For the second time in just over a week, Sean “Diddy” Combs wants the judge in his sex-trafficking case to declare a mistrial and kick the whole sordid matter to the curb.
Citing “prosecutorial misconduct,” defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro wrote to Judge Arun Subramanian today to insist this case, which could see Combs behind bars for the rest of his life if found guilty, should go no further.
“In this trial the government has presented testimony that it knew or should have known was materially false related to its allegation that Mr. Combs dangled Bryana Bongolan from the balcony of Cassie Ventura’s apartment in September 2016,” Shapiro’s correspondence stated with references to Bongoloan’s height in relation to the Bad Boy Records founder and to apparent inconsistencies in the testimony this past week by the good friend of Cassie Ventura. “Accordingly, to avoid an unfair conviction in this case the Court should grant a mistrial.”
The 55-year-old Combs was arrested in September 2024 in a New York hotel lobby by a phalanx of police and federal officials on federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and more. From Combs’ crying ex-girlfriend “Jane” and her tales of abuse, and before that Ventura’s pal Bongolan, who had told the court Wednesday that Combs had dangled her off a 17th-story balcony on September 26, 2016, the panel of eight men and four women in the courtroom has heard explicit and sometimes heartrending testimony about rapes, emotional and physical violence. They also listening, sometimes in obvious discomfort to tales of blackmail, narcotics being moved across statelines and an apparent arson attempt to Kid Cudi’s car.
Additionally, perhaps most damning, the jurors heard of a 2018 rape and the years of filmed drug-juiced “freak-offs” from the then very pregnant “Me & U” singer Ventura, male escorts, and Comb’s ex-personal assistant “Mia,” who also alleged Diddy repeatedly raped her.
A view from the judge’s seat inside a federal courtroom similar to the room where the Sean Combs sex trafficking trial is being held in Federal District Court in Manhattan on June 6, 2025. (Photo by Jefferson Siegel-Pool/Getty Images)
Unlike the last mistrial request of May 28 in the Diddy case, which was made in the lower Manhattan courtroom where the May 12 starting trial is taking place, Judge Subramanian has not issued a quick order on the latest motion. Contacted by Deadline today, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the latest mistrial move.
Casting almost all of Bongolan’s testimony, and by implication, the government’s position in disrepute, defense attorney’s Shapiro’s somewhat redacted four-page letter also recommended the prosecution own up to what it supposedly knows.
“The government knew or should have known this testimony was perjured, and that Ms. Bongolan could not possibly have been injured by Mr. Combs on a Los Angeles balcony in the early morning hours of September 26, or even the day before that,” the Shapiro Arato Bach LLP partner wrote
“The government has long known that Mr. Combs was on the East Coast in late September, and specifically at around the time of this alleged incident,” Shapiro added with footnotes mocking what a simple Google search would tell the feds, with a name drop of the pardon considering current POTUS. “The government knew that he had stayed at Trump Hotel in New York City between September 24-29, 2016. In fact, the government had marked as GX7Y111 the records of this hotel stay, which are now in evidence. And it has had other evidence in its possession for some time showing Mr. Combs’s travel schedule and proving that he was on the East Coast when it told the jury he dangled Ms. Bongolan over a balcony in front of Ms. Ventura.”
A link to a New Jersey website’s September 26 review of Diddy’s show in Newark on September 25 that the defense provides in their letter brought up the “Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy reunion tour ignites Newark, despite B.I.G. hole” article.
Not content to let the Bongolan matter make their case for mistrial, the defense spend the last pages of the letter rehashing their previous unsuccessful mistrial effort. Specifically, on the matter of some destroyed fingerprints of Kid Cudi a.k.a. Scott Mescudi from 2012, they claim “the government’s motive all along must have been to suggest that Mr. Combs had corrupt influence over the LA authorities.” Putting the pretty powerful testimony of Combs’ former aide “Mia” under the microscope over an incident where some LAPD officers let the personal assistant off the hook from driving infractions because she revealed she worked for Diddy, the letter gets very specific. “In other words, the subsequent questioning of Mia, even if itself permissible, further corroborates that the government’s real purpose in its questioning of the fire inspector, Lance Jiminez, was to improperly suggest that Mr. Combs corruptly caused the destruction of the fingerprints.”
At the tail end of a week that saw the judge reprimand Combs for interacting with the jury and threatening to toss him out of the courtroom for his own trial, today’s letter ends: “This constitutes another instance of prosecutorial misconduct. Accordingly, the Court should grant a mistrial based on prosecutorial misconduct.”
Scheduled to pick up on June 9 for another week, the trial is set to run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET day-in, day-out. With more testimony from accuser “Jane” expected on Monday and maybe Tuesday, the trial will likely see the prosecution rest its case and the defense will pick up the baton.
