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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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      Drugs, Sex, Baby Oil: The ‘Freak-Offs’ at the Core of Sean Combs’s Troubles

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      Prosecutors say the sexual encounters in hotel rooms were coercive and abusive and are the heart of their sex trafficking case. The music mogul’s lawyers call them consensual.A woman and a male prostitute gather for sex in a luxury hotel suite that, in the government’s telling, has been lit for filming and stocked with baby oil and drugs. Another man watches and sometimes captures the events on video. These sexual marathons, complete with a cleanup staff, sometimes went on for days.To the people involved, they were known as “freak-offs.”The 14-page federal criminal indictment of Sean Combs, the music mogul known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, accuses him of participating in many crimes including arson, bribery, kidnapping and obstruction of justice. But the heart of the government’s case is the premise that the criminal “enterprise” he ran as an alleged racketeer was responsible for coordinating these “freak-offs,” and then covering up any damage to hotel rooms, or people, when they were over.In the government’s portrayal, they were horror shows — “elaborate and produced sex performances,” according to the indictment — that involved copious drug use and coerced sex, leaving participants so exhausted and drained that they were given fluids intravenously to recover. Then, the government said, Mr. Combs weaponized the videos he had shot to keep any participants from complaining.“Freak-off activity is the core of this case, and freak-offs are inherently dangerous,” Emily A. Johnson, one of the prosecutors, said at a hearing last week.The government’s depiction closely mirrors allegations made by the singer Cassie in a bombshell civil suit she filed last fall against Mr. Combs, her former boyfriend. The indictment attaches no name to its account of the freak-offs, instead referring only anonymously to a “Victim-1.”Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, said in her lawsuit that Mr. Combs directed frequent “freak-offs” at high-end hotels around the country, directing her at the events to pour “excessive” amounts of oil on herself and telling her where to touch the prostitutes while he filmed and masturbated.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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      My Working Relationship With Diddy in the Music Industry

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      A thing happened between Sean Combs and me. Unlike what he has been accused of over the last eight months, what occurred between us was not sexual. It was professional — demonstrative of the way dynamic and domineering men moved in our heyday. Combs and I worked together a lot. Competed, in our way. So often I thought I came out on top. I was mistaken. I had reason to fear for my life. What happened was insidious. It broke my brain. I forgot the worst of it for 27 years.It was July 1997. In the fading smoke of the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., I was named editor in chief of a music magazine called Vibe. Started by Quincy Jones and Time Inc. in 1992, the magazine chronicled Black music and culture with rigor and beauty, 10 issues a year, for an audience that was relentlessly underserved. When I took over, we thought hip-hop might have died with our heroes, and we were determined not only to keep it alive but also to give it the cultural credit it was due.Hip-hop was both in mourning and in marketing meetings. Combs, Biggie’s creative partner and label boss, was the personification of this dichotomy. His Bad Boy Records was having a $100 million year — much due to the work of Biggie and Mase, as well as Combs’s own debut album, “No Way Out,” which was anchored by the blockbuster Biggie tribute “I’ll Be Missing You” featuring Faith Evans. Other singles, “It’s All About the Benjamins” and “Been Around the World,” functioned as a score for hip-hop’s megawatt moment — its commercial evolution and international expansion. (“No Way Out” would go on to sell over seven million copies.) So I wanted Combs on the cover of Vibe’s December 1997/January 1998 double issue. And I wanted him to wear white feathered wings.Faith Evans and Sean Combs filming the 1997 video for “I’ll Be Missing You,” in memory of the Notorious B.I.G., Evans’s husband. Mychal Watts/Associated PressMy point of reference was the poster for “Heaven Can Wait,” a 1978 film starring Warren Beatty. The movie is about a quarterback who dies before his time and is reincarnated as an idiosyncratic and callous billionaire. Vibe’s working cover line for Sacha Jenkins’s article was “The Good, the Bad and the Puffy.” Not so elegant, but it would work if the fashion director Emil Wilbekin and I got Combs (then known as Puffy, or Puff Daddy) to put on the angel wings. And if we also got a shot that looked even slightly mischievous, we could do a split run of the cover — one with heavenly signifiers and another with hellish ones. Possible cover line: “Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Whatcha Gonna Do?”The photo shoot took place in Manhattan in September 1997. I had probably said hello to Combs at an event, but the shoot was the first time I was around him for an extended period. Either it was a crowded set or I just felt claustrophobic. I wore yoga pants and an oversize T-shirt. I remember wanting to minimize my bust more than my bra was already doing. I remember cajoling. And I remember knowing that as a Black woman, I was in a no-win situation: to fail was to live up to my male bosses’ low expectations, and to succeed was to invite their resentment. That day, Combs was begrudgingly compliant. We finally got him to shrug on the white feathered wings.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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      Howard University Votes to Revoke Sean Combs’s Honorary Degree

