In November 2023, the singer Cassie (real name Cassandra Ventura) filed an explosive federal lawsuit against her former partner Sean “Diddy” Combs, claiming he had been physically and sexually abusive throughout their relationship. The complaint alleged that Combs’s abuse ranged from beating Ventura and forcing her to have sex with other men to raping her at her home in 2018. The rapper settled the lawsuit within a day. But since then, six more women and one man have sued Combs, accusing him of a wide range of abusive behavior including sexual harassment, rape, nonconsensual pornography, and sex trafficking. The situation escalated in March when federal agents raided Combs’s properties in Miami and Los Angeles, reportedly in connection to a federal sex-trafficking investigation.
Following the raids, Combs’s lawyer Aaron Dyer maintained that his client is “innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.” The music mogul has denied all of his accusers’ allegations. “I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” he said in December. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged.”
However, in May, CNN published graphic security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in a hotel back in 2016, which lines up closely with the allegations in her suit. Following the leak, Combs issued a video apology, saying, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.” Now, CNN reports that federal investigators are preparing to bring the allegations against Combs to a grand jury, suggesting the Department of Justice may seek an indictment. Here’s everything you need to know about the accusations against Combs.
Cassie alleged she was the victim of a pattern of “abuse, violence, and sex trafficking.”
Ventura sued under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave victims a onetime one-year window to sue their alleged sexual abusers and institutions even if the statute of limitations had run out. (The window expired in November.) She says she first met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. In the lawsuit, she alleges that Combs controlled nearly every aspect of her life, from her career to having access to her personal medical records. She claims he was frequently violent, physically abusing her “multiple times a year,” and that he often plied her with “copious amounts of drugs.”
The complaint also claims that Combs forced Ventura to have sex with male sex workers in different cities — encounters she says he watched, masturbated to, and recorded. The singer says she never went to the police because she was afraid that doing so “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.” She also alleges that, following a dinner in 2018, Combs forced himself into her apartment and raped her while she “repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.” Ventura says she ended the relationship for good afterward.
In her lawsuit, she referred to multiple witnesses who saw the abuse take place. One of them is her friend, singer-songwriter Tiffany Red, who wrote an open letter to Combs describing an incident on Ventura’s 29th-birthday party in 2015. Ventura and Red claim that that night, Combs and his security team forced Ventura to leave because he wanted her to have sexual encounters with other men. Red said Ventura had disclosed to her at the time that Combs was physically abusive. “I feel compelled to show up for Cassie and myself and confirm that everything she described in her complaint about what happened that night is consistent with what I experienced,” she wrote.
In a statement to the New York Times, Combs’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said Combs denied the allegations and that the lawsuit was “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.” Ventura and Combs settled the lawsuit one day after it was filed; the details remain private. Brafman said that the settlement “is in no way an admission of wrongdoing.”
“I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control,” Ventura said in a statement. “I want to thank my family, fans and lawyers for their unwavering support.” Meanwhile, Combs said, “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.”
Video shows Diddy assaulting Cassie back in 2016.
In May, CNN released security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in the elevator bay at the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. The graphic video shows Combs grabbing Ventura by the head, throwing her to the ground, and repeatedly kicking her. He also shoves her into a corner and throws what appears to be a vase at her.
The video appears to support a similar incident Ventura described in her suit. “[Combs] followed her into the hallway of the hotel while yelling at her. 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,” Ventura’s complaint reads. Meanwhile, Ventura’s lawyer Douglas H. Wigdor told CNN: “The gut-wrenching video has only further confirmed the disturbing and predatory behavior of Mr. Combs. Words cannot express the courage and fortitude that Ms. Ventura has shown in coming forward to bring this to light.”
After the video was made public, Combs posted an apology video on Instagram. “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace,” Combs said. “I’m so sorry. But I’m committed to be a better man each and every day. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m truly sorry.”
Ventura’s attorney Meredith Firetog responded to the apology in a statement, saying, “Combs’s most recent statement is more about himself than the many people he has hurt. When Cassie and multiple other women came forward, he denied everything and suggested that his victims were looking for a payday. That he was only compelled to ‘apologize’ once his repeated denials were proven false shows his pathetic desperation, and no one will be swayed by his disingenuous words.”
