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The most sincere factor Sean Combs might have ever performed was identify his report label “Dangerous Boy.”
Though 54-year-old Combs – aka Puff Daddy, aka Puffy, aka P. Diddy, Diddy and Love – has been orchestrating much more than simply braggadocious “unhealthy” habits throughout the intervening a long time, in accordance with a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. As an alternative, it expenses, he’s been the veritable architect and chief of a “felony enterprise” engaged in alleged arson, kidnapping, compelled labor, bribery, obstruction of justice and intercourse trafficking.
It was that last accusation, laid out not in federal charging papers however in a sequence of damning lawsuits final 12 months, that first revealed the rising cracks within the veneer of Combs’ carefully-curated repute. He strenuously denied all wrongdoing. However the filings have been rapidly adopted by a bicoastal raid on his properties amid a tight-lipped federal investigation, then the leaking of a violent video displaying Diddy’s brutal beating at a resort of then-girlfriend Cassie– probably the most high-profile sufferer to sue him.
The footage was proof that his denials had been false all alongside. Combs tried a weak filmed mea culpa and apologized on Instagram, staying largely and uncharacteristically out of public view regardless of just a few different presumed makes an attempt at repute rehab: two lukewarm family-centric posts on the identical social media platform amid occasional statements from legal professionals.
These efforts did nothing to stem the tide of public embarrassments. Howard College revoked the honorary diploma of which he’d been so proud. The mayor of New York requested Combs to return the key to town. Even Miami Seashore canceled its annual Sean Diddy Combs Day.
And now, precisely three years after Combs applauded the MeToo motion in a September 2021 journal profile – and only one 12 months after performing a medley of his hits to simply accept the World Icon Award on the VMAs – he’s been arrested for a litany of jaw-dropping alleged offenses that embrace violent crimes in opposition to ladies. He was taken into custody within the foyer of a Manhattan resort, a five-star setting within the metropolis whose excessive society he presided over for years.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday have been pushing in court docket for detainment till trial – the prospect of drab jail scrubs a world away from Diddy’s years of flashy style and his legendary Labor Day Hamptons White Events.
Every thing that’s taking place with Diddy proper now, nonetheless, is a far cry from the teflon profession he crafted for himself; he’s beforehand dodged jail time for expenses associated to every little thing from unlawful gun possession to deadly live performance stampedes. However the Combs depicted within the indictment – one who “abused, threatened and coerced … to meet his sexual needs, defend his repute and conceal his conduct” – might have a more durable time wriggling away from the lengthy grasp of the legislation.
His public fame started muting final November, when three separate ladies filed lawsuits in opposition to Combs in a single week, among the allegations relationship again a long time. The actions have been taken earlier than the expiration of New York’s Grownup Survivors Act, which supplied a one-year window for the pursuit of litigation, no matter when the abuse occurred.
Most stunning have been the allegations made by his former accomplice of a decade, singer Casandra Ventura, identified professionally as Cassie and nearly 20 years Combs’ junior. The couple have been in a high-profile relationship for years till their 2018 breakup sparked a frenzy of headlines and gossip.
Combs settled the go well with inside a day – however not earlier than the publication of Cassie’s staggering allegations. Amongst them, the go well with claimed that Combs had raped her “in her own residence after she tried to depart him; Typically punched, beat, kicked and stomped on Ms. Ventura, leading to bruises, burst lips, black eyes and bleeding;” and launched her “to a life-style of extreme alcohol and substance abuse and required her to acquire illicit prescriptions to fulfill his personal addictions.”
However that was simply the tip of the iceberg. Cassie’s lawsuit shockingly claims Combs had one other rapper’s automotive blown up after studying the musician was romantically considering Cassie; compelled her to have interaction in intercourse acts with male intercourse employees in classes he known as “freak offs” whereas masturbating and filming the encounters; and demanded she “carry his firearm in her purse simply to make her uncomfortable and show how harmful he’s.”
Regardless of the settlement, Combs denied all wrongdoing outlined in Cassie’s filings and throughout the different lawsuits – although his authorized woes have been removed from over.
In February, former worker Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones filed a go well with accusing Combs of sexual harassment and threats. Weeks later, federal brokers raided Combs’ houses in Los Angeles and Miami — he wasn’t at residence on the time, though his sons have been.
Homeland Safety Investigations New York stated the March raid was a part of an ongoing investigation however didn’t elaborate on the time; the mogul’s legal professionals known as the raids a “gross overuse of army degree power.”
Tuesday’s indictment, nonetheless, revealed a few of what authorities recovered in these raids: narcotics, three AR-15s with “defaced serial numbers,” ammunition, a drum journal” and proof aligning with the “freak offs” so graphically outlined in Cassie’s lawsuit.
Additionally recovered have been “greater than 1,000 bottles of child oil and lubricant,” in accordance with the indictment, which alleges that Combs “subjected victims to bodily, emotional, and verbal abuse to trigger the victims to have interaction in Freak Offs.
“Combs maintained management over his victims via, amongst different issues, bodily violence, guarantees of profession alternatives, granting and threatening to withhold monetary help, and by different coercive means, together with monitoring their whereabouts, dictating the victims’ look, monitoring their medical information, controlling their housing, and supplying them with managed substances.”
