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The most trustworthy factor Sean Combs might have ever executed was title his document 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” conduct in the course of the intervening many years, in response to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. As a substitute, it expenses, he’s been the veritable architect and chief of a “prison 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 collection of damning lawsuits final 12 months, that first revealed the rising cracks within the veneer of Combs’ carefully-curated fame. He strenuously denied all wrongdoing. However the filings have been shortly 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 lodge of then-girlfriend Cassie– essentially 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 fame 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 just accept the International Icon Award on the VMAs – he’s been arrested for a litany of jaw-dropping alleged offenses that embody violent crimes in opposition to girls. He was taken into custody within the foyer of a Manhattan lodge, 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 vogue and his legendary Labor Day Hamptons White Events.
Every little 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 all the pieces from unlawful gun possession to deadly live performance stampedes. However the Combs depicted within the indictment – one who “abused, threatened and coerced … to satisfy his sexual wishes, defend his fame and conceal his conduct” – might have a tougher time wriggling away from the lengthy grasp of the regulation.
His public fame started muting final November, when three separate girls filed lawsuits in opposition to Combs in a single week, among the allegations courting again many years. The actions have been taken earlier than the expiration of New York’s Grownup Survivors Act, which offered a one-year window for the pursuit of litigation, no matter when the abuse occurred.
Most surprising have been the allegations made by his former associate of a decade, singer Casandra Ventura, identified professionally as Cassie and virtually 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 go away 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 obtain 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 automobile blown up after studying the musician was romantically desirous about Cassie; compelled her to have interaction in intercourse acts with male intercourse staff in periods he referred to 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 inside 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 house 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 referred to as the raids a “gross overuse of navy stage pressure.”
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 response to 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 by, 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 data, controlling their housing, and supplying them with managed substances.”
The day after the raid, authorities arrested a 25-year-old former school 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 revealed CCTV footage that it had obtained from March 2016 displaying Combs chasing Cassie down the hall of a Los Angeles lodge earlier than punching and kicking her close to the elevators.
When confronted with that proof, Combs lastly apologized – calling his conduct “inexcusable” in a social media put up, claiming to take “full duty for his actions within the video” and asking “God for his mercy and style.” He stated he sought skilled assist and went to remedy and rehab within the aftermath of the 2016 incident.
“It’s so tough to mirror on the darkest occasions in your life, however typically you bought to do this,” he stated in a social media put up. ”I used to be f***ed up – I hit all-time low – however I make no excuses. My conduct 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 title.
A decade after a humbled Combs stood proudly on the Howard commencement stage, accepting the diploma in entrance of family and friends, the varsity issued a assertion calling his conduct 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 distinction he’d bestowed not even one 12 months earlier, in September 2023, across the identical 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 carried out 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 house 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 decide usurped the extra iconic photographs of his bedazzled rapper way of life. Certainly 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 fame. And that battle suffered a terrific loss in November when a decide 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 immediately from remanded Combs. For all his bluster and bravado, he’s proven no real interest in actual jail time previously; 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 taking pictures that occurred whereas Combs was with Jennifer Lopez, each of them arguably on the top of their fame.
Followers “threw open the home windows” of the courthouse upon his acquittal, chanting his title and ‘Depart him alone,’” The New York Instances reported on the time.
That was a unique period, nonetheless, and a really completely different, nonetheless critical set of expenses; Diddy was years from being accused of directing a prison enterprise over many years of drugging and assaulting girls, leaving accidents that took weeks and months to heal.
This time, he’s going through a prosecution that represents him as being a prison mastermind who “used the Combs Enterprise, together with sure workers, to hold out, facilitate and canopy up his abuse and business intercourse. These workers – 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 essentially the most damning allegations got here out in opposition to him final 12 months, in response to the indictment.
“Combs and members and associates of the Enterprise pressured witnesses and victims, together with by tried bribery, to remain silent and never report what they skilled or knew to regulation enforcement,” it states.
Nonetheless, although, the investigation endured, 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’ lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, on Tuesday insisted his consumer was “an harmless man with nothing to cover.”
“Mr Combs is a fighter, he’s going to struggle this to the tip,” Agnifilo stated exterior 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 just a little little bit of foreshadowing.
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The Impartial
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Sheila Flynn , 2024-12-09 11:18:00
