Over the previous yr and a half, I’ve saved discovering myself in sudden conversations about Diddy. Cab drivers, deli cooks, and far-flung uncles have all needed to speak in regards to the 55-year-old rapper who’s now on trial for costs of intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to interact in prostitution. There may be, actually, a lot to speak about: Federal prosecutors allege that the media mogul preferred to throw baby-oil-slicked orgies—referred to as “freak-offs”—the place abuse and exploitation recurrently occurred. (He pleaded not responsible; his legal professionals say he by no means coerced anybody into something.) However the conversations are typically much less about Sean “Diddy” Combs than about enjoying a guessing recreation: Who else was concerned?
A number of the individuals I’ve spoken with had theories about Justin Bieber, citing rumors suggesting that the singer—a teenage protégé of Diddy’s—had been preyed upon (“Justin isn’t amongst Sean Combs’ victims,” Bieber’s consultant stated in an announcement final month). Others speculated that the Democratic Social gathering, whose candidates Combs has campaigned for over time, was not directly implicated within the case. Most of them agreed that Diddy was similar to Jeffrey Epstein in that he was most likely on the hub of a star sex-crime ring.
Because the trial started a couple of weeks in the past, it’s develop into clear what these conversations had been: distractions from the grim, all-too-ordinary points that this case is de facto about.
The wild nature of the conspiracist narratives surrounding Combs can’t be understated. In January, social-media customers questioned if the fires that swept via glitzy L.A. neighborhoods had been meant to destroy proof pointing to the participation of different celebrities. On Amazon final yr, gross sales spiked for a salacious memoir purportedly written by the rapper’s late girlfriend, Kimberly Porter, and revealed by a self-described investigative journalist utilizing the pseudonym Jamal T. Millwood—the latter being the supposed alias that Tupac used after he, in line with legend, faked his demise. (Amazon pulled the ebook from its choices after Porter’s household lambasted it as a forgery.) One viral faux information story, based mostly on no proof in any respect, stated that Will Smith had offered one in every of his kids into Combs’s servitude. On Fact Social final fall, Donald Trump himself shared a meme that includes a fabricated picture of Kamala Harris and Diddy, with textual content studying, “Madam vp, have you ever ever been concerned with or engaged in one in every of Puff Daddies freak offs?”
The media additionally stoked the fervor. A former bodyguard of Combs’s gave an interview for a TMZ documentary saying that politicians, princes, and preachers had been blended up within the rapper’s debauchery. The conservative influencer Charlie Kirk devoted a portion of 1 webcast to questioning, “Possibly P. Diddy has footage of Barack Obama doing one thing he shouldn’t have been doing?” Piers Morgan hosted a singer, Jaguar Wright, who insinuated that Jay-Z and Beyoncé had dedicated crimes very like those Diddy is charged with. After these stars issued a vigorous denial and threatened to sue, Morgan apologized and edited any point out of them out of the interview on-line—after which, in February, retired Common Michael Flynn offered Wright with a “Defender of Freedom Award” at Mar-a-Lago.
Just a few precise information underlay all of this QAnon-esque hypothesis. For greater than a decade, Combs’s legendary White Events attracted a medley of stars to the Hamptons, Los Angeles, and Saint-Tropez. Attendees typically joked publicly about how rowdy the festivities may get. Over the previous yr or so, dozens of individuals—an array of musicians, staff, fashions, and others who’ve crossed paths with him because the Nineteen Nineties—have sued Combs for quite a lot of offenses (all of which he denies), and a few of these fits have alluded to alleged misdeeds by different celebrities. (One lawsuit naming Jay-Z was dropped after the star denied the declare; he has since countersued for defamation.)
Nonetheless, the pace and sheer giddiness with which conspiracist pondering eclipsed the recognized particulars of Combs’s case confirmed a couple of bleak realities in regards to the psyche of a rustic by which financial inequality and sexual abuse are each stubbornly endemic. An entire class of politicians, commentators, and media platforms exist to take advantage of the resentments that on a regular basis individuals maintain towards the wealthy and well-known. In the meantime, charges of sexual harassment and assault—reportedly skilled by 82 % of ladies and 42 % of males in the US of their lifetime—stay as excessive as they had been when the #MeToo motion erupted in 2017. Inspecting the actual causes for that is much less enjoyable—and, for a lot of, much less worthwhile—than imagining that Hollywood is a entrance for ritualistic sadism.
The trial itself, which started in Manhattan on Might 12, has not but revealed a community of super-famous evildoers. Though the testimony has surfaced vivid and weird particulars in regards to the rarefied lives of celebrities, it’s additionally informed an intimate, human, oddly acquainted story about how energy can warp relationships in all types of the way. I spotted that within the random conversations I’d had main as much as the trial, I’d heard rather a lot in regards to the imagined villains, and little or no in regards to the individuals they had been stated to have harm.
Combs’s downfall within the public eye started in November 2023, when an ex-girlfriend, the singer Cassie Ventura, filed a lawsuit alleging that he had raped and bodily abused her. The swimsuit was settled in the future later out of courtroom, however a lot of its particulars are resurfacing now. Though the federal trial in opposition to Combs is anticipated to final a minimum of eight weeks and have dozens of witnesses, Diddy and Ventura’s relationship has been central to the testimony. Prosecutors say Combs ran an organized legal enterprise that served, partly, to help in and canopy up this one lady’s subjugation.
Ventura, now 38, was a 19-year-old aspiring R&B singer when she met Combs round 2005. He’d heard her first-ever single, “Me & U”; it might develop into a success, however Diddy promised that he may information her to a profession of lasting success. He signed her to a 10-album take care of his label, Dangerous Boy Information, and launched her debut album in 2006. It’s nonetheless her solely album to ever come out.
