Alert – Diddy latest: Trial start date revealed as jurors are chosen and Cassie video is ruled out

Juror 220 told the court on Wednesday the he went to the same New York high school as Diddy – Mount St. Michael’s.

While the man attended the school 30 years after Diddy, he was dismissed after admitting he reposted a meme about Diddy while ‘doom scrolling.’

Moments later, Judge Arun Subramanian as juror 317 entered the courtroom, clearing recognizing the man.

The judge then asked the man to reveal their connection – they met while working antitrust class action cases together.

Prosecutors expressed concern juror 317, as an attorney who knows the judge, could have outsize influence on other jurors.

The defense had no issues with juror 317, but the man was dismissed after expressing concern about a client’s needs during the length of the trial.

A jury in Diddy’s trial is expected to be in place sometime Friday, after prosecutors asked for a delay in case potential jurors choose to back out.

The lawyers measured the progress made over two days after Judge Arun Subramanian completed questioning dozens of prospective jurors to weed out any biases.

The court will attempt to find as many as 10 additional potential jurors on Wednesday to get to a pool of 45 potential jurors.

On Friday, the pool is to be narrowed to 12 jurors and six alternates.

Opening statements are scheduled for Monday, when prosecutors will cast Combs as the head of a criminal organization who exploited his fame and fortune to sexually abuse women and destroy young lives.

Defense attorneys plan to counter by saying Combs was not committing crimes when he engaged in sexual activity with consenting adults.

Below, potential jurors answer written questions by U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian during jury selection in Diddy's sex trafficking trial in New York City on May 6.

After the jurors were sent home prosecutor Maurene Comey said that they still had not been able to contact Victim 3 in the case, raising more doubts about whether she will testify.

Comey said that on Monday after opening arguments there will be two short witnesses and then one witness will take up the ‘entire rest of the week.’

Among those who made it to the final jury pool was a black man who said he was ‘tired’ when he filled out the forms and made some mistakes because he had been up late binging on the new season of Andor, the Star Wars TV show.

To laugher in court the man – who also has sleep apnea – was asked by the judge if could concentrate during the trial. ‘I hope so’, he replied.

Prosecutors said the man should be struck because of his ‘very meandering’ responses and because he may not have the ‘personal discipline’ to pay attention, but the judge disagreed.

Security video of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs violently assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway was ‘edited’, his defense attorneys have claimed.

The video – which was published by CNN in May – appears to Combs, wearing only a white towel, punching, kicking, and throwing the R&B singer to ground at a hotel in March 2016.

Federal prosecutors have cited the video as evidence that Combs was sex trafficking Ventura, as well as the danger he could pose to other women if released on bail.

By lunchtime on Wednesday 45 jurors had been qualified for the final round of the jury selection process.

Lawyers for both sides will return on Friday where they will strike the ones they don’t want.

The defense will get 10 strikes and prosecutors will get six as they sit the main jury of 12 people.

After that each side will get three strikes each for the six alternates.

The jury in the sex trafficking trial of music mogul Diddy isn’t expected to be finalized until Friday, two days later than expected.

Judge Arun Subramanian granted a request by lawyers Wednesday for extra time to decide who they will eliminate from the list of prospective jurors. It’s the last step of a jury selection process that began when potential jurors filled out questionnaires last week.

Rapper 50 Cent has made no secret of how much he dislikes Diddy over the years.

Now, in the midst of Diddy’s monumental downfall as he’s charged with a host of sex trafficking and racketeering offenses, 50 Cent has capitalized on their public feud by revealing he’s working on a Netflix docuseries which promises to tell all.

Read all about their long standing feud

After luinch, the court questioned the pool of potential jurors as a group.

They were asked about their jobs, news-consuming habits, as well as any experience with abuse. among other queries.

Shortly after, the judge let the pool of jurors go, telling them they may be called back for May 12, when opening statements are expected.

There was laughter in court when a prospective juror said he worked at the MDC in Brooklyn: the same prison Diddy is being held.

Diddy’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked if they could get longer visit hours laughed and said he wasn’t in charge of that.

The juror – who did not say what his exact job was – was excused.

A fashion designer claims Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs dangled her over a 17th floor balcony and she was only saved when Cassie Ventura intervened.

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

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

For the past three days, the judge has been questioning prospective jurors one at a time to see who can be fair and unbiased.

On Friday, lawyers on each side will be permitted to eliminate several individuals from the panel of jurors — for reasons they usually do not have to explain. That procedure, which typically takes an hour or less, produces the final jury of 12 plus alternates.

Judge Arun Subramanian granted a request by lawyers Wednesday for extra time to decide who they will eliminate from the list of prospective jurors. It’s the last step of a jury selection process that began when potential jurors filled out questionnaires last week.

