Crack Open Another New Can of Worms!
Diddy Make a Deal? The Sean Combs Case and More Mysteries
Sean Combs, who has a long list of professional names including Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, got arrested last week on federal charges. This opens another great big Costco-sized can of worms.
The operative term here is “federal” charges. As a general rule, the feds do not come after anyone unless they have a completely locked down, waterproof, airtight, bullet-proof, perfect case. That’s why they often sit on the sidelines (which in Combs’ case they did for 16 years) until all of their ducks are in a row. Pew Research found that of 79,704 federal cases, the feds won 99% of the time. You have about a 1% chance of beating federal charges in court.
Bad week to be Sean Combs.
A lot of charges are brought at the state level, since state attorneys general and state prosecutors are much more cavalier about bringing flimsy charges and don’t seem to worry about statistics. Take Jack Smith, the guy is bringing charges as a special prosecutor in the Mar-A-Lago document case. Smith wasn’t even authorized as a special prosecutor (meaning a slam-dunk reversible error on appeal) but he still brought the case. It’s a guaranteed loss for him, but he doesn’t care. State charges can go any which way, and sometimes state legal eagles bring charges just to get elected or pander to the public. Soros has funded lots of campaigns for Democrat district attorneys and attorneys general and these guys will bring charges just to annoy Soros’s enemies. Not mentioning any names, but the initials Letitia James come to mind—she ran for office in New York on a platform that promised “to get Trump.”
That should be illegal, but sometimes state legal systems are nutty.
The feds are a different animal. And because they suffer from the Perry Mason syndrome—they always win their case—approximately 90% of people hit with federal charges do not even put up a fight and just plead guilty. In fact, the feds rarely have to see the inside of the court room. If things follow the typical course, the feds are negotiating with Combs right now and Combs will flip on a lot of big names and maybe some lesser-known names.
The Combs indictment lists serious charges:
Kidnapping
Sexual abuse
Verbal and emotional abuse
Interstate commerce for the purposes of prostitution
Physical assault
Sex trafficking
Forced labor
Miscellaneous drug crimes
Bribery
Obstruction of justice
Arson
Holding frequent parties called “freak offs” where participants were coerced to attend, drugged without their knowledge or consent, and activities videotaped
Combs also compelled specific people into attending his “freak offs” by offering to advance or harm their careers, to attack them physically, or “arson.” I’m not sure what the indictment meant by that but it sounds like if you didn’t RSVP favorably to a “freak off,” you ran the risk that Combs or one of his henchmen would burn your house down.
The full indictment (it’s fairly short) is online. It does not name names other than Combs. The scary part for Combs is that these crimes trace back to 2008 and run continuously to date. That’s a lot of freak offs and a lot of sex trafficking. While some may be outside the bounds of the statute of limitations, if the feds have been collecting dirt on you for 16 years, some of it is going to stick.
Legally, it’s all set up as a RICO case (racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations act) meaning that Combs ran a criminal enterprise that was devoted to enriching himself and those who worked for him through the music business, running related businesses (apparently he had a marketing company, too), and using his freak-off events to compel people to work for him or do various things that would enrich or amuse him.
(In case you’ve been following the Trump lawfare, Fani Willis is trying to charge Trump with RICO charges in Georgia until she wound up getting in hot water herself. But on her best day, Willis was a district attorney filing state charges that will be overturned on appeal. The Combs case is a whole different ball game. This stuff is ironclad.)
Combs is right now being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the only federal jail in the state of New York. While it’s been described as a horrific and substandard detention center, it has housed such notable celebrity defendants as Jeffrey Epstein, R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sam Bankman-Fried. This place is so bad that a lot of people who go in, don’t come out alive. I’m not just talking about Epstein. Just this summer, two inmates who were not famous were stabbed to death.
Since Combs has lived super-size large for decades, even flouting his illegal activities to insiders in the music and entertainment industry, he is no doubt feeling the squeeze that may lead him to start naming names.
Despite Combs’ aberrant lifestyle, he had an on-again, off-again girlfriend for many years, named Casandra (Cassie) Ventura. Ventura was signed to Combs’ record label so her professional career was entangled with Combs. Combs had a pattern of mixing business with sexual assault.
Sean Combs attacked Ventura violently in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel, kicking her in the head and dragging her by the hair. During this altercation—which was caught on a hotel video camera—Combs was clothed just in a towel around his waist. It’s hard to say what they were fighting about, but on November 16, 2023, Ventura hit Combs with a lawsuit that alleged he gave her drugs, forced her to have sex with other men, and beat her “savagely.” Given the video evidence and what was generally known about Combs, this seemed pretty credible, although Combs denied the allegations.
In what might be the greatest rush-to-judgment in the history of American jurisprudence (where some lawsuits languish for years), the suit was settled the very next day. On November 17, 2023, Combs and Ventura reached a confidential settlement, and Cassie Ventura more or less left the scene with a big bag of cash.
A lot of other Combs victims figured if Combs had his checkbook out, they were going to come forward as well. At least two other lawsuits followed. We don’t know how many other potential accusers came forward but never filed suit; they may have either taken a check to keep quiet or were intimidated enough to go away. Combs was finding out that he had a long line of people waiting to get paid off.
By November 28, 2023, Combs has to step down as chairman of Revolt, which is his cable TV network. It didn’t help much, since on December 6, 2023, an unnamed woman said that Combs and two other men gave her drugs and alcohol before raping her; this occurred years earlier, when she was 17.
