Diddy trial live updates: Will the Diddy trial be livestreamed or televised?

The attorneys are discussing with the judge whether to use peremptory challenges on Monday.

Marc Agnifilo, Diddy’s attorney, is arguing in favor of the idea.

But the government “strongly” opposes this idea, according to Inner City Press. The assistant US attorney told the judge: “We’d be telling 43 people to come back not knowing – if one said ‘I want off,’ others might. I had a trial like that, it blocked the whole morning.”

Juror 295 apparently sent an email to the jury office concerning her personal safety. She is no longer in the jury pool.

Meanwhile, Juror 146 has a lawsuit against the city; that juror is also out, according to Inner City Press.

Once the jury pool gets narrowed down to just 18 — 12 jurors and six alternates — opening statements are set to begin on Monday, May 12.

At least four alleged victims are expected to testify against Diddy throughout the course of the trial.

However, this week prosecutors revealed the woman known as “Victim 3” may not take the stand; they said they have been experiencing communications issues with her attorney.

Ariana Baio has more on what to expect for the high-profile trial:

Days before the evidentiary portion of the trial is set to begin, a wrench has been thrown in the works: one of the key witnesses reportedly may not testify.

A jury panel is shaping up but one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, known as “Victim 3” in the indictment, may not take the stand, prosecutors told the judge Wednesday.

She is expected to testify as to how Diddy allegedly “used force, threats of force, and coercion” to cause her and other victims to “engage in commercial sex acts,” according to the indictment.

“We do not know whether she intends to appear, and we are trying very hard to find out because we are having trouble communicating with her counsel,” prosecutor Maurene Comey said Wednesday, according to the New York Post.

The judge had asked for an update after Comey told him earlier in the week that the witness “does not live locally” and “may not show up, even if we try to enforce the subpoena and want to call her.”

Friday is expected to be the final day of jury selection.

Opening statements are slated to begin on Monday, May 12. But first, the lawyers on both sides must whittle down the jury pool.

On Wednesday afternoon, that pool had been narrowed down to 45 potential jurors.

By the end of the day, that figure will have to be brought down to just 18, as attorneys will use peremptory challenges to strike jurors who they don’t want in Diddy’s trial.

Jury selection is expected to resume at 9 a.m. Friday.

We are now pausing our rolling coverage as the court is dark on Thursday.

The final stage of jury selection will resume on Friday morning at 9 a.m., when each legal team will exercise their peremptory strikes on jurors to whittle down the 45 members of the pool to 12 jurors and six alternates who will sit for the estimated eight weeks of the trial.

We’ll be following developments as they happen, so join us then.

In the meantime, here’s Ariana Baio with all the shocking allegations that make up the case:

Sean “Diddy” Combs faces federal criminal charges, which means the presence of “electronic media” is expressly banned by a procedural rule passed in 1946.

The Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 53 bars both photographs and broadcasting from the courtroom of a federal criminal trial. This was also the case in the federal criminal trial of R. Kelly, on similar charges.

The rules governing federal civil proceedings are somewhat more flexible, permitting recording in certain situations at the judge’s discretion.

Some criminal trials at the state level, such as in the closely watched case of Alex Murdaugh in South Carolina, permit cameras in the courtroom.

For Diddy, we have to rely on in-court reporting by journalists and sketches by court artists.

Isabel Keane takes a look at who was mentioned — and why.

The trial is taking place in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian. He’s a Columbia Law School graduate and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who 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, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. She was among the prosecutors in the trial of Ghislaine 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 Luigi Mangione, the man accused of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

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.

From “Puff Daddy” to “P. Diddy” and even the obscure “Brother Love,” here’s a look back at Combs’ self-appointed names and what was going on during his career in each era.