Witnesses say Sean 'Diddy' Combs broke the law for decades. Why didn't they say anything?

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2 days ago

NEW YORK ― When celebrity lawyer Perry Sanders Jr. finally deposed Sean "Diddy" Combs about a bloody rap music turf battle that had killed two of its biggest stars in 1996 and 1997, the young music impresario wasn't very helpful.
Although not quite so forthcoming with information, Combs was, not surprisingly, disarmingly personable and offered something else instead.
"When it was over, we sat there just the two of us in that conference room, and he was eating tomato soup as he was training for a marathon," Sanders told USA TODAY. "He offered me a cup, and said, 'Don't say I never gave you anything!'"
As his federal sex crimes trial enters its third week now, a parade of witnesses has detailed a shocking level of violence that Combs allegedly inflicted on longtime girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura Fine, including head kicks, scar-inducing beatings and dragging her by her hair.
But, as Sanders recalled, Combs could also be quite charming when he wanted, or needed, to be.
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Prosecutors have told jurors the violence was part of an alleged sex trafficking and criminal racketeering enterprise led by Combs that began in 2008, in part to shield him from outside scrutiny. Court records and victim claims show the Bad Boy Records founder was accused of similar sexual violence and predatory behavior as far back as 1990, as he was first making a name for himself in the music business.
So why wasn't significant legal action taken until last year?
"People that want to keep secrets have surrounded themselves with other people that were willing to keep their secrets for generations, probably from Biblical times onward," said Sanders, who said he has known Combs and many others at the highest levels of the music business for decades.
: Step inside the courtroom with USA TODAY as Sean 'Diddy' Combs faces sex crimes and trafficking charges. Subscribe to the newsletter.
Sanders, a Colorado lawyer who has worked on Michael Jackson's estate, says Combs' case isn't an outlier, but rather a case study in how powerful men like Combs can stay protected by lawyers, assistants, publicists, stylists, security and even random bystanders who suspected or witnessed something but looked away, stayed silent or were paid to forget what happened.
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Ventura Fine finally came forward in November 2023, filing a lawsuit alleging that Combs kept her locked in the abusive relationship through frequent beatings, coercion, control over her career and blackmail. That, she alleged, included threats to release explicit sex tapes of her engaging in marathon sex sessions known as "freak offs" with paid sex workers.
Within 24 hours, Combs and Ventura Fine settled the case "amicably" with Combs declaring his innocence. Privately, he paid her $20 million and reportedly required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement barring her from speaking publicly of the allegations again.
But Ventura Fine's lawsuit opened the floodgates.
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Dozens more accusers have come forward, and in September, the Justice Department's Manhattan office unsealed a federal indictment that could send the Bad Boy Records founder to prison for life.
Combs, 55, is facing charges of sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering, which consists of directing an illegal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In court, his defense lawyer, Teny Geragos, said prosecutors are trying to twist his romantic relationships with Ventura Fine and others into a federal racketeering and sex trafficking case where none exists.
"Sean Combs is a complicated man, but this is not a complicated case," Geragos told jurors. "This case is about voluntary choices made by capable adults in consensual relationships."
Legal and law enforcement experts say Combs is not the first major celebrity to face justice years, or even decades, after their crimes allegedly began being committed. That's often the case even when their alleged behavior was anything but secret within their rarified circles.
Music mogul R. Kelly and former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein are now serving long prison terms for sex and coercion crimes similar to those Combs has been charged with. (Weinstein is currently being retried on charges of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape in New York.)
Like Combs, they surrounded themselves with people who did not report what they witnessed to the relevant authorities out of a mixture of admiration, fear and their self-interest, Sanders and other experts told USA TODAY.
On May 27, Capricorn Clark – a personal assistant who worked in various other roles for Combs and his businesses from 2004 to 2012, then again in 2016 – spent the entire day on the stand testifying about Combs' violent and threatening nature, and his manipulative side as well.
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Clark told the jury that Combs kidnapped her at gunpoint in 2011 and threatened her, Ventura Fine and a rapper she was dating named Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi) if they told authorities about how Combs had broken into Mescudi's house in a jealous rage.
Referring to Combs as Puff, Clark said he came to her home holding a gun and demanded she get dressed because "we're going to kill (Kid) Cudi."
But under cross examination, Clark confirmed she kept coming back to work for Combs in various positions, and that she even discussed joining his top management team after authorities searched his Los Angeles and Miami mansions in March 2024 in connection with the current case.
In dramatic and tearful testimony, she acknowledged that despite his threats, "I wanted my life back," working with Combs and his team at the top of the rap music and fashion worlds.
"I wanted people to see I was a valuable person. I wasn't disposable," Clark said, sobbing. "In this business, he held all the power over me."
To that end, Clark also confirmed she refused to talk to Los Angeles police and fire investigators about who set fire to Mescudi's Porsche months after Combs found out the rapper was dating Ventura Fine during a fraught part of their own relationship.
Sanders found himself up against a similar wall of silence when suing the city of Los Angeles in 2007 for wrongful death in the 1997 slaying of Combs' friend and Bad Boy Records rapper Christopher Wallace.
Wallace, a protégé of Combs who recorded under the name Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, was gunned down amid a bloody turf war between Combs and his New York-based Bad Boy Records and Marion "Suge" Knight and his West Coast rival, Death Row Records.
