has ruled that the video compilation.

will go into the jury room.

Mia said one of Combs’ former bodyguards also reached out to her in the days after Cassie filed her lawsuit.

Mia testified that she felt ‘terrified, threatened, scared, nervous’ that Combs was using an intermediary to reach her. She said she ‘wanted to play dumb’ and needed a gameplan to protect herself.

Mia’s testimony echoed concerns that prompted judges to deny Combs bail, keeping him jailed since his arrest last September.

Prosecutors said Combs and his allies were contacting potential victims or witnesses to prevent them from cooperating or to get them to alter their recollection of events.

At a bail hearing last September, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said Combs contacted at least one victim in November 2023 and was in constant contact with witnesses including as late as last July.

Jamie Foxx has spoken out again about Diddy, making it clear what he thought of the disgraced rap mogul.

During his appearance at The Comedy Store for Netflix‘s All-Star Comedy Night, Jamie called Diddy a ‘nasty motherf****r,’ according to Urban Hollywood.

‘That Diddy s**t is crazy, huh? I don’t know if he’s going to jail, but he’s a nasty motherf***er. S**t! Am I right? Especially for our community. [For] white people, it’s cool, but black people are like, that was our hero. All that godd**n baby oil, boy. Then, the urine,’ Jamie said, referring to an alleged claim regarding Diddy’s ex Cassie and an escort urinating in her mouth.

A woman was escorted out of the court’s public gallery Tuesday after she started yelling against ‘the system.’

‘Diddy these motherf***ers are laughing at you in every courtroom,’ the woman yelled.

Judge Arun Subramanian quickly asked a guard to escort the woman out.

She has not been identified.

Former CFO of Sean Combs enterprises Derek Ferguson confirmed on Tuesday that in 2011, Diddy’s bank account received $20,000 from Cassie’s mom, Regina Ventura. The money then was sent back.

This appears to confirm Regina Ventura’s testimony.

She told the court an angry Diddy demanded $20,000 and threatened to release explicit sex tapes of his longtime girlfriend after learning she was dating someone else.

Regina Ventura said she felt ‘physically sick’ when her daughter sent her an email in late 2011 to say Combs threatened to release two explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt her and the man she was seeing, the rapper Kid Cudi.

‘I did not understand a lot of it. The sex tapes threw me,’ Ventura told the Manhattan federal court last month.

‘He was angry that he had spent money on her and she went with another person,’ she said.

Ventura said she tapped a home equity loan to pay Combs because she was ‘scared for my daughter’s safety.’ Days later, she said, the money was returned and Cassie was soon dating Diddy again.

Video expert Frank Piazza is expected to take the stand Wednesday morning.

They will likely be followed by Bryana Bongolan – Cassie Ventura’s friend who might testify about being dangled over the side of a building by Diddy.

Radio personality Enrique Santos is also on the witness list.

Moreover, an alleged victim, who will testify under the pseudonym of Jane, is expected to testify this week for the prosecution.

Prosecutors told the court on Monday that Jane should be taking the stand as soon as Wednesday afternoon.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s sex trafficking trial has spawned a slew of wild baseless conspiracy theories linking the music mogul to several high-profile figures.

DIDDY’S MANSION SPARED FROM RAMPANT LA FIRES

When a series of deadly wildfires tore through southern California in January, conspiracy theorists made baseless claims the infernos were started to ‘cover up’ Diddy’s alleged sex crimes – and protect any allies he may have left.

JUSTIN BIEBER ABUSED BY DIDDY

After Diddy was accused of a string of depraved crimes, there was widespread fears among Justin Bieber fans that the singer may have been sexually abused by the rap mogul during his early years in the music industry.

Concern first erupted last year after a video resurfaced of Combs and Bieber – who was a minor at the time – hanging out for ’48 hours.’ The pair also worked together on an album.

Bieber has now denied that he was one of the mogul’s victims, but that has not stopped social media users from speculating.

BEYONCE AND JAY-Z RAN CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE WITH DIDDY

Beyoncé and Jay-Z were baselessly accused of being involved in a criminal enterprise with Diddy last year.

The allegations surfaced on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored show when singer Jaguar Wright, who appeared as a guest on the program, suggested the pair had committed crimes similar to those of which Diddy has been accused.

Wright told the media personality she had been ‘screaming’ that ‘Diddy and Jay-Z are monsters’ for four years.

But Morgan was forced to issue an apology to the famous couple after their lawyers contacted him, saying the allegations were ‘totally false and have no basis in fact’.

WILL SMITH SOLD HIS DAUGHTER TO DIDDY

A fake news story, based on no evidence whatsoever, went viral in October last year, alleging that Will Smith sold his daughter Willow Smith to Diddy.

The article featured a doctored image of Willow, 23, and the rap mogul in bed together, prompting widespread speculation that she had been harmed by Diddy.