Sean "Diddy" Combs' better quit making faces at jurors in his federal trial, or he'll be booted from the courtroom ... that's the stern warning the judge hit him with Thursday morning.
00:04In fact, if he's not careful, Diddy could find himself kicked out of the courtroom.
00:09That is the warning he got from the judge this morning.
00:12I mean, it is stunning that the judge would say this.
00:18And we're going to get into what happened that prompted this.
00:22But consider this.
00:22This man is on trial for, could be in prison for the rest of his life.
00:27And the judge literally said, you may have to sit on the sidelines and you will not be able to be in the courtroom while that is happening.
00:35Seems like a very drastic warning.
00:38So what went down?
00:39The day started with Brianna Bonglin, the designer and friend of Cassie who was testifying yesterday.
00:47She was being cross-examined by one of Diddy's attorneys.
00:51Right. Just the woman that was allegedly held over the balcony.
00:53Right. And they were getting into more of that, grilling her on that.
00:57And then they took a break.
00:59And once the jurors had been let out of the courtroom, the judge stopped Mark Agnifilo, Diddy's lead attorney, and said to him, you better talk to your client about his behavior.
01:14It's a pretty remarkable moment that doesn't happen very often where a court will admonish the defendant like this.
01:21It's also a pretty human moment, right?
01:24Diddy's been sitting there for four weeks hearing bad things said about him, and now he's got his defense counselors who's sort of sinking their teeth into a witness.
01:31And he's nodding along with it.
01:33I get it.
01:34So, yeah, we should get into Jason because we hadn't said what exactly the issue was.
01:38What the judge was taking issue with was Diddy looking at jurors, apparently, and giving his approval to what was being said, like nodding his approval.
01:51It was on cross-examination, and his counsel was going in pretty hard at Breonna and making, I guess, Diddy thought making some good points.
01:59And Diddy wanted to convey to the jury that he appreciated the questioning or appreciated the answers that the witness was responding.
02:08And so he started nodding along pretty vigorously, apparently.
02:11Now, if he's nodding, that's fine, but you can't nod while looking at jurors, right?
02:17What is the issue, though, Jason?
02:19So the judge is basically saying you're trying to convey information to the jury.
02:24You have a right to do that.
02:25You can get up on the witness stand.
02:27But otherwise, your job is to sit there and not do that, not convey information to the jury.
02:33Honestly, the most draconian sort of result here could be that the judge would say you're virtually testifying.
02:40You're going to waive your Fifth Amendment privileges here.
02:43You'd have to wait for a long time to do that.
02:44But here, what the judge said is if you continue to do that, continue to try to convey information to the jury, what I'm going to do is I'm going to kick you out of the courtroom.
02:53Which is stunning because he has, you know, a constitutional right to face his accusers.
02:59It's the jury, I guess, is the issue here.
03:01You know, Charles, I think that Diddy was excited that his defense attorney was picking apart the witness on the stand, caught her in possibly a lie or two.
03:15You know, the witness had testified that the hanging over the ledge incident took place September 26, 2016.
03:28And Diddy's defense proved that he was in New York at the time, not Los Angeles, where that incident allegedly took place.
03:38So, you're right, I'm sure he was pretty happy with the way that was going and probably smiling and, like the judge said, nodding.
03:47The issue is when you do it while you're staring down a juror, you know, then you are conveying something.
03:53It does come down to, as Jason said, I guess sort of like testifying without testifying.
03:57Right.
03:57And I'm sure, like for Diddy, he had to listen to Brianna the entire day before Charles go through all of this testimony where he was accused of roughing her up, of hanging her over the 17th floor balcony.
04:08So, I imagine if Diddy is actually telling the truth here that that would be incredibly difficult to listen to.
04:14But again, can't do it.
04:15Let's get to that about what is the truth about this.
04:18Because they didn't necessarily, certainly the defense wanted to make it look like this never happened and she completely made it up.
04:27On redirect, the prosecutors said, can you explain why you got the date wrong?
04:32So, they weren't conceding that it didn't happen.
04:35They're saying she may have gotten the date wrong.
04:37About something that happened nine years ago.
04:38And her response was, look, it was a long time ago.
04:41Yeah, I mean, this is what juries do, right?
04:43They're going to hear this information sort of, you know,
04:46and they're going to have to make a determination of what they believe and what they don't.
04:49I think it does make a lot of sense that you wouldn't remember something to this specific date that happened nine years ago.
04:54Although, you're not hung off a balcony very often.
04:56So, you would think that that would be something that would be crystallized in your mind.
05:00And also, you would have worked out with prosecutors beforehand.
05:03It's odd that you got caught in this misrecollection of the specific date.
05:07They're on a break as we're speaking right now.
05:09But the victim two, victim number two, who is testifying under the pseudonym Jane, is about to testify.
05:18And Diddy's going to have to really watch his behavior and his actions, his reactions to that testimony.
05:27Hi, I'm Marie Dial here in Ireland.
05:29And Diddy needs to stop trying to interfere with the jury.
05:32I think today in the testimonies is probably one of the worst that we've had.
05:35And with him trying to get involved with the jury does not make him look any way good at all.