Diddy was accused of obstructing his sex trafficking case from behind bars by paying off witnesses and enlisting his own children in a ‘public relations campaign’.

Prosecutors said in November the disgraced hip hop mogul has ‘demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding’ even though he is locked up in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

They claimed that he tried to influence potential jurors in his trial by getting seven of his children to post a video marking his birthday on November 4th.

Judge Arun Subramanian has sent the court on lunch break after questioning over a dozen jurors Wednesday morning.

The goal is to get at least 10 potential jurors to the next step of the process to get a total pool of about 45 to choose from.

Since 2023, dozens of women and men have been filing lawsuits against Combs claiming he sexually or physically abused them. Many of those people said they were slipped drugs at events hosted by Combs and were abused while they were incapacitated.

Combs has denied all of the allegations through his lawyers.

Some of those lawsuits have claimed that other celebrities were either present for or participated in the abuse.

The great majority of those allegations, however, aren’t part of the criminal case. Prosecutors have chosen to focus on a relatively small number of accusers and allegations where there is physical evidence or corroboration by witnesses.

The trial is in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian. He was appointed a federal judge by President Joe Biden in 2022.

The prosecution team consists of eight assistant U.S. attorneys, seven of them women. They include Maurene Ryan Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. She was among the prosecutors in the trial of Ghislane Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.

Combs’ team of seven defense attorneys is led by New York lawyer Marc Agnifilo, who along with his wife Karen Friedman Agnifilo is also defending alleged health care CEO assassin Luigi Mangione.

Also on the defense team is Atlanta attorney Brian Steel, who represented Young Thug in a trial that went on for nearly two years before the rapper pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges.

Sean 'Diddy' Combs is seen with his attorneys Brian Steel and Teny Geragos. Judge Arun Subramanian is seen in the bacground.

Without identifying them publicly, prosecutors have said four of Combs’ accusers will testify at the trial.

The prosecution will be allowed to show the jury security video of Diddy beating and kicking one of his accusers, the R&B singer Cassie, in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016.

Diddy’s attorneys are expected to argue at trial that the government is demonizing and distorting the sexual activity of consenting adults. They have also argued that two of Combs’ longtime girlfriends willingly brought a male sex worker into their relationship.

Cassie, whose legal name is Cassandra Ventura, was Combs’ on-again-off-again romantic partner for more than a decade. Her 2023 lawsuit against Combs alleging years of abuse, including rape, began the scrutiny that eventually led to his prosecution.

On Tuesday, a black woman in her 20s was excused after saying in her jury questionnaire that Diddy ‘had a lot of money’ and could ‘possibly buy his way out for jail’.

The woman also said she was the victim of an attempted rape three years ago and the police could have done more to solve the case.

She was one of six jurors who were excused from the case and by mid morning just on juror had been allowed to proceed to the next stage.

In Monday’s episode of Daily Mail's The Trial of Diddy podcast, we break down all the highlights from Manhattan federal court.

The celebrity names that could come up included actors Mike Myers, Michael B. Jordan and Lauren London.

Some other famous names in the music industry were also revealed, including Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child, producer Dallas Austin and choreographer Laurieann Gibson.

Potential jurors in the trial of fallen hip hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs face a grilling by his legal team and government prosecutors over their suitability to judge his guilt or innocence.

And in revealing clues over upcoming testimony, DailyMail.com can disclose some of those bombshell questions that they will be asked to determine if they make it to the 12-person panel.

Many revolve around attitudes to the sensational sex trafficking and racketeering crimes 55-year-old Combs is accused of – and their views on the hip hop industry in general.

Eyebrows were raised in court when a woman was allowed to remain in the jury pool despite saying that after watching the video of Diddy beating up Cassie she thought he ‘would be guilty of domestic violence.’

The black woman said that she recalled having seen news articles that said Diddy was ‘trying to get out of jail’.

And she wrote in her jury questionnaire that her mother – a domestic abuse survivor – told her ‘never to accept physical or mental abuse from anyone’.

But the woman, a middle school teacher, also said some things that appealed to Diddy, saying that she wouldn’t pre-judge him and was skeptical of some accusers.

‘Just because somebody does one thing doesn’t mean they did another,’ she said.

She said that ‘sometimes people testify to things that are not necessarily true’ because they had ‘jumped on the bandwagon.’

Heralded for decades as rap royalty, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs now lives alone in an isolation cell in a notorious New York City jail – deemed too much of a ‘threat to the community’ by authorities to be let out even after offering a $50 million bond.

It’s a stunning fall for the ‘It’s All About the Benjamins’ rapper, who was once hip-hop’s wealthiest and most influential mogul.

But if the feds’ allegations are true it may be just be all the unlimited cash, unchecked power and the Hollywood privilege that goes along with it that landed Diddy where he now sits: facing a slew of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges that accuse him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes and physical abuse.