In an interview with Piers Morgan, Combs’s former head of security said he wasn’t surprised by the footage because he witnessed the rapper being violent toward women “four or five times.” Roger Bonds, who worked for the mogul for a decade, alleged he had seen Combs be violent toward Cassie and his former partner Kim Porter, with whom he shares three children. (Porter died in 2018 from pneumonia.)
In late May, Cassie released a statement on domestic violence, saying she was grateful for all the support she’s received in the wake of the footage becoming public.
“The outpouring of love has created a place for my younger self to settle and feel safe now, but this is only the beginning. Domestic Violence is THE issue. It broke me down to someone I never thought I would become. With a lot of hard work, I am better today, but I will always be recovering from my past,” she wrote on Instagram. “Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to take this matter seriously. 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. I offer my hand to those that are still living in fear. Reach out to your people, don’t cut them off. No one should carry this weight alone. This healing journey is never ending, but this support means everything to me.”
Six more people have come forward with allegations against Diddy.
Following the settlement, Liza Gardner filed a lawsuit on November 23, right before the Adult Survivors Act expired. She says she and a friend met Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall at an MCA Records event in 1990 or 1991. They returned to Hall’s apartment for an after-party, where Gardner says she was “offered more drinks and was coerced into having sex with Combs.” She says Combs also assaulted her friend. The lawsuit claims the encounter left Gardner “shocked and traumatized,” and as she got dressed, Hall allegedly “barged into the room, pinned her down, and forced [her] to have sex with him.” Gardner claims that Combs came to the home she shared with her friend a few days later and allegedly attacked her again. He came to the house looking for the friend because he was worried she would tell the “girl he was with at the time,” according to the suit.
In another complaint filed the same day, Joi Dickerson-Neal alleges that in 1991, she “reluctantly” went on a date with Combs, who “intentionally drugged” and sexually assaulted her after their dinner. She claims that Combs recorded the assault and showed the tape to other people. While Dickerson-Neal did not go to the authorities immediately after the alleged assault, she says she did eventually file a police report with unspecified agencies in New York and New Jersey. The complaint says prosecutors told her they’d need to corroborate her allegations, but she believes possible witnesses were “terrified that Combs would retaliate against them and that they would lose future business and music opportunities if they made a statement” backing her account.
A spokesperson for Diddy said the two women’s claims are “fabricated” and accused them of exploiting the Adult Survivors Act. Another woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the complaint, filed a fourth lawsuit on December 6, alleging that Combs, his longtime lieutenant Harve Pierre, and a third unidentified assailant gang-raped her at Combs’s Manhattan recording studio in 2003, when she was 17 years old. (Pierre, who previously served as president of Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment, has also been sued by a former assistant, who alleges he “used his position of authority as plaintiff’s boss to groom, exploit, and sexually assault” her several times between 2016 and 2017.)
The lawsuit claims that the men trafficked Doe across state lines from Detroit to New York City on a private jet, plied the teenager with drugs and alcohol until she couldn’t consent, and then violently assaulted her as she told them to stop. The complaint also includes several photos that Doe alleges were taken at the studio on that night, including one where she is sitting on Combs’s lap.
In February, Combs’s former producer and videographer filed a federal lawsuit against the mogul, alleging Combs sexually harassed, drugged, and threatened him. According to the lawsuit, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones worked on Combs’s most recent album, Love, and lived with him between September 2022 and November 2023. Jones alleges he “was the victim of constant unsolicited and unauthorized groping and touching of his anus by Mr. Combs.” On one occasion, the lawsuit claims, Jones woke up naked and disoriented in bed with Combs and two sex workers. He alleges the music mogul drugged him.
The complaint also claims that, in his role as Combs’s videographer, Jones “secured HUNDREDS of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.” The illegal activity the suit alleges includes acquiring drugs, soliciting sex workers, providing laced drinks to minors, and sexual assault.
Jones’s suit names several other defendants, including Combs’s son Justin; Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram; Universal Music Group CEO Sir Lucian Grainge; and former Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam. Combs’s lawyer, Shawn Holley, denied Jones’s allegations. “We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies,” she told People.
