Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs’ was arrested in Manhattan on Monday evening after being indicted by a grand jury for racketeering and sex trafficking, months after the music mogul was hit with a series of civil sexual assault lawsuits—all of which he has denied.
Although 54-year-old Combs – aka Puff Daddy, aka Puffy, aka P. Diddy, Diddy and Love – has been orchestrating a lot more than just braggadocious “bad” behaviour during the intervening decades, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. Instead, it charges, that he’s been the veritable architect and leader of a “criminal enterprise” engaged in alleged arson, kidnapping, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice and sex trafficking.
It was that final accusation, laid out not in federal charging papers but in a series of damning lawsuits last year, that first revealed the growing cracks in the veneer of Combs’ carefully-curated reputation. He strenuously denied all wrongdoing. But a bicoastal raid on his properties quickly followed the filings amid a tight-lipped federal investigation, then the leaking of a violent video showing Diddy’s brutal beating at a hotel of then-girlfriend Cassie– the most high-profile victim to sue him.
Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, insisted on Tuesday that his client was “an innocent man with nothing to hide.”
“Mr Combs is a fighter, he’s going to fight this to the end,” Agnifilo said outside of the federal courthouse.
Twenty-three years ago, Combs was celebrating the continued success of his release Bad Boy for Life and his third studio album, The Saga Continues.
Perhaps both titles marked another hint of honesty from Combs – and more than a little bit of foreshadowing.
Arrest timeline
September 17: A federal court in Manhattan unseals charges against Combs for racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, alleging he “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.”
September 16 : Combs is arrested in Manhattan after being indicted by a grand jury.
May 29 : Federal investigators may bring Combs’ accusers to testify before a grand jury soon and investigators have already interviewed most plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against the rapper, sources told CNN—a move that could indicate prosecutors are looking to charge somebody, though no charges have been filed yet.
May 24 Plaintiff April Lampros accuses Combs in a lawsuit filed in New York on Thursday of sexual assault over four “terrifying sexual encounters” between 1995 and 2001, including three incidents of rape and one instance of Combs forcing her to take ecstasy.
May 22: Former model Crystal McKinney files a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court accusing the rapper of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his New York recording studio in 2003.
May 19 : Cassie Ventura, Combs’ ex-girlfriend, speaks out after CNN obtained a 2016 video of Combs attacking her in a hotel hallway, stating on Instagram Thursday morning that domestic violence “broke” her and she will “always be recovering” from her past—Combs later apologized for the video.
February 26 :In February, producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones sues the rapper in New York in February and alleges he was “subjected to unwanted advances by associates of Diddy at his direction” and was forced to engage in relations with sex workers he hired. In a set of widely covered allegations, Jones says in the lawsuit that Combs regularly hosted “sex-trafficking parties” with underage women and illegal drugs, and implies record label executives who looked the other way financially benefited from access to celebrities and dignitaries like the British royal Prince Harry, who is not accused of any wrongdoing or of attending parties himself (Combs’ attorney tells the Los Angeles Times the suit includes “reckless name-dropping about events that are pure fiction”).
December 6: Combs is hit with another sexual assault suit in December, accusing the rapper of drugging and participating in a gang rape of the unnamed woman in 2003, when the accuser was 17 years old.
November 23: A woman named Joie Dickerson-Neal alleges in a lawsuit Combs drugged her, sexually assaulted her and secretly recorded the assault while she was a college student in 1991.
November 23 : An anonymous plaintiff accuses Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall of raping her and a friend in 1990 or 1991 after meeting at an MCA Records event in New York—a suit that, like the Dickerson-Neal complaint, was filed shortly before the expiration of a New York law temporarily allowing lawsuits for older assault allegations that would ordinarily be past the statute of limitations.
November 17 : Ventura’s $30 million suit is settled the day after it was filed for an undisclosed amount, with Ventura telling CNN she chose to “resolve this matter amicably,” while Combs’ attorney says the settlement was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing” and didn’t change his denial of the allegations.
November 16 : Cassie Ventura files the suit against Combs, alleging he raped her in 2018 and subjected her to a years-long abusive relationship that included physical abuse and his assertion of “complete control” over her personal and professional life.