Their relationship quickly developed from skilled to romantic. The singer stated she’d initially rejected the rapper’s advances however that she’d felt pressured to do what he needed as a result of her profession was largely in his palms. He additionally reportedly offered her with items, threatened her with punishment, and equipped her with medication till she felt he managed her life. She stated that he then used that management liberally, dictating what she wore, whom she socialized with, which medicines she took.
He additionally beat her. Lodge security-camera footage from 2016 revealed by CNN final yr—and used as proof within the trial—confirmed Combs chasing Ventura down a hallway, throwing her to the bottom, kicking her, and pulling her by her sweatshirt. The video is a small and horrible glimpse into their relationship. Diddy is in a towel and clearly livid; Ventura, starkly alone, makes no effort to defend herself. “My habits on that video is inexcusable,” Combs stated in a filmed mea culpa final yr; in the course of the trial, his legal professionals have acknowledged that he was violent towards her.
Different witnesses within the trial have testified that the lodge assault was not an remoted incident. One former assistant, Capricorn Clark, reported seeing Combs repeatedly kick Ventura after studying that she’d been romantically concerned with the rapper Child Cudi. One other former assistant, George Kaplan, described a 2015 altercation between Combs and Ventura on Diddy’s personal jet. He heard the sound of breaking glass in a non-public space, the place he then noticed Combs standing and holding a whiskey glass over Ventura, who was on her again. In line with Kaplan, Ventura screamed, “Isn’t anyone seeing this?” Nobody on the aircraft intervened, Kaplan stated.
The now-notorious freak-offs allegedly occurred in opposition to this backdrop of violence and intimidation. Ventura’s lawsuit stated that towards the start of Combs and Ventura’s relationship, Combs employed a person to have intercourse with Ventura whereas Diddy watched. Encounters like that, involving intercourse staff and medicines, grew to become common occurrences that might final for days at a time. The freak-offs had been, prosecutors say, “performances” for Combs’s pleasure. And so they affected the performers; Ventura testified to having medical issues, mental-health points, and drug dependancy because of them.
Combs’s protection argues that Ventura willingly participated in these occasions. His legal professionals have cited textual content messages by which she seems to specific enthusiasm: “I’m at all times able to freak off,” she wrote to him in August 2009. Different texts recommend a extra difficult image—in 2017, Ventura wrote, “I really like our FOs once we each need it.” She and prosecutors assert that at any time when she tried to withstand Combs’s instructions, he would carry her to heel with bodily violence and threats of blackmail and monetary hurt. Ventura’s lawsuit alleged that when she tried to interrupt up with him for good in 2018, he raped her in her house (an accusation that Diddy’s protection has concertedly pushed again on in the course of the trial).
Ventura isn’t the one alleged sufferer of Combs’s. His workers have shared notably disturbing tales: Clark stated that Combs kidnapped her twice; a former assistant recognized as Mia testified final week that the rapper repeatedly sexually assaulted her. (Diddy’s legal professionals dispute that the kidnappings ever occurred and have questioned Mia’s credibility.) Prosecutors are pursuing racketeering costs on the idea that Combs didn’t act alone: For instance, they are saying he might have had somebody set Child Cudi’s automotive on hearth (the protection denies Combs’s involvement in that arson). On this means, Diddy’s case can be a narrative about what occurs when it’s simpler to take the test and never ask too many questions.
However basically, the trial is one other extremely public check of the definition of consent. It remembers the prosecutions of Harvey Weinstein, the film producer who allegedly dangled job prospects to ladies within the movie business in trade for intercourse (one in every of his convictions was overturned final yr and is being retried now). It additionally evokes R. Kelly, the musician who wooed aspiring singers with guarantees of profession assist after which violently saved them—and different ladies—in sexual servitude (habits for which he’s at present serving 31 years in jail).
And the problems right here transcend movie star. When #MeToo erupted eight years in the past, it compelled many on a regular basis People to reexamine experiences they’d had of their workplaces and houses. The motion has, by many indications, petered out and even curdled into backlash: Yesterday, one in every of Diddy’s legal professionals requested Mia whether or not she was searching for a “Me Too cash seize,” which suggests he thinks the very phrases Me Too could be tinged for some jury members. However to take a seat with the allegations in opposition to Combs—and the experiences of the alleged victims—is to once more be confronted with the underlying causes that motion occurred. It’s to be confronted with the insupportable issues that occur when males are given the ability to pursue their wishes nevertheless they need, and to extract no matter they need from their underlings.
Lots of people would evidently desire to show away from that confrontation—and to concentrate on fantasy. Since I began listening to the case, my YouTube algorithm has develop into polluted by movies with AI-generated courtroom sketches of stars equivalent to Will Smith and Jay-Z, paired with completely imaginary testimony about their involvement in Combs’s crimes. The movies are yet one more signal that our society is shedding any shared sense of actuality. They do, nevertheless, have disclaimers stipulating that they’re fiction, which raises the query: Why is this the story somebody needs to listen to?
Maybe as a result of tales of demonic Hollywood cabals provide a easy, clear-cut narrative that doesn’t ask us to replicate on how home violence and sexual coercion actually get perpetuated—and maybe as a result of that narrative advantages sure agendas. Final month, I tuned in to Asmongold, a well-liked Twitch streamer who interprets the day by day information for a big viewers of younger, typically aggrieved males. He had a glazed look in his eyes as TV information footage associated to the trial performed on his display. Then he stated, “I don’t care about this case in any respect—till Diddy begins naming names.”
