Sean Combs Arrested in New York Following Grand Jury Indictment
Rapper and producer Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, was arrested in New York City on Monday night after being indicted by a grand jury, the New York Times reported.
The exact nature of the charges have not been made public; the grand jury was originally convened in July.
In a statement provided to NYT by Combs’ attorneys, he had “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.”
“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community. He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal,” the statement also said.
Because charges haven’t been made public, it isn’t known if these new charges are connected the report in May that federal investigators were preparing to charge him with crimes related to a federal grand jury investigation of accusations of sexual misconduct.
Combs, whose Bad Boy Records was a pivotal force in the rise and dominance of hop hop, is also facing other lawsuits and serious accusations of sexual assault and other misconduct.
His longtime girlfriend Casandra Ventura, best known as Cassie, filed a federal lawsuit in November accusing him of repeatedly abusing her physically and sexually. Combs denied it, but the next day he settled the lawsuit out of court. In May, hotel surveillance video from 2016 was leaked that showed Combs viciously assaulting Cassie.
A week after he settled that lawsuit, two other women sued him for rape and abuse over incidents they said occurred decades earlier.
Combs stepped down as Chairman of his hip hop and youth-focused media company Revolt after the lawsuit filed by Cassie, and sold his majority stake in the company weeks after the footage of him assaulting her went public. Three days after that, Howard University rescinded the honorary doctorate it bestowed on him in 2014, specifically citing that footage.
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