The day after the raid, authorities arrested a 25-year-old former faculty basketball participant, Brendan Paul, who’d been named in ‘Lil Rod’ Jones’ court docket filings as an alleged drug mule for the celebrity.
Then, in Could, CNN printed CCTV footage that it had obtained from March 2016 displaying Combs chasing Cassie down the hall of a Los Angeles resort earlier than punching and kicking her close to the elevators.
When confronted with that proof, Combs lastly apologized – calling his habits “inexcusable” in a social media submit, claiming to take “full accountability for his actions within the video” and asking “God for his mercy and beauty.” He stated he sought skilled assist and went to remedy and rehab within the aftermath of the 2016 incident.
“It’s so troublesome to replicate on the darkest occasions in your life, however generally you bought to try this,” he stated in a social media submit. ”I used to be f***ed up – I hit all-time low – however I make no excuses. My habits on that video is inexcusable.”
Combs had already stepped down as chairman of his tv firm, Revolt, however the violent footage was sounding the dying knell for another feathers in his cap. The month after its launch, Howard College – the historic black establishment he’d attended earlier than dropping out to pursue his music profession – revoked the honorary diploma it conferred ten years earlier, additionally returning Diddy’s donation cash and disbanding a scholarship program in his identify.
A decade after a humbled Combs stood proudly on the Howard commencement stage, accepting the diploma in entrance of family and friends, the college issued a assertion calling his habits within the video “so essentially incompatible with Howard College’s core values and beliefs that he’s deemed now not worthy to carry the establishment’s highest honor.”
The identical month, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams requested Combs to return the keys to town and rescinded the respect he’d bestowed not even one 12 months earlier, in September 2023, across the similar time the singer carried out on the VMAs and launched his newest studio album.
The mayor and metropolis fee of Miami Seashore additionally in June 2024 revoked honors and recognition – canceling Sean Diddy Combs Day, which had been applied on October 13 eight years earlier by town’s then-mayor. They decided the designation was “now not in concord with the Metropolis’s values of security, group well-being, and respect.”
Combs himself was laying low all through all of this. He was pictured trying stone-faced close to his Florida residence within the weeks after the March raid, however his most well-known – and notorious – look this 12 months was on that CCTV footage.
Till September, when courtroom sketches of Combs showing earlier than a New York choose usurped the extra iconic pictures of his bedazzled rapper life-style. Considered one of his raided houses, a 13-room mansion in Beverly Hills, is in the marketplace for $61.5m, put up on the market the week earlier than his arrest.
Combs is combating for his freedom, not simply his enterprise curiosity or his repute. And that battle suffered an incredible loss in November when a choose denied his request for bail for a 3rd time, ordering the rapper to stay in federal custody whereas awaiting trial on racketeering and intercourse trafficking expenses.
There’s been no phrase straight from remanded Combs. For all his bluster and bravado, he’s proven little interest in actual jail time up to now; when he was discovered not responsible in March 2001 of gun and bribery expenses, Combs was visibly shaking earlier than the decision was learn.
Legions of followers thronged the courtroom and past throughout that trial, which stemmed from a 1999 nightclub capturing that occurred whereas Combs was with Jennifer Lopez, each of them arguably on the peak of their fame.
Followers “threw open the home windows” of the courthouse upon his acquittal, chanting his identify and ‘Go away him alone,’” The New York Occasions reported on the time.
That was a special period, nonetheless, and a really totally different, nonetheless severe set of expenses; Diddy was years from being accused of directing a felony enterprise over a long time of drugging and assaulting ladies, leaving accidents that took weeks and months to heal.
This time, he’s dealing with a prosecution that represents him as being a felony mastermind who “used the Combs Enterprise, together with sure staff, to hold out, facilitate and canopy up his abuse and business intercourse. These staff – together with safety workers, family workers, private assistants and high-ranking supervisors – and different shut associates acted as Combs’ intermediaries, and their conduct was facilitated and assisted by Combs’ management of the Combs enterprise.”
The rapper orchestrated and continued to hold out a marketing campaign of terror in opposition to victims even after probably the most damning allegations got here out in opposition to him final 12 months, in accordance with the indictment.
“Combs and members and associates of the Enterprise pressured witnesses and victims, together with via tried bribery, to remain silent and never report what they skilled or knew to legislation enforcement,” it states.
Nonetheless, although, the investigation continued, gathering sufficient proof in opposition to the impresario to land him in custody for what now appears to be an indeterminate period of time.
Combs’ legal professional, Marc Agnifilo, on Tuesday insisted his shopper was “an harmless man with nothing to cover.”
“Mr Combs is a fighter, he’s going to combat this to the tip,” Agnifilo stated outdoors of the federal courthouse.
Twenty-three years in the past, Combs was celebrating the continued success of his launch Dangerous Boy for Life and his third studio album, The Saga Continues.
Maybe each titles marked one other trace of honesty from Combs – and greater than somewhat little bit of foreshadowing.
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The Impartial
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Sheila Flynn , 2024-12-09 11:34:00