Diddy has been granted permission to wear his own clothes at his upcoming sex trafficking trial following a judge’s ruling.

The disgraced hip hop mogul can ditch the prison issue, tan colored top and pants when jury selection begins and for the remainder of the case.

But certain conditions on Diddy, who has designed his own clothing range and once won a prestigious fashion industry award.

Diddy’s lawyers made the application for him to wear clothes other than those from the grim Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is being held, to Judge Arun Subramanian.

Although dozens of men and women have alleged in lawsuits that Combs abused them, this trial will highlight the claims of four women.

One of them is Cassie, who filed a lawsuit in late 2023 saying Combs had subjected her to years of abuse, including beatings and rape after they met in 2005.

Her lawsuit, which offered the first public account of the Freak Offs described in the indictment, was settled in a day. Four months later, though, federal investigators raided Combs homes in Los Angeles and Miami and confronted him at a private airport in Florida, seizing 96 electronic devices. They also found three AR-15-style rifles with defaced serial numbers.

The three-time Grammy winner was indicted last September. He has since been held in a federal jail in Brooklyn after judges ruled that he would be a threat to intimidate witnesses and victims if released.

Jury selection is expected to wrap up in about a week, with the trial’s opening statements scheduled for May 12. The proceedings are estimated to last eight to 10 weeks.

Stick with us for the latest updates throughout the day and to listen to our The Trial of Diddy podcast click here.

Diddy is facing five felony charges, namely:

• Racketeering conspiracy
• Two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion
• Two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution

The charge of racketeering conspiracy, the federal statute known by its acronym RICO that was once primarily used to target the mafia but in recent years has been wielded in cases of sexual abuse, including against the fallen R&B star R. Kelly.

It allows government attorneys to project a long view of criminal activity rather than prosecuting isolated sex crimes.

If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in ushering hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jury consultant Linda Moreno has joined his top-tier legal team, the Daily Mail can confirm.

She will help defense attorneys to profile potential jurors as selection starts Monday in Combs’ federal criminal trial in Manhattan.

Moreno gained fame as one of the country’s leading jury consultants after high-profile cases including the 2005 trial of Sami Al-Arian, a Florida college professor indicted on terrorism-related charges under the Patriot Act.

Unlike other high-profile cases, the rapper’s trial will not be televised as it is in federal court.

Electronic media, including cameras, are banned in the Manhattan court room.

A sketch artist’s work will be the only visuals coming out of the courtroom.

Diddy won a victory after his lawyers managed to strike a white female juror from the pool because she works for HBO.

The 55-year-old photo producer had said during questioning that the video of Diddy beating up his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in 2016 was ‘disturbing’ and ‘upsetting’.

Diddy attorney Marc Agnifilo said that the HBO documentary ‘The Fall of Diddy’ which was released earlier this year painted him in a ‘horribly negative light, almost like a monster’.

Agnifilo said that the woman said she had had ‘water cooler talks’ with co-workers even though she didn’t work on the documentary.

Additionally, three government witnesses in the Diddy case appeared in the documentary and were paid to do so, Agnifilo said.

The judge agreed after prosecutors didn’t object to the juror being excused.

Diddy has hired Nicole Westmoreland as the eigth lawyer on his defense team.

Westmoreland revealed she was raped in 2001 when she was just 19 years old.

She said a man named Alfred Cleveland raped her at Patchwerk Recording Studio in Atlanta, as reported by TMZ.

The star attorney joined Diddy’s team on Tuesday morning.

She is pictured leaving court this week.

The daughter of former FBI director James Comey, Maurene Comey, is one of the prosecutors in the sex-trafficking trial against Diddy.

She was also among the prosecutors in the trial of Ghislane Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.

James Comey, nominee for FBI Director, shares a laugh with his daughters, Kate, center, and Maureen and his wife Patrice during his conformation hearing in 2013.

James Comey shares a laugh during his conformation hearing in 2013 as his daughters Kate, left, and Maureen.

Maurene Comey points at Ghislaine Maxwell as she delivers the rebuttal argument for the government during the trial of Maxwell in 2021.

The court announced on Wednesday that the official jury will be selected on Friday after the prosecution requested a delay.

The judge, prosecutors and defense are now discussing the jurors who made it through the next round of questioning on Monday and Tuesday.

The defense asked that an HBO staffer, Juror 29, be removed from the pool, citing the bombshell documentary, The Fall of Diddy.

Judge Submarian dismissed the juror after the prosecution agreed with the defense.

Other names mentioned on the list by a female juror who said she recognized them were Michelle Williams from Destiny’s child, actress Lauren London – who was the girlfriend of Nipsey Hussle who was fatally shot in 2019 – and rapper Kid Cudi.

