Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome back to What's in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart. The trial of Sean Diddy Combs, the US rapper and music mogul P. Diddy, is about to begin. It is one of the most high-profile celebrity court cases that we've had in years. And just a heads up before we get into it, this episode contains description of violence and sexual assault.
Today, you're going to hear all about the charges that Diddy is facing. He denies them all. You're also going to hear about the freak-offs, the thousand bottles of baby oil that were allegedly found at his home, and what to expect when the trial gets underway. And joining me to break this down is Anushka Mutandadauti, host of the BBC podcast Diddy on Trial. Hi, Anushka. Hi, Hannah. First of all, can you give me some of the important background, the things we need to know about P. Diddy? How did he make his money?
So P. Diddy for most people is kind of cemented as a bit of a hip-hop legend and he's got this sort of cross-generational fame that's quite difficult to achieve. So you might know him now if you're a teenager, your parents probably listen to him as well. P. Diddy's beginnings in the music industry start when he's 23 years old. He founds a record label called Bad Boy and Bad Boy isn't like other record labels because the talent that it has goes down to be this sort of once-in-a-generation
era of music that's considered to be raw organic hip hop. So it's before mass commercialization and the real crown, the jewel in his crown is Biggie Smalls, who is the first artist that he signs. And Biggie goes on to have this reputation and this longstanding beef with Tupac. And Diddy is kind of right at the center of that. And he's crafting this image of this record label. He's helping craft Biggie's image. And Biggie
Biggie and Tupac, they end up passing really, really young. They die. And from that, Diddy releases his first album called Puffin the Family, which is about the loss of Biggie. And he just, I mean, it becomes stratospheric. He is a household name. He's got a massive reputation for being sort of a party boy, but also having this, having suffered this great loss for this artist that everybody loves. And that establishes Bad Boy as a foundation piece in the movement of hip hop. Now, Diddy...
then becomes sort of fundamental in maneuvering hip hop from the fringes of culture. It was something you kind of had to be engaged with to the center. It becomes what we would now consider to be pop culture. And that is through commercialization, brand deals, crafting images and marketing.
making himself the man who brings the party in. So that's how he starts. He founds a clothing company called Sean John Clothing in 1998, and that brings him a lot of money and great success. He founds a TV company or a TV station called Revolt TV.
He invests heavily in Ciroc, which is a brand of vodka, and it kind of becomes synonymous with this Miami, LA party scene. Everybody wanted to drink Ciroc. It was the bottle you wanted to have on your table, and it was heavily associated with Diddy. So his image as the man who makes the party was disjointed.
cemented during this time. In September, he was arrested and charged. Can you talk me through what he's been accused of? So Diddy was arrested in September and charged with a three count indictment. That's one count sex trafficking, one count transportation for prostitution and one count racketeering with conspiracy. Now, most people know about sex trafficking and transportation for prostitution. RICO?
you may have heard it in rap songs or seen it in headlines recently it's a bit of a confusing charge it's basically the charge that took down the mob or it was originated created to take down organized criminal activity and it allows prosecutors to tie together different bits of criminal activity and say okay well you stole this car over here and you sold drugs over there actually they're all
linked as part of this broader criminal enterprise and the prosecution are alleging that Diddy ran a criminal enterprise, that he was heading up this organisation that was there to facilitate his wants and needs through criminal means and that recode charge is what will enable them to tie lots of things together if they can convict him. And what do we know about the victims, the accusers? Well we know a lot more than we did before so the amount of
We're calling them victims because that's what the federal government calls them. They're actually witnesses to an alleged crime. So these are people who their testimony is going to be foundational or fundamental to the prosecution's argument. They're going to get on the stand and say what they witnessed. Now, at first we knew about victim one, then we had victim two and three added, and now we have four and five. We know very little about victim five, but we know that three of the...
alleged victims are people that Diddy refers to as previous romantic partners. In Diddy's words, they're not victims, they're people that he had these long consensual relationships with. We know that one other of them was also a staff member. But we now know that victims two, three and four are going to be appearing under a pseudonym during the trial so their identity will be protected, whereas victim one is going to testify under their own name. And what do we know about these parties he had, these freak-offs?
So the federal government used the terminology of 'freak-off' in the indictment. Now we all thought that was a bit peculiar because that's terminology that has been allegedly originated by Diddy. But they're trying to garner interest in this, public interest in this case. So they say he had these 'freak-offs', which were these days-long orgies where people were performing sexual acts. They say they found a thousand bottles of baby oil in the raids that they performed on his homes.