In April, a separate lawsuit was filed against Combs’s son Christian Combs, in which a woman alleged that the 26-year-old drugged her and sexually assaulted her on a yacht chartered by the music mogul in December 2022. The suit also names Combs as a defendant. In her complaint, Grace O’Marcaigh accused the rapper of aiding and abetting his son, alleging that he is liable as the person who chartered the boat. O’Marcaigh, who worked on the yacht as a steward, also claimed she witnessed partying and drug use between celebrities and “constant rotation of suspected sex workers.”
Then, in May, another suit was filed in federal court by Crystal McKinney, who alleges Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2003. The lawsuit was brought under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which gives survivors a two-year look-back window to file civil claims against their alleged abusers after the statute of limitations has passed.
The former model claims that she met Combs when she was 22 during a men’s Fashion Week event in New York. The lawsuit says the rapper invited McKinney back to his recording studio, where she was allegedly given alcohol and marijuana that she believes was laced. Later in the evening, Combs allegedly took McKinney to the bathroom where he pushed her head near his crotch. The lawsuit says that McKinney refused to perform oral sex on Combs but he forced her to do so anyway. She claims she lost consciousness and regained it hours later during a cab ride, where she realized she had been sexually assaulted. Combs has yet to comment on the allegations.
On May 24, April Lampros became the seventh person to file a suit against Combs, accusing him of drugging and assaulting her over several years beginning in 1995, per NBC.
Lampros claims she first met Combs in 1994, when she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She alleges that the next year, she met up with him at a bar and although she didn’t typically drink, she says she gave into pressure from Combs to do so because of his “delusional and violent outbursts.” After a few sips, Lampros felt “uneasy” and like “the walls were closing in” on her. Lampros says she was guided into a car that took her and Combs to a hotel, where he forcibly kissed and grabbed her. Despite her telling him to stop and saying that she felt unwell, “Ms. Lampros was being raped by Mr. Combs, and she soon passed out,” the lawsuit claims. Lampros says that after the incident, Combs wooed her back by sending lavish gifts and flowers. Per NBC, the lawsuit includes a photo of a handwritten Valentine’s Day card signed from “Puffy.”
Combs allegedly assaulted Lampros for a second time later in 1995, when she claims he forced her to perform oral sex in a parking garage near his Manhattan apartment. After the incident, she says he became angry and threatened to physically hurt her after she made the decision to distance herself from him. “Mr. Combs would also threaten to blacklist her in the industry if she tried to mess with him in any way,” according to the suit.
Lampros claims that Combs assaulted her a third time in 1996, forcing her and his then-girlfriend, Kim Porter, to take ecstasy and have sex with one another. Lampros says that she “vocally opposed this idea,” but Combs reminded her that “he could make her lose her job,” the suit claims. Lampros claims that Combs watched the women while he masturbated before sexually assaulting her.
Lampros says she severed ties with Combs in 1998 but ran into him at an event in the early aughts. Though she refused to leave with him, she says she later allowed him to come to her home, where he began to kiss and touch her against her will. She alleges that years later, in 2023, she learned that Combs had recorded a sexual encounter with her and shown it to several people.
One lawsuit claims Combs groomed his accuser “to pass him off to his friends” and traded on his celebrity connections.
In his suit, Jones says that he feared Combs was grooming him and “that fear became a reality” when actor Cuba Gooding Jr. allegedly assaulted him during an outing on the music mogul’s yacht. The actor “began touching, groping, and fondling Mr. Jones’ legs, his upper inner thighs near his groin, the small of his back near his buttocks and his shoulders,” the complaint alleges. “Mr. Jones was extremely uncomfortable, and proceeded to lean away from Mr. Gooding Jr. He rejected his advances and Mr. Gooding Jr. did not stop until Mr. Jones forcibly pushed him away.” An amended version of the lawsuit filed in late March names Gooding as a defendant, People reported.
