Judge threatens Sean Combs with removal over interactions with the jury

Prosecutors introduced another marquee witness on Day 17 of Combs’s federal sex-trafficking trial: a woman who is allowed to testify under the pseudonym Jane to protect her privacy.

She alleges that the record producer terrorized and abused her after they started dating in 2020, much like he is alleged to have treated Casandra “Cassie” Ventura years earlier.

On Thursday afternoon, Jane began what is expected to be days of testimony. Defense attorneys had finished cross-examining Bryana “Bana” Bongolan about discrepancies in her account that Combs attacked her on a high-rise balcony in Los Angeles in 2016.

The defense team presented evidence suggesting Combs was thousands of miles away on the date Bongolan said he attacked her, and it accused the witness of lying.

Ventura, the prosecution’s star witness, previously testified that her 11-year relationship with Combs was a nightmare of beatings, surveillance from his staff and coercion to have sex with male prostitutes for Combs’s pleasure.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of all counts.

His legal team has argued that Ventura and Jane enjoyed the “freak-offs” and that their relationships with him were consensual, if toxic and unorthodox.