A forensic audio and video editor and a longtime close friend of Cassie Ventura, the ex-partner of Sean “Diddy” Combs and his alleged longtime victim, who is central to federal prosecutor’s case against the fallen rap world superstar, testified in court on Wednesday. The former testified that he reviewed cell phone video, surveillance footage and “sex videos” while working for the feds on the case, and the latter spoke about the moment she said she was dangled from a balcony by an enraged Combs.
Combs has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied wrongdoing as he faces a five-count indictment that includes sex trafficking and racketeering.
Frank Piazza is an expert witness who testified that he was unaware of the Combs sex trafficking and racketeering case; he said that he reviewed cell phone video, surveillance footage from the infamous attack by Diddy on Ventura at the Intercontinental Hotel in L.A. and “sex videos.” The possible modification of the tape, a notion floated by the defense ahead of the trial, was refuted by Piazza, who assured the court that the footage was not manually altered, saying that he’d slowed the footage to real-time because a technical file converting video process inadvertently sped up.
At the request of the government (at a rate of $295/hour), Piazza compiled video clips of the footage to “track the movement of individuals inside the events;” signs of tampering were not present and the video, which was again showed to the jury for the 8th time since the trial began, were reliable depictions of what occurred in December 2016 in that hotel hallway. He also analyzed 10 “sex videos” recorded between 2012 and 2014 pulled from the “Frank Black” user profile — a Combs pseudonym — and the laptop Ventura submitted to investigators. During cross-examination, Piazza told the court that the timestamps are not inaccurate, but that motion-activated cameras only update timestamps with distinct movement, saying that motion triggers a time stamp change in this camera system.
Heading into the afternoon, the jury heard testimony from Bryana Bongolan, whose alleged ordeal was briefly discussed earlier in the trial. She testified about a fight with Combs in 2016 when the powerful mogul “held her over a 17-story balcony.” Bongolan said Combs “threw (her) onto the balcony furniture,” and she sustained injuries. Bongolan testified that she still suffers from “night terrors and paranoia.” Bongolan did not report the myriad instances of violence, one of which included Combs tossing a knife into a wall, but she was terrified of Combs and his massive power.
At one point, Combs threatened her life when she was accompanying Ventura on a 2016 beach photo shoot. “He came up really close to my face and said something around the lines of, ‘I’m the devil and I could kill you,’” Bongolan said.
Bongola and Ventura’s rampant drug use together over their long-term friendship was another topic on Wednesday. In cross-examination, she was grilled about doing drugs with Ventura, selling them to her and giving them to her for free. The two would take cocaine, Percocet and Cocoa Puffs — marijuana blunts laced with Ketamine.
The court adjourned after 4 p.m. on Wednesday and will resume with defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland’s grilling cross-examination of Bongola, but not until 11 a.m. on Thursday.
Finally, the defense team had a long-awaited win on Wednesday when Judge Arun Subramanian allowed them to meet with Combs in the court until 6 p.m. to strategize about the case. The team has been pushing for this extra time from the judge for weeks.
