Once the reigning host of lavish White Parties in the Hamptons, hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is now facing a damning fall from grace as federal prosecutors prepare to portray him not as a music icon but as a serial predator who used fame as a weapon to exploit and abuse women behind closed doors.
Opening Monday, the trial centers on shocking allegations that span more than two decades, accusing the Bad Boy Records founder of orchestrating drug-fueled orgies – referred to as “Freak Offs” – where women were coerced into sex acts with male workers while Combs filmed.
According to the indictment, Combs leveraged his industry power to manipulate and silence victims through violence and intimidation – choking, striking, kicking, and even dragging people by their hair. In one instance, prosecutors allege, he dangled a person from a balcony.
The case threatens to upend the legacy of one of hip-hop’s most influential figures as a growing number of witnesses step forward to expose what they claim was a culture of fear, control and exploitation.
Combs’ lawyers contend prosecutors are trying to police consensual sexual activity.
While Combs, 55, has acknowledged one episode of violence – the caught-on-camera beating of his former girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie – his lawyers say other allegations are false.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday at a federal courthouse in Manhattan. Testimony is likely to begin the following week.
If convicted on all charges – which include racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transporting people across state lines to engage in prostitution – Combs faces a possible sentence of decades in prison.
Although dozens of men and women have alleged in lawsuits that Combs abused them, this trial will focus on the claims of four women.
One of them is Cassie, who filed a lawsuit in late 2023 saying Combs had subjected her to years of abuse, including beatings and rape, after they met in 2005.
The Associated Press (AP) does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie – whose legal name is Casandra Ventura – did.
Her lawsuit, which offered the first public account of the Freak Offs described in the indictment, was settled in a day. Four months later, however, federal investigators raided Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami and confronted him at a private airport in Florida, seizing 96 electronic devices. They also found three AR-15-style rifles with defaced serial numbers.
The three-time Grammy winner was indicted last September. He has since been held in a federal jail in Brooklyn after judges ruled he would be a threat to intimidate witnesses and victims if released.
The 17-page indictment accuses Combs of using employees from his various business ventures – including record labels, a recording studio, an apparel line, an alcoholic spirits company, a marketing agency, a television network and a media company – to facilitate his crimes, which included kidnapping, arson and bribery.
Prosecutors plan to show jurors travel records, text messages, emails, hotel records and videos to support testimony and their claims about what they call “Freak Off activity.”
Jurors will also see security camera footage showing Combs punching, kicking and then dragging Cassie in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
After the video aired on CNN last year, Combs apologized, saying, “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”
Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said at a bail hearing that Combs wrote “a very large check” to Cassie after she filed her lawsuit. The lawyer said the payout motivated others to come forward with false claims.
Agnifilo said Combs was “not a perfect person” and acknowledged drug use and toxic relationships, but said the rapper was undergoing therapy before his arrest.
He said Cassie and Combs were in a 10-year relationship that was “very loving at times” and that they sometimes chose to bring a third person into their intimacy.
“That was their thing,” he said. “It was a sought-after, special part of their relationship.”
The trial is not Combs’ first. In 2001, he was acquitted of bringing an illegal handgun into a crowded Manhattan dance club where three people were wounded by gunfire. A rapper in Combs’ entourage, Jamal Barrow, who performed under the name Shyne, was convicted in the shooting and served nearly nine years in prison.
At a pretrial conference Thursday, Combs confirmed to a judge that he turned down a plea offer that would have carried a lesser penalty than what he might face if convicted at trial.
Just before leaving the courtroom after the hearing, he defiantly shook his fist in the air.