The lawsuit also says that Combs’s circle enabled his behavior in order to have access to celebrities that he knew and socialized with. “Mr. Combs was known for throwing the ‘best’ parties,” the suit reads. “Affiliation with, and or sponsorship of Mr. Combs sex-trafficking parties garnered legitimacy and access to celebrities such as famous athletes, political figures, artist[s], musicians, and international dignitaries like British Royal, Prince Harry.” (The complaint does not include any allegations of wrongdoing against Prince Harry.)
Homeland Security raided Combs’s properties, reportedly as part of a sex-trafficking investigation.
On March 25, federal agents raided the music mogul’s residences in Los Angeles and Miami. NBC News reported that the search warrants are connected to a federal investigation into allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms. Federal agents in New York have also spoken with at least four Jane Does and one John Doe as part of the investigation, with more interviews to come, Rolling Stone reports.
In a statement, Combs’s attorney Aaron Dyer said there was “a gross overuse of military-level force” during the execution of the search warrants. “Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities. Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family members have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way,” he said.
While authorities have not said whether Combs is a subject of the alleged sex-trafficking investigation, Dyer connected the raids to the lawsuits against the rapper. “This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits,” he said in the statement. “There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations. Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”
In an Instagram post, Misa Hylton — Combs’s former partner and mother of his son Justin — shared video footage of Justin and Christian Combs being detained during the raid and denounced the agents’ “excessive use of force.” She added that an attorney is looking into the agents’ conduct. “The over zealous and overtly militarized force used against my sons Justin and Christian is deplorable,” she wrote. “If these were the sons of a non-Black celebrity, they would not have been handled with the same aggression. The attempt to humiliate and terrorize these innocent young BLACK MEN is despicable!”
One of Combs’s associates, who was described in Jones’s lawsuit as “Mr. Combs’s mule,” was arrested on the same day at Miami’s Opa-Locka airport when law enforcement searched a plane linked to the music mogul. Brendon Paul was charged with one count of possession of suspected cocaine and another of possession of “suspected marijuana candy,” according to an affidavit obtained by TMZ. The arrest was not related to the raids, the outlet reports.
Several brands and organizations have cut ties with Combs.
In late November, Diddy temporarily stepped down as chairman of Revolt, the media company he founded in 2013. “While Mr. Combs has previously had no operational or day-to-day role in the business,” the company said in a statement, “this decision helps to ensure that Revolt remains steadfastly focused on our mission to create meaningful content for the culture and amplify the voices of all Black people throughout this country and the African diaspora.” In June, Diddy sold his majority stake in the company for an undisclosed amount.
Capital Prep Harlem, a charter school he opened in 2016, also announced it would end its partnership with the music mogul.
After the footage of Combs assaulting Cassie was made public, New York City mayor Eric Adams said his team was considering rescinding the key to New York City that Combs received last September for “his contributions to music, business, and philanthropy.” “I think all of us were deeply disturbed by watching that chilling video of the young lady being assaulted by him,” Adams said. “The committee and the team have never rescinded a key before, but we are now sitting down to see what the next steps forward are going to be.”
In the wake of the footage being released, Howard University’s board of trustees voted to revoke an honorary degree that was awarded to Diddy in 2014. “Mr. Combs’ 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 school said in its announcement.
At least 18 companies that were partnering with Diddy’s e-commerce website Empower Global have dropped the platform, according to Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, Variety reports that a new reality show featuring Combs, which was in the early stages of development at Hulu, has also been scrapped following the allegations. The show, tentatively titled Diddy+7, would have followed Combs and his family. And Salxco, which managed Diddy as an artist, no longer lists him as a client on its website, Bloomberg reports.
Several reports have outlined additional allegations of abusive behavior.
In late May, Rolling Stone published a wide-ranging story detailing various accusations against Combs, including a new allegation from a woman who worked with Bad Boy’s marketing team as a freelance graphic designer in the early aughts. The woman, identified as “Anna” (she asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retribution), said that in 2001, Combs threw a party at the Peninsula Hotel to celebrate being acquitted for a nightclub shooting in which three people were injured. She alleged that during the party, Combs approached her and began massaging her back. “I’m getting touched on my shoulder, my arms, my back. He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you like that? I know you like that.’ Like really, really gross,” Anna told Rolling Stone. This was the first time she had spoken publicly about the incident. “I was like, ‘No, not so much,’” Anna added, “and I sort of floated my way out of there.” She said that weeks after the party, her boss’s girlfriend told her Combs had approached the boss at the party in an attempt to “solicit me for sex.” Rolling Stone confirmed that Anna told a friend about the incident a few years later. Anna said her days at Bad Boy are “just overshadowed by his crap.”
