Combs, Sean

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      Sean Combs’s Legal Woes Are Growing. So Are His Streaming Numbers.

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      The embattled music mogul is facing federal sex trafficking charges and a slew of lawsuits. Curious listeners and fans are keeping his catalog in rotation.In the 11 months since the singer Cassie accused Sean Combs in a lawsuit of sexual assault and years of physical abuse, the mogul’s once-booming music career has largely fallen apart.His songs have vanished from radio playlists. He became a pariah at the Grammy Awards, where he once held court. And his business interests — including stakes in a media network and a popular liquor brand — have collapsed. At least 17 more lawsuits have been filed against Mr. Combs alleging misconduct, and last month, he was indicted in New York on federal charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty and is appealing his detention in a Brooklyn jail.But through it all, one part of Mr. Combs’s music business has remained steady, and even seen some growth: the popularity of his songs on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.Over the last year, as Mr. Combs, who is also known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, faced a drumbeat of negative stories in the news media — like the raids on his homes by federal agents in March, and a leaked security camera video in May that showed him brutally assaulting Cassie in a hotel in 2016 — the number of people who follow him on Spotify has steadily grown. That figure has climbed from about 1.5 million late last year to 1.8 million now, an increase of about 15 percent, according to Chartmetric, which tracks data from streaming music and social media.Recently the number of clicks for Mr. Combs’s songs have shot up dramatically. In the week before his arrest on Sept. 16, his catalog had about 3.2 million streams on services in the United States; in the weeks following, that figure rose about 50 percent to 4.8 million, according to Luminate, which supplies the data for Billboard’s charts. (In the most recent chart week, the number dipped a bit to 4.3 million.) On social media, Mr. Combs’s follower count has fluctuated, depending on the platform, but support on TikTok has been strong, where the hashtag #FreeDiddy has 12,000 uses.In the music business, this has become a familiar phenomenon of the streaming era. A household-name star — like R. Kelly, Marilyn Manson or Michael Jackson — comes under harsh scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct, and may temporarily suffer in the broader cultural marketplace, but maintains steady streaming numbers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecutors Say Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Can’t ‘Pay His Way Out of Detention’

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      In a new filing, the government said the music mogul, who has proposed a sizable bail package as part of his bid to be released, should remain incarcerated.Federal prosecutors opposed Sean Combs’s bid for release from jail on Wednesday, asserting that the music mogul should not be allowed to use his wealth to set up a proposed bail release package that would include hiring a private security detail to guard him.Mr. Combs, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail ahead of his trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in May, has appealed a court’s decision to deny him bail, which was based in part on a finding that he posed a danger of witness tampering.His lawyers proposed an elaborate system — effectively a private version of house arrest — in which Mr. Combs would be monitored by security staffers at all hours, would have no access to phones or the internet and could only be visited by an approved list of guests. They suggested a bond set at $50 million.In their response to Mr. Combs’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the prosecutors pushed back on Mr. Combs’s argument for release.“The District Court rightly rejected Combs’s effort to pay his way out of detention,” the prosecution wrote, “when the record established that no set of conditions could ensure the safety of the community.”The government has accused Mr. Combs, 54, of running a “criminal enterprise” that wielded the mogul’s power in the entertainment industry to commit crimes, including coercing women to engage in sexual activity with male prostitutes in drug-fueled encounters known as freak-offs. Lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty, have denied the charges, asserting that any sexual activity involved consenting adults.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Faces 6 Lawsuits From Lawyer With a Hotline

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      The Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee filed suits in New York with new allegations of rape and sexual assault from 1995 to 2021. Mr. Combs denied the accusations.The embattled music mogul Sean Combs is facing six more sexual assault lawsuits in New York, including one from a man who accused Mr. Combs of groping his genitals when he was 16, in what a team of lawyers say are the first filings from dozens of plaintiffs.The lawsuits, filed on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, also accuse Mr. Combs of raping two men and two women and forcing another man to perform oral sex in allegations that span from 1995 to 2021. All of the claims were filed anonymously.The filings further intensify the legal troubles facing Mr. Combs, the longtime record executive and performer known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, as he awaits a trial for federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a Brooklyn jail. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers said in a statement in response to the new lawsuits that “Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”The new lawsuits were brought by a personal injury lawyer in Houston, Tony Buzbee, who has used Instagram and a widely publicized news conference to solicit clients. Mr. Buzbee detailed the scope of his work at the news conference this month, where he spoke in front of a backdrop displaying a large red hotline number that people with claims against Mr. Combs could call.“After the indictment of Sean Combs and the announcement that we were pursuing these claims, the floodgates opened,” Mr. Buzbee said at the news conference.In one of the lawsuits filed on Monday, a plaintiff recounts a 1998 encounter with Mr. Combs at one of the entertainer’s famous White Parties at his mansion in the Hamptons. The suit says the plaintiff, who was 16 at the time, bumped into Mr. Combs and shared his dreams of “becoming a star,” after which Mr. Combs told him that he needed to drop his pants. When the plaintiff complied, the suit says, Mr. Combs grabbed and squeezed his genitals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Is Set for May 5

