What is a summary witness? Paralegal specialist Ananya Sankar comes on stand to testify on Diddy trial
The latest witness to testify in Diddy’s trial was Ananya Sankar, a paralegal specialist at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Sankar appeared at the stand on June 16, 2025.
She began by reading the alleged conversations between Ryan Lopez, an assistant of Sean “Diddy” Combs and the rapper’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, as per the live updates from the trial posted by CNN. Notably, Ananya Sankar has appeared as a summary witness at the trial.
For the unversed, a summary witness usually refers to someone working for the government. The prosecution can use this individual to provide summary charts as evidence, aiming to clarify any complex aspects of the case. As per CNN, the charts can include the kind of information that was submitted as evidence but was never mentioned in the testimony.
According to Thomson Reuters, a witness summary includes an outline of the evidence that would be added to a witness’s statement. However, if the evidence is unknown to everyone, the party providing the summary may propose to question the witness on those matters.
E! News live trial updates reported that Ananya read the messages that were exchanged between Kristina and Khorram in December 2019. Sankar told the court that she checked documents of multiple pages that featured messages, call record details, pictures, audio, and video files.
Jury members read the messages shared between Diddy and his staff members
During the ongoing trial, the jury members were shown the conversations of Diddy with his staff members, which included details of various events. One of them was about a hotel night with Sean and his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, which reportedly happened back in 2016.
The trial updates by CNN stated that Sean had once told Kristina Khorran in a message that the hotel should never know that he had booked a room. This was allegedly because he did not want to pay extra charges. In 2022, Kristina told Sean Combs about the damage charges as she wrote:
“Your damage charges on the one hotel are always high.”
Sean Combs additionally spoke to his staff members about a man named Guido, alleged to be a drug dealer. Diddy and Kristina had a conversation on a package that was supposed to be dropped by Guido. Another text reportedly claimed that Sean’s head of security, Faheem Muhammad, was allegedly told to pay Guido in exchange for drugs.
As per The Independent live trial updates, Brendan Paul, an assistant for Sean Combs, also joined in the rapper’s conversation with Kristina Khorram, where Khorram and Paul discussed “king stuff.” The messages were shared when Paul accompanied Sean while the latter was travelling to Jane's house, the former lover of Combs.
Among the messages shared between Jane and Khorram on Valentine’s Day 2022, Jane sent some pictures of a hotel room with decorations. Jane told Kristina about her plans as she wrote:
“I’m excited to surprise him.”
The live updates from the trial by NBC stated that a second summary witness, DeLeassa Penland, has appeared at the trial. Penland also had to read the messages, including the ones that were shared between Diddy, Cassie Ventura, and a man from the New York City-based London Hotel in 2009.
Notably, Cassie was also one of the witnesses in the first week of the trial, which started on May 5, 2025.