On February 26, 2024 another lawsuit gets filed, this time by a man. The suit was brought by a music producer said he was assaulted by Combs and forced to have sexual encounters with prostitutes. That spring—on March 25, 2024, Combs had a visit from Homeland Security who raided both of his homes (he is bi-coastal, living in both Los Angeles and Miami) simultaneously to gather evidence of the sex trafficking charges.
It's like the old Texas proverb about being caught in the countryside during a hailstorm: “can’t run, can’t hide, can’t make it stop.”
The next big lawsuit was directed at Combs’ son. You can see this was a bad year for the Combs family. On April 4, 2004, a suit was filed by a woman who worked on one of Combs’ yachts and charged that Combs’ son Christian sexually assaulted her.
Before this gets too tedious, in April and May 2024 the Combs organization started to push back a little and filed this and that motion, alleging procedural violations. For instance, Combs did not deny raping the 17-year-old, but he did ask the court to dismiss her suit because too much time had passed.
The public did not get a chance to see Combs kicking and punching Cassie Ventura until May 17, 2024. Surprisingly, it was aired by CNN, which generally tends to favor celebrity criminals. The assault on Ventura by Combs occurred in Los Angeles, which has never filed charges. Of course, if Los Angeles starts prosecuting every criminal in Hollywood, they’d have to work 24/7.
Combs then made a social media apology for the Cassie Ventura assault on May 19, 2024, and even promised to get therapy. He invoked the name of God, thanking Him for His mercy and grace. This case is full of surprises.
By September 5, 2024, Combs goes to Manhattan and checks in a hotel, allegedly awaiting indictment. It is not clear why Combs did not simply turn himself in. On September 16, 2024, the feds came to his hotel and arrested him without any resistance. His indictment was unsealed with unbelievable speed: by September 17, 2024 we could all read the charges against him.
Combs had pleaded not guilty and, in our system, that’s what he is until it is proven otherwise. But the feds would not have filed charges if they thought there was even a chance they would lose the case.
It can be anticipated that they are playing “let’s make a deal” at the moment. If these charges can be sustained, Combs is potentially facing life in prison. Combs is 54 years old right now, so a 30 year sentence is going to exceed his projected natural life expectancy. But perhaps he is willing to name some names or turn over some videos? I am not too optimistic since we never saw any of the miles and miles of Epstein videos, but I have to believe that there is some kind of negotiation going on right now.
Remember the feds win 99% of all cases.
Some say that Combs may meet a fate like that of Epstein, where an inconvenient person who knows too much is dispatched for the great good of the cabal. He’s in the right place, if that’s the plan, but we don’t know if that’s the plan. They also put him on suicide watch, which could be a genuine protective move or it could be a set-up to convince us that Combs entered the federal prison in a suicidal state of mind.
I do not think Combs is suicidal because he practically turned himself in. He likely has some valuable video tapes in his possession. Maybe he’s angling for a sweetheart deal? Epstein once walked away from some federal charges with a sweetheart deal in Florida, although technically the feds “won” the case.
Some people are not sleeping well right now. Usher and Pink, both well known single-name musiciansm have scrubbed their social media accounts. Usher lived with Combs for about a year when Usher was just 13 years old. He got his musical career started there—but at what price? It is well known that Usher ran in Diddy’s circles. Pink, on the other hand, has no obvious ties to Diddy, but she seems kind of nervous. She said she deleted her social media because social media is not good for one’s mental health.
It is hard to say what is next since most of the people in Sean Combs’ orbit are Democrats or Democrat-adjacent and that group tends never to go to prison. On the other hand, knowing that Combs is likely never going to get out of prison may prompt more people to come forward. The whole turn of events is very unexpected. Are we going to see Epstein 2.0? Or are we going to see some big names get busted? Is this just more cabal clean-up or is this somebody trying to take down the cabal?
Combs’ attorneys are gearing up for a hail Mary, because they say they want to go to trial. His attorneys are going to likely argue something that might be described as the “victim-offender overlap.” In cases of sex trafficking, people may start out as the victims but wind up committing the same crimes themselves later on. In other words, some of the people who can credibly accuse Combs may be perpetrators themselves.
This occurred in the Epstein and Maxwell case where young girls who were at first victims of Epstein later worked with Maxwell to recruit their friends to be future victims. So were these girls—at first innocent victims of Epstein—really victims at all, if they joined forces with Maxwell to bring more young girls to Epstein and his friends?
If you follow rap music, first of all my sympathy and second of all this may bring up shades of R. Kelly. In early 2021, another rap superstar, R. Kelly, was sentenced to 30 years for sex trafficking in a RICO case that has some similarities to the Combs case. In 2023, Kelly got another 20 years for enticement of a minor and other disgusting crimes against children. Like Combs, Kelly was charged by the feds. Kelly was charged in Illinois and he is serving his time in North Carolina. Combs does not have to look into a crystal ball to see his future.
I think the celebrities who attended the freak offs are going to get buried. The question is: are the feds going to just bury these allegations so the criminals can walk free, or are the feds going to bury the criminals by bringing allegations to light? Rumor has it some very big names are involved.
Back in 2020, when Kamala was running for President, she sent out a tweet on X (then Twitter) thanking Combs for hosting one of her town hall meetings. It appears that Combs contributed to the Harris campaign, but I cannot confirm this; however, just because a criminal contributes to a politician doesn’t mean the politician is a criminal. After all, if we took all of the criminals out of American politics, we wouldn’t have much left.
Of course, Harris hasn’t really said what she’d do about the border or the economy, either.
Despite the best efforts of the liberal social media denizens, there are no tweets between Trump and Diddy. There are images of Harris with Combs and Trump with Combs, but they appear to be fakes.
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