Rolling Stone also spoke with students who encountered Combs at Howard University in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Although Combs left the university after his sophomore year, he maintained close ties with people on campus. A former student described the rapper regularly showing up and tapping on the window of a girlfriend’s class to get her to ditch. A classmate of the girlfriend claimed that over time she seemed to “tense up” when Combs appeared. “He just had a weird control thing. I felt like she was fearful,” the former classmate said. This person also recalled a particularly disturbing incident when Combs appeared outside the girlfriend’s dorm and “screamed and hollered and acted a stone fool until she came downstairs.” Another person who witnessed the incident said Combs seemed “super angry” and was “screaming at the top of his lungs.” The former classmate alleged that when the girlfriend came downstairs, Combs proceeded to beat her with what appeared to be a belt. The witness said Combs “whupped her butt — like really whupped her butt,” adding that the woman “was trying to defend herself a little bit. She was crying. And we were telling him, ‘Get off of her.’ We were screaming for her.”
In another jarring incident from the rapper’s past, he is accused of attacking late music executive Shakir Stewart. After Porter and Combs broke up, she began dating Stewart, attending L.A. Reid’s wedding in Italy with him. After the ceremony, Combs went to Stewart’s hotel room and broke a chair over Stewart’s head, according to Stewart’s mother and two of his close friends. “He left him bleeding on a hotel floor in Italy,” Stewart’s mother, Portia, said. “He had to have stitches and then [Combs] threatened him … ‘I’m going to kill you’ … That’s when I said you need to get out of this business. This man is crazy.”
Rolling Stone also revisited a 2017 lawsuit by Combs’s former personal chef Cindy Rueda. She alleged that while working for Combs from 2015 to 2016, he “regularly” made her serve meals while he and his guests “were engaged” in “sexual activity.” Rueda claimed that after asking her to make a “postcoital meal,” Combs greeted her fully naked and asked if “she liked his naked body.��� She also accused Combs of having her bring breakfast to his room and then proceeding to engage in sexual activity with model Gina Huynh. The suit was forced into arbitration and ended privately. Meanwhile, in 2019, Huynh told gossip blogger Tasha K that Combs had offered her $50,000 to terminate a pregnancy in 2014. She accused Combs of pushing her to the ground and dragging her by her hair in 2018 and said he once “stomped” on her stomach in a jealous rage. The allegations went largely ignored, and Huynh didn’t speak to Rolling Stone.
In June, five former employees who worked at Sean John and Blue Flame — Combs’s former lifestyle brand and defunct advertising agency, respectively — spoke with the Daily Beast about how the mogul’s alleged abusive behavior extended to the workplace.
One of the workers said that during a disagreement with Combs, he berated her and aggressively grabbed her face. “He puts one hand on both sides of my cheeks and says ‘Stick out your tongue,’ and then he squeezes my face harder and yells at me to stick out my tongue, forces his hands on my face,” the woman said, adding that Combs wanted to check whether her tongue was bleeding because she had been biting it. She said she began looking for a new job right after the incident. “You have to really idolize him and see him as an icon. I didn’t. I was just there to do my job.”
Other former employees said Combs created a “culture of fear” in the workplace, with one alleging the environment was filled with “a lot of profanity, kind of aggressive, in-your-face — physically in-your-face — kind of stuff.”
Another claimed that women specifically bore the brunt of Combs’s alleged toxic behavior. “There was a lot of cursing, a lot of talking to people crazy, a lot of [calling women] bitches, [saying], ‘Fuck you,’ or ‘Stupid,’” or “‘I’ll fire y’all bitches right now,’” the former employee told the Beast. However, she added, she rarely saw him “be like that with men” except in instances where they had no “power or stature in the industry.”
We have reached out to a representative for Combs about the latest allegations and will update when we hear back.
This story has been updated.
