For decades, music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was one of the most powerful people in hip-hop. But now, he faces federal charges that could put him behind bars for life. Follow The Crime Scene Weekly to get new episodes early! You can find the podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and contributors of The Crime Scene Weekly?
This is Deborah Roberts. We've got a new show for you that I think you're really going to want to check out. It's called The Crime Scene Weekly from ABC News. Each week, host Brad Milkey, who you know from Start Here, sits down with the journalists covering the latest true crime stories.
From the discovery of grisly new crimes to breakthroughs in cases that are far from closed, you can stay up to speed on the latest true crime headlines. It's true crime in real time. And for the next few weeks, we're going to bring the Crime Scene Weekly to you here in the 2020 feed. If you like it, make sure to follow the show and keep listening. Again, it's the Crime Scene Weekly.
Now, here's Brad.
The world knows him as Diddy. The courts know him as Sean Combs. Now his federal trial for racketeering and sex trafficking is right around the corner. Welcome to the crime scene. I'm Brad Milkey. I host ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here. And every week, we're bringing you the latest on what's big and what's new in the true crime space.
This week, I'm talking to attorney and ABC News legal contributor Brian Buckmeyer, who's host of the new podcast from ABC Audio called Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy, which traces Diddy's rise and how it all came crashing down.
Brian today is going to walk us through everything we need to know about this trial that is really racing towards us now, including Diddy's claims of innocence and potential defense strategies. And a quick note, this episode will deal with sexual assault and other difficult subject matter. Hey, Brian. Hey, Brad. So thanks for being here. Top level, Diddy is set to begin his federal trial in May.
It's less than two weeks from now. He faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars. Before we even get into the specifics of that trial, I just want to talk about how big of a deal this is. This is going to be the biggest criminal trial of the year. And Diddy is like an industry unto himself. So how did we get here, I guess?
Yeah. So first, thanks for having me here. And I think you got to go back to when he started with Uptown Records with Mr. Harrell and then left to start Bad Boy Records. And he was the producer for Notorious B.I.G. And then he had his own kind of music that influenced as well and started with other rappers and creating careers.
And we actually have a clip here that I want to play from your podcast. This is Bad Rap, The Case Against Diddy. And we're talking here about that time sort of in the 90s during that rise that you're describing. So the voice you're going to hear here is first the journalist Toray along with Brian.
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Chapter 2: Who is Sean 'Diddy' Combs and what charges is he facing?
But that didn't happen, because in those lawsuits, we saw similar allegations of sex trafficking, forced labor, allegations that they observed what happened to Cassian, and even corroborations of some of her allegations as well. And going to the phrase of where there's smoke, there's fire, I wouldn't say at this point we saw any fire, but we started seeing a lot more smoke.
One of those civil lawsuits that got a lot of attention was the lawsuit filed by music producer Rodney Jones. Why is that one so important?
Rodney Jones, he was one of the people in this litany of civil lawsuits who files a lawsuit. And I think like Cassie's lawsuit, if Cassie's lawsuit is considered the spark to create this all, Rodney Jones's lawsuit is the roadmap because in his lawsuit, he says, I saw this, I saw that, this happened to other people. I was forced to recruit these people. This happened to me. Here are still shots.
And there's a difference here. The civil lawsuit, you're looking for monetary damages for yourself. But once you lay that stuff out there on the public record, that's when prosecutors might start looking through it and going, oh, there could be a criminal case here.
Yes. So I am by trade a defense attorney. I do criminal work. Do I do civil work? Yeah, but that's not my bread and butter. Although it does be a lot of bread and butter. When I read Cassie's lawsuit, I'm like, oh, this is your standard civil lawsuit. This is about damages to me, allegations about what this person did to me. Rodney Jones's lawsuit read like a criminal indictment. It read like...
And I'm like backing up a little from the microphone so you don't hear me yelling, hey, SDNY, over here, look at these places because you can't start a criminal case. Like I read that and I think that's when I pitched the podcast to ABC and I said, something's gonna happen.
Did he deny these allegations in Jones's lawsuit? What happens next?
DHS and the federal government end up raiding Sean Combs' Miami home and his LA home. They went exactly where Rodney Jones said the alleged material would be, and they did it simultaneously. Why does any law enforcement do raids simultaneously? Why do they do raids without people knowing? And from my understanding, Sean Combs is standing on a tarmac in Miami, about to fly off somewhere.
He's not at these homes, because they know he's not at the homes, and they say, go, go, go,
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Chapter 3: How did Sean Combs rise to prominence in the music industry?
Then they're going to say, well, these people could not have consented because, again, as the headlines were, look at the baby oil. Look at the GHB within the baby oil. You cannot consent when you are intoxicated. Look at how this... traversed over state lines, making it a federal case because it affected interstate commerce. Look at people being forced into this through fraud or coercion.
All of that is the government's position. For the defense, they're taking the standard of Well, everyone was asking for it. Everyone was in on it. The government are just very much prudes. They like to have sex like a very prudish way.
Like a freak off by its nature is not illegal. You can have people having big sex parties. I think Diddy's lawyers characterize this as like private sexual activity between fully consenting adults. What's the problem with that?
If everyone shows up to a sex party and we all say, hey, everyone's of age, we all want to do drugs before this. Is everyone OK with that? We're good. Then, yeah, whatever you do in the privacy of your home is not a crime. And that's what the defense is arguing. And that's not an argument that works when you have dozens of people saying otherwise.
There are like amended indictments in all this, right? How have those kind of evolved?
Yeah, so since the original indictment, there have been what we call superseding indictments. And what superseding means is just like this one replaces or takes over the other one, right? And so as those indictments have come up, it's evolved the case in the sense of
First indictment, or the indictment, sorry, only three charges, and we only believe to be one alleged victim, and who we believe to be Cassie, from the way you can kind of like... It's like she's not named, but all the details would match with her. Yeah, like going in, going back to the arson, like arson in the indictment, arson in her civil lawsuit, it seems like allegations.
And then as the superseding indictments came out, there were... More allegations within the RICO or the racketeering conspiracy. There is forced labor in there. We went from one alleged victim to four alleged victims. We went from a three-count indictment to a five-count indictment because now we have two sex trafficking charges and two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.
And so I would say... the highway in the mind of the government, the highway towards a conviction is moving in the same direction at the same pace, but there are more lanes now. It's kind of expanded. Is it still moving forward with the same type of charges, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, Transportation. Yeah. Is it still women and potentially men going to talk about freak ops? Yeah.
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