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      The music mogul, wearing tan jail clothes at a court hearing, waved and smiled at six of his children and his mother in the gallery.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul, is scheduled to stand trial next May in New York, a federal judge said at a hearing on Thursday.Judge Arun Subramanian of Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, who was recently assigned to the case, set May 5 as the start of Mr. Combs’s trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.Mr. Combs, 54, has been held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn for the past three weeks after being arrested at a New York hotel and then twice denied bail. He will remain in jail until the trial, pending another appeal that his lawyers filed this week.Mr. Combs was present at the hearing on Thursday. Wearing tan jail clothes, he walked into the courtroom waving and smiling at his family assembled in the gallery, including his mother and six of his children, and he embraced some of his lawyers.The hearing had been set as a routine scheduling matter. But it came one day after Mr. Combs’s lawyers filed a motion in which they accused government agents of leaking footage of Mr. Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie to CNN. Without citing direct evidence, the lawyers theorized in court papers that the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that raided Mr. Combs’s homes in March, had been behind the leak. They said they might ask for the video to be barred as evidence at the trial.Emily A. Johnson, one of the prosecutors, commented briefly at the hearing about the defense’s accusation of leaks, saying, “The government believes the motion is baseless and it is simply a means to exclude a damning piece of evidence.” She said the government would be filing a response to the defense’s motion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking Cassie Assault Video

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      The hip-hop mogul’s legal team said in a filing on Wednesday that it may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Lawyers for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is battling federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, accused the government on Wednesday of leaking hotel surveillance footage of him brutally beating his former girlfriend to CNN, saying that they may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that the video — which shows Mr. Combs assaulting the singer Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 — is a key piece of evidence in their case. The surveillance footage was published by CNN in May, prompting Mr. Combs to apologize publicly for “inexcusable” behavior.It has never been clear how the footage made its way to the news organization, but in the court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty and has vehemently denied the criminal charges, accused the Department of Homeland Security, which executed raids of the defendant’s homes in March, of being responsible for the leak.“The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,” the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, wrote.The court filing cited a federal rule of criminal procedure that prohibits prosecutors or government agents from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.The lawyers did not cite direct evidence that Homeland Security officials had leaked the tape. But they accused the agency of a series of leaks, including in anonymous comments to The New York Post, that they said “all but ensured” that the grand jury and a potential trial jury would be tainted. The lawyers asked for a hearing to determine the government’s culpability in the leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seeking Release on Bail, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Downplays Risk of Witness Tampering

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      In an appeal, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that a judge’s decision to withhold bail was not based on evidence that he had sought to interfere with the sex trafficking investigation.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge’s decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.Mr. Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.In their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.The lawyers, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Mr. Combs’s decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government’s custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.“Mr. Combs is presumed innocent,” they wrote in the filing. “He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into “highly orchestrated” sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Cases Against Sean Combs

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLast month Sean Combs — the hip-hop mogul known alternately as Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy and Love — was arrested on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty.The indictment was a striking fall from grace seemingly put in motion approximately a year prior, when one of his ex-girlfriends, the singer Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of rape and physical abuse. (That case was settled in one day.) A lawsuit filed in late September is the eighth over the past year by a woman accusing Combs of sexual assault; three other lawsuits have made allegations of sexual misconduct.On this week’s Popcast, a discussion of Combs’s criminal and civil cases, the role of the court of public opinion, and how the entertainment press covers morally complicated figures.Guests:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music business reporterJulia Jacobs, culture reporter for The New York TimesJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Soon, you’ll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don’t miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts. More

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      Lawyers for a Sean Combs Accuser Ask to Withdraw From Her Case

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      A dispute between Adria English, who has accused Mr. Combs of sexual misconduct, and her lawyers is the latest twist in the civil litigation the music mogul is facing.Lawyers for a woman who accused Sean Combs of plying her with drugs at his famous White Parties and commanding her to have sex with guests are seeking to withdraw from representing her, writing in court papers that she had displayed “undermining behavior and questionable antics.”The plaintiff, Adria English, sued Mr. Combs in July, alleging that as an employee who worked at the parties in the Hamptons and Miami in the mid-to-late 2000s, she had been “groomed” into being sex trafficked and had been given ecstasy-laced liquor.The lawsuit is one of a dozen sexual misconduct suits that have been filed against Mr. Combs over the past year. He is also facing a federal criminal case and was indicted last month on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.In their court filing, lawyers for Ms. English, Ariel Mitchell-Kidd and Steven A. Metcalf, told a judge in federal court in Manhattan that “irreconcilable differences” had developed with their client.“As a result of a fundamental disagreement between Attorneys and Plaintiff regarding almost every aspect of the litigation,” the filing says, “including settlement demands, causes of actions in the pleadings and Plaintiff’s undermining behavior and questionable antics an irreconcilable conflict and tension has developed between Plaintiff and Attorneys.”Ms. Mitchell-Kidd said in a text message response to questions on Thursday, “I never lost faith in her case, just in her.”“Her case is great,” she added. “My issue was with her undermining my work and going behind my back doing things incongruent to advancing her case.”In a phone interview on Thursday, Ms. English — who reported her claims to the police in Miami Beach, Fla., after filing her lawsuit — said she was seeking new counsel. She said she had clashed with Ms. Mitchell-Kidd repeatedly, including over a demand from the lawyer that Ms. English not speak to the media.“I’m the client; you work for me,” Ms. English said to describe her perspective.Mr. Combs, who is currently detained in a Brooklyn jail after a judge ordered him held until trial, has denied sexually assaulting or sex trafficking anyone. In a statement on Wednesday, his representatives called Ms. English’s claims “fabricated.”“As we’ve said from the start, anyone can file a lawsuit without proof — and this case is a clear example of that,” the statement said. “Adria English escalated things by filing false police reports and making baseless claims, using high-profile events as a backdrop to harm innocent people.”Mr. Combs’s legal team has been defending him against a mounting pile of lawsuits since the indictment was brought in September and lawyers in Texas have said they are preparing suits on behalf of multiple accusers who have reached out to them with accounts of misconduct. More