Tupac Shakur, a rising star on Knight's label, was killed in a drive-by six months earlier.
But penetrating the human layers of protection surrounding both Combs and Knight to get to the truth − including alleged police corruption and a cover-up − was anything but easy, Sanders recalls.
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Phil Carson, the FBI agent investigating Wallace's murder, agrees.
Carson, who retired in 2017, said it was extremely difficult – even in the early stages of Combs' rise to stardom – to get past the wall of employees, friends, enablers and others who might have been witness to potential crimes and music business dynamics but who chose to look the other way or forget key details.
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"You've got to remember that when Diddy was first taking off, in terms of his popularity and the people he was rubbing shoulders with, he was the man,' Carson told USA TODAY. "And people will do anything and everything to attach themselves to somebody like that, not just for immediate financial reasons but to try to jettison their careers."
Carson, who has been following the testimony in Combs' current trial, says he sees many parallels between how those at the highest levels of the music industry operated then and now.
"It's very easy for people just starting off in the industry to just kind of turn a blind eye and just say, hey, that's none of my business. I'm here to do my job. I'm just going to kind of not say anything or get involved,' Carson said.
"Not to say that I agree with that, because I don't. But I understand why people may think that way."
In Combs' current case, some of the witnesses testified that, like Ventura Fine herself, they were terrified of the rap mogul because of his propensity for violence and retribution.
Former male stripper Daniel Phillip, paid by Combs to have sex with Ventura Fine during marathon sex "freak offs," said he witnessed so many violent assaults that he discreetly pleaded with her to leave Combs.
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Phillip said he was "shocked and terrified" after one incident in which Combs threw a glass at Ventura Fine and dragged her by the hair from one room to another. But he didn't intervene, he testified, because "it was going through my head that if I tried to do something, I might lose my life."
Israel Florez, a hotel security guard, told jurors he intervened after a now-infamous 2016 incident in which Combs beat and kicked Ventura Fine as she tried to enter an elevator at a Los Angeles area hotel. Closed-circuit video of the assault, first released by CNN, went viral and was shown to jurors.
When escorting Combs back to his room, Florez testified, the mogul offered him a stack of money in exchange for staying silent about the altercation. He said he declined the offer. And while Florez filed a hotel incident report, he said he didn't call the police because Ventura Fine didn't want him to.
Many of the others who have testified were much closer to the often-fraught dynamic between Combs and Ventura Fine than Florez. They too didn't act on their concerns.
Celebrity makeup artist Mylah Morales, who had worked for both Ventura Fine and Combs, said she awoke once to hear Combs screaming and attacking Cassie in the next room of their Beverly Hills hotel suite.
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Despite seeing Ventura Fine with a swollen eye, busted lip and knots on her head, she said she didn't call the police – or bring up the incident to either of them. "I feared for my life. Because if he could do that to her …" Morales testified, before being cut off by an objection from Combs' lawyers.
Some of the most compelling testimony has come from former Combs former personal assistant, George Kaplan.
Kaplan testified that Combs brutally attacked Ventura Fine during a crowded flight to Las Vegas on his private jet in 2015, and that he heard screams and the sound of shattering glass coming from the jet's bedroom.
There was a "tremendous commotion," Kaplan testified, and Ventura Fine screamed, "Isn't anybody seeing this?"
No one else on the plane, including Combs' ever-present security staff, did anything to help Cassie, Kaplan said. And he looked away out of fear for his budding career.
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"I was 23 years old," Kaplan testified. "All I wanted to do was have a great job in the entertainment industry."
Similar acts of violence made Kaplan quit, ultimately, he said, adding that he was "tremendously" shaken by the plane incident and "felt an element of guilt for not stopping it."
But even now, a decade later, he said, "I desperately did not want to come here," and only took the stand because he had no choice but to obey a Justice Department subpoena.
Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard, who recorded music with Combs and for Bad Boy Records, said she witnessed Combs kicking, punching and dragging Ventura Fine by the hair.
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More witnesses are expected to testify about acts of violence that were seen by many others but never reported, or even questioned.
A Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigator and a Los Angeles Police officer are expected to take the stand as early as today to testify about how Clark refused to assist them in their investigation into who firebombed Mescudi's car and the threats to Mescudi that Combs allegedly made. "I did not want to be involved in any of this any longer," Clark testified on May 27 as to why she refused to cooperate. Later, she told the jury she also "felt like somewhat of a protector of Puff."
And Kristina Khorram, Combs' longtime chief of staff for his many business ventures, could be called as well. Khorram, whom Combs once called his "right hand," has been named as a defendant in at least three civil suits.
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So might a Bad Boy Records executive who was mentioned, but not by name, by witness David James, another former Combs personal assistant. James, who said Ventura Fine told him she couldn't leave Combs because he controlled her money and her career, tearfully began his testimony last week by describing his hiring process and a remark made by the executive.
"This is Mr. Combs' kingdom," the executive told James, he said, "and we are all here to serve in it."
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.
Josh Meyer is a veteran correspondent focusing on domestic, national and global security issues, including transnational criminal organizations. Reach him [e-mail]. Follow him on X at @JoshMeyerDC and Bluesky at @joshmeyerdc.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why people stayed silent about Sean 'Diddy' Combs' criminal behavior