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      In a unanimous decision, the university’s board of trustees also moved to disband a scholarship in Mr. Combs’s name amid investigations into abuse allegations.Howard University announced on Friday that it would revoke an honorary degree that was awarded to the hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2014. The decision comes in the wake of Mr. Combs’s admission that he physically abused a former girlfriend, in addition to a slew of other allegations of abuse that have surfaced in recent months.At the conclusion of a meeting of the Howard University board of trustees, the body voted unanimously “to accept the return by Mr. Sean Combs of the honorary degree,” according to a statement released by the university. Howard also said that it would revoke all honors and privileges associated with the degree.Mr. Combs, 54, also known as “Puff” and “Diddy,” attended the university from 1987 to 1989 but left before graduating. In 2016, he pledged $1 million to establish the Sean Combs Scholarship Fund, which went to students in need of financial aid.Video footage surfaced last month of Mr. Combs striking, kicking and dragging his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known professionally as Cassie, in 2016.“Mr. Combs’s behavior as captured in a recently released video is so fundamentally incompatible with Howard University’s core values and beliefs that he is deemed no longer worthy to hold the institution’s highest honor,” the statement said.Howard University did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment.In November 2023, Ms. Ventura filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Combs of rape and physical abuse; they reached a settlement the next day. Then, in May, CNN published surveillance footage it had acquired from a Los Angeles hotel that showed Mr. Combs attacking Ms. Ventura near the building’s elevators.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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      Cassie After Sean Combs Assault Footage: ‘Open Your Heart to Believing Victims’

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      The singer, who sued the hip-hop mogul over allegations of rape and abuse, posted a statement after 2016 video emerged last week showing him assaulting her in a hotel.Cassie, the singer who accused Sean Combs of years of physical and sexual abuse in a lawsuit that she settled, on Thursday addressed footage of the music mogul assaulting her that emerged last week, saying in an Instagram post that domestic violence had broken her down to “someone I never thought I would become.”“Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to take this matter seriously,” the singer, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, wrote in the post. “My only ask is that EVERYONE open your heart to believing victims the first time. It takes a lot of heart to tell the truth out of a situation that you were powerless in.”It is the first time that Ms. Ventura has spoken publicly about her accusations against Mr. Combs, whom she dated for about a decade, since her lawsuit was filed last November and settled in one day. Since then, as Mr. Combs has faced a cascade of legal troubles, Ms. Ventura has spoken about her claims only through her lawyer, who released a statement calling the footage of the assault “gut-wrenching” when it was published by CNN last week.In the footage from 2016, which appeared to come from security cameras, Ms. Ventura is seen waiting for an elevator in a hotel when Mr. Combs, wearing a towel, grabs the back of her sweatshirt and throws her to the ground, kicking her twice before dragging her down the hallway away from the elevators. The video corroborates some of the details from Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, which recalls Mr. Combs assaulting her at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016 as she tried to leave.Although his lawyer denied the allegations in the lawsuit at the time, Mr. Combs released an apology video following the release of the footage, saying that he took “full responsibility” for his actions and that he had since been to therapy and rehab.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 Combs Accused of Sexual Assault in New Lawsuit