Judge Subramanian said that the list of people and places runs ‘several pages’ and felt like an ‘appendix from Lord of the Rings’. To speed up the process, he ruled that jurors would be given the list to review before they are brought into court and questioned one by one before they seat a final panel of 12 jurors and six alternates.

Judge Arun Subramanian admonsihed Mark Geragos in court after he made comments in a podcast calling Diddy’s prosecutors a ‘sick-pack of white women.’

According to prosecutors, Geragos has been advising Diddy’s team during the jury selection process even though he is not one of the rapper’s officials attorneys in the trial.

Subramanian, who is of South Asian descent, called Geragos’ comments ‘outrageous,’ but Geragos’ whose daughter Teny is a member of Diddy’s legal team, pushed back at the judge.

‘I think when you’ve got a Black man who’s being prosecuted and the client feels like he’s being targeted, it’s a — it’s an observation,’ Geragos said.

But the judge wasn not having and shot back: ‘I think this is ridiculous.

‘I think referring to the prosecution in this case as a six-pack of white women is outrageous. All right. And I understand what you’re saying about the cases and everything else, but I think this is outrageous and this would not be tolerated in any court from any lawyer anywhere across the nation.’

Daily Mail can confirm Oddi did know Diddy – and was guarding a secret so scandalous that the rapper asked him to sign an NDA agreement to protect it.

The agreement is dated 2014 – four years before the Doral shooting – and ten years before Diddy’s life came crashing down with a federal indictment for sex trafficking.

Oddi told police in Doral that he signed the document in exchange for $5 million.

Diddy jurors will be able to leave court and go home after each day of the trial.

‘There are no plans to sequester the jury, which means you will go home every day after court,’ the jury questionnaire obtained by the outlet read.

However, jurors were instructed to “avoid all media coverage and not to go on the Internet or social media with regard to this case for any purpose.”

They are advised to avoid discussing the case with family, friends and colleagues until after the trial is done.

Composed and with his hands in his pockets, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs greeted potential jurors who hold his fate in their hands with a slight nod as the sex trafficking trial that could send him to prison for life began Monday.

And despite the gravity of the crimes against him, Combs, 55, remained composed and calm, hugging his lawyers as he came in and nodding his head slightly when he faced the jurors with his hands in his pockets.

Until he cracked midway through the process after Diddy’s legal team requested a bathroom break. When the judge asked if they could carry on, Diddy put up his hand and said: ‘I’m sorry your honor, I’m a little nervous today.’

Another 10 potential jurors must be selected on Wednesday for a total pool of 45 prospective jurors.

The last step in the jury selection process will occur when lawyers on both sides strike a limited number of individuals off the jury for reasons they usually are not required to disclose.

The judge has scheduled peremptory challenges for Friday.

Opening statements are set for Monday.

Judge Arun Subramanian was seeking to build a pool of 45 prospective jurors from which a panel of 12 jurors and several alternates can be chosen. Nineteen were chosen on Monday and six more by noon Tuesday.

Opening statements are scheduled to be presented on May 12 for a trial projected to last up to two months.

Rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces a slew of charges related to his alleged sexual and physical abuse of women.

He was charged with three crimes – racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

In a court filing Tuesday, prosecutors complained that a prominent attorney, Mark Geragos — the father of one of the lawyers on Combs’ legal team — had a long-standing relationship with Combs and seemed to be acting as an adviser to Combs and the defense team even as he spoke out about the case repeatedly on his podcast.

Prosecutors urged the judge to require the attorney to obey rules that require lawyers working on the case to limit their public comments.

Several who were eliminated from the jury pool had seen or heard media reports related to the case, including some who said they saw a video in which Combs was hitting and kicking one of his accusers in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016.

But one man who had written on a questionnaire that the video left him with the ‘impression of an angry hostile person who is entitled’ was not dismissed from the jury pool.

After the video aired on CNN last year, Diddy apologized, saying, ‘I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.’

On Monday and Tuesday, the judge assembled a pool of 35 potential jurors, 10 individuals short of the group of 45 would-be jurors that are one step from sitting on the jury for a trial projected to last up to two months.

The last step in the process will occur when lawyers on both sides strike a limited number of individuals off the jury for reasons they usually are not required to disclose.

A potential juror said he recognized comedian Mike Myers’ name in a list of individuals provided to the jury pool.

The individuals may come up during the trial.

It’s likely Myers was dragged into the case over a scene in 2002’s Austin Powers: Goldmember, where the character of Dr Evil had an ‘E. Diddy’ tattoo on his buttocks after spending time in prison.

The scene also features Beyonce.

The rapper, 55, repeatedly nodded and smiled at the individuals being questioned during the jury selection process this week.

He appeared to be showing his approval for some jurors by nodding his head up and down or shaking it left and right, giving a subtitle indication of how he was feeling towards each person.