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      A former model sued the hip-hop mogul and accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex in 2003 at his recording studio. Mr. Combs has not yet responded.A former model filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs of forcing her to perform oral sex on him at his New York City recording studio in 2003.In the complaint, Crystal McKinney says that when she was 22, an unnamed fashion designer invited her to attend a Men’s Fashion Week event at a restaurant in Manhattan, where she met Mr. Combs, who was a well-known record label impresario and host of the MTV reality show “Making the Band.”Later that night, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Combs invited her to his recording studio, where Ms. McKinney says she was given alcohol and marijuana that she later came to believe was laced. She says Mr. Combs led her to the bathroom, shoved her head down to his crotch and, after she refused, forced her to perform oral sex on him. Soon after, the lawsuit says, she lost consciousness, later awakening in a cab and realizing that she had been sexually assaulted.Representatives for Mr. Combs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.Mr. Combs, 54, has been facing deepening legal troubles since his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him last year in which she accused him of sexually and physically abusing her for years. The lawsuit was settled in one day, but three more suits followed from women who accused him of rape. In March, two of Mr. Combs’s homes were raided as part of an investigation that officials said is at least in part a human trafficking inquiry.The producer and businessman, who is known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, has called the allegations against him false and “sickening,” and he has described the plaintiffs as looking for “a quick payday.”Mr. Combs’s conduct has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after CNN published footage from 2016 in which he is seen striking, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura, corroborating part of her lawsuit filed last year. On Sunday, he apologized, saying in a video posted to Instagram, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.”Ms. McKinney, who filed her lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said learning of the other lawsuits against Mr. Combs led her to file her own. Because the allegations are more than two decades old, which is outside the statute of limitations, the lawsuit is bringing the claim under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which, for a limited period of time, allows accusers to file civil complaints involving claims after the statute of limitations has run out.A lawyer representing Mr. Combs, Jonathan Davis, argued in a separate assault lawsuit that the gender violence act should not be used to allow such suits to go forward because another state law specifically extending the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired. More

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      Sean Combs Apologizes After Video Shows Him Assaulting Cassie

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      After footage surfaced of Mr. Combs striking, kicking and dragging Cassie, he apologized on social media, saying that “my behavior on that video is inexcusable.”Two days after CNN published video footage showing him striking, kicking and dragging his former girlfriend, Sean Combs posted a video on social media on Sunday calling his behavior “inexcusable.”The footage that surfaced on Friday showed Mr. Combs, the hip-hop mogul known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, kicking and dragging his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, in 2016.Last year Ms. Ventura filed and then quickly settled a lawsuit against Mr. Combs accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. The footage shown Friday, which appeared to come from security cameras, was consistent with some of the allegations in her lawsuit, which accused Mr. Combs of assaulting her at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016 as she tried to leave.“It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that,” Mr. Combs said in his apology video, which he posted to Instagram. “I hit rock bottom — but I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”A lawyer for Mr. Combs had previously denied the allegations in Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit. In a statement following the suit, which was filed in November, the lawyer said that Combs “vehemently denies these offensive and outrageous allegations.” The next day, Mr. Combs said, “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably.”In her lawsuit, Ms. Ventura accused Mr. Combs of forcing her to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him in encounters that he called “freak offs,” which she said he instructed her to arrange. Her court filing said that the 2016 assault took place after a freak off during which she said Mr. Combs “became extremely intoxicated and punched Ms. Ventura in the face, giving her a black eye.” Ms. Ventura tried to leave the hotel room after Mr. Combs fell asleep, the lawsuit said, but he awoke and began screaming, following her down the hallway and picking up glass vases and throwing them at her.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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      Video Shows Sean Combs Assaulting Cassie in a Hotel in 2016

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      The footage published by CNN shows Mr. Combs striking and kicking the singer when she was his girlfriend. They settled a lawsuit last year after she accused him of abuse.Hotel surveillance footage published by CNN on Friday showed Sean Combs physically assaulting and kicking Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, in a manner consistent with allegations she made against him in a lawsuit that she filed and settled last year.The video shows Mr. Combs, a hip-hop mogul known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, wearing a towel and confronting Ms. Ventura while she waits for an elevator. It shows him grabbing her and throwing her to the ground, kicking her twice, grabbing some of her possessions, and beginning to drag her down the hallway by her sweatshirt.Mr. Combs is also seen grabbing an object off a table and throwing it.A lawyer representing Ms. Ventura, Douglas H. Wigdor, confirmed that the woman being assaulted in the video is his client.“The gut-wrenching video has only further confirmed the disturbing and predatory behavior of Mr. Combs,” he said in a statement. “Words cannot express the courage and fortitude that Ms. Ventura has shown in coming forward to bring this to light.”A representative for Mr. Combs, who has not been criminally charged, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, she described an incident from 2016 at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in which Mr. Combs became “extremely intoxicated and punched Ms. Ventura in the face, giving her a black eye.” The lawsuit said that after Mr. Combs fell asleep, Ms. Ventura tried to leave the hotel room, but Mr. Combs woke up and followed her into the hallway.“He grabbed at her, and then took glass vases in the hallway and threw them at her, causing glass to crash around them as she ran to the elevator to escape,” the lawsuit said.Mr. Wigdor confirmed that the video footage corresponds to those allegations.Mr. Combs settled the suit with Ms. Ventura — an R&B singer known as Cassie, who had been signed to Mr. Combs’s record label — in one day in November, and denied any wrongdoing. Three suits by other women, each alleging rape, followed in quick succession, and in February a male music producer filed suit accusing Mr. Combs of unwanted sexual contact.Mr. Combs is facing a federal investigation, which officials said was at least in part a human trafficking inquiry. In March, federal agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla., and stopped him at a Miami-area airport, confiscating his electronic devices. Mr. Combs has vehemently denied the accusations in the civil suits, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.” His lawyers have sharply criticized how the raids — which involved agents from Homeland Security Investigations brandishing guns — were carried out, calling them a “gross overuse of military-level force.” More

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      Why Is Sean Combs the Subject of a Homeland Security Investigation?

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      The department has a division that often directs inquiries into sex trafficking allegations, like those cited in recent lawsuits against Mr. Combs.The raids of Sean Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and the Miami area this week raised a barrage of questions about the nature of the inquiry, which a federal official said was at least in part a human trafficking investigation.The government has said little about the basis for the search warrants, but the raids came after five civil lawsuits were filed against Mr. Combs in recent months that accused him of violating sex trafficking laws. In four of the suits women accused him of rape, and in one a man accused him of unwanted sexual contact. Mr. Combs, a hip-hop impresario known as Puff Daddy and Diddy who has been a high-profile figure in the music industry since the 1990s, has vehemently denied all of the allegations, calling them “sickening.” Officials have not publicly named him as a target of any prosecution.As the civil suits against Mr. Combs illustrate, the term human or sex trafficking has a broader meaning in the law than perhaps the more popularly understood image of organized crime and forced prostitution rings.“Traditionally you think of trafficking as a pimp who has a stable of victims and then is trafficking them in the traditional sense of the word, for money,” said Jim Cole, a former supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who oversaw human trafficking cases, “but there are lots of forms of trafficking.”The breadth of trafficking investigations has grown with the recent uptick in sexual abuse claims and the use of the internet by traffickers. Homeland Security Investigations often leads such criminal investigations, although the department is most commonly associated with immigration and transnational issues.In the current inquiry, federal investigators in New York have been interviewing potential witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Combs for several months, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Some of the questions involved the solicitation and transportation of prostitutes, as well as any payments or promises associated with sex acts, the person said.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