On social media, freak-offs are being presented as these celebrity parties that he hosted called white parties. And it was these orgies with all these different celebrities. We've had absolutely no indication that that's what they were. It appears to be what Diddy is defining it as, is days-long sexual encounters, consensual sexual encounters. But the victims define as...
where they were sort of trapped and forced to perform sexual acts with prostitutes being filmed and under the influence of drugs that they were given. His trial is devastating.
soon going to start. What can we expect when it begins? Well, it's a tricky one, really, because we need to expect the unexpected as we have throughout this entire thing. So the government say they seize these tapes from his house that show him having sexual encounters, either consensual, non-consensual, obviously he says they're consensual, with other partners. We know that some of these sex tapes have been submitted by the victims. We can expect a
really, really grueling cross-examination of these victims when they take the stand. Their history, their relationship with Mr Combs, whatever that looked like, is going to take the stand with them and that's going to be heavily interrogated. And we have seen some indication from the filings that Diddy will take the stand himself.
Who are Diddy's lawyers? What have they and what have he said ahead of the trial? Diddy's been completely consistent in what he said. He says he's never sexually assaulted anyone, man or woman, adult or minor. He's described lots of the civil cases that have come outside the federal trial, which are being filed by claimants as cash grabs, opportunistic people who are looking to sort of cash in on this moment where lots of people are accusing him. He said, and his team of lawyers have said that,
These are consensual relationships he had. Yes, at times toxic, but that doesn't mean that it's what the federal government are accusing him of doing. And they need to kind of keep their nose out of private individuals, bedrooms and sexual proclivities. And that is the bulk of their argument. They're going to say this was about consent. What do we know about his lawyers? I mean, he has a lot of lawyers. They're extremely well-versed.
well-practiced lawyers, very successful lawyers, Mark Agnifilo, Tenny Garagas, who is the daughter of the defence attorney who famously represented Michael Jackson. We have now Brian Steele, who's been added as a sort of last-minute addition to the legal team, who was Young Thug's lawyer. We also had Anthony Rico, who decided that he could no longer participate as Diddy's lawyer and left halfway through. So we've had a bit of a changing team, but he does have a lot of legal support there.
In this federal trial, what would happen to Didier if he were to be convicted? If he's going to be convicted of all three counts, he could be facing up to life in prison. He's just rejected a plea deal. So he is going to proceed forward with the full amount of time attached to those crimes. You mentioned that he's also facing some civil lawsuits. There are some that involve high profile celebrities. Who else is accused of being involved?
Yeah, so I think it's really important that we draw the distinction here between civil and federal because it is really confusing and both are making headlines. These civil cases that are coming up, these are people who say that they have been wronged by Didi in some way and they have cognisable damages. So they went to hospital, they had to go to therapy, they lost out on business opportunities because of the harm that was done to them by Didi and their
claimants and they're raising them all over the country in lots of different areas. Now, one man in particular, Tony Busby, he is a Texan lawyer who you've probably seen in the headlines because he came and he told the BBC, I have over 150 cases I think I can bring to trial against P. Diddy. Now, he did a press conference in October of 2024 and he said,
There are other names that are going to come out and those names are going to shock you. He called them the perpetrators of foul play. And he said he promised that there would be other high profile names. Now, he raised a lawsuit.
originally that was accusing Diddy, another unnamed male celebrity and an unnamed female celebrity of participating in or watching the rape of a 13-year-old girl. The male celebrity was accused of participating in the rape of this girl. He then refiled this lawsuit and added the name of
Jay-Z, the rapper, Sean Carter, as one of the unnamed male celebrities. Jay-Z was adamant from the beginning that he had absolutely nothing to do with this. His lawyer, Alex Spiro, came out and presented a really, really coherent timeline of the night of the alleged events and said, look,
He just wasn't there in this place. These events would have had to have taken space in a 23 minute window and it's not possible. And Jay-Z said that from the beginning to the end and now is saying, you know, you have defamed me by essentially lying in this lawsuit and I'm going to pursue that in court.
Jay-Z denied all the allegations in that civil suit and so did Diddy. Diddy remained consistent saying, I have never sexually assaulted anyone, man or woman, adult or minor, and said that this lawsuit was just further proof that people were performing these cash grabs on celebrities by mentioning their names in lawsuits.
That lawsuit was then dropped with prejudice by that accuser. And being dropped with prejudice means that it cannot be raised again. So she said, I'm not filing this anymore and I'm not formally accusing Jay-Z anymore. And there's been a back and forth about whether she was pushed to add Jay-Z to that lawsuit by Tony Busby, which he vehemently denies. Jay-Z says he has evidence from private investigator recordings that she said...
Yes, Tony Busby told me to add on the name of Jay-Z. So that is going back and forth. And there's now a defamation case going on where Jay-Z is suing Tony Busby and this female Jane Doe accuser, the anonymous accuser of defamation. But as far as celebrity names being added on, it has not been what was promised at the beginning of this.
There has not been name after name after name. There's not been these videotapes and recordings of celebrity orgies with everyone you've ever met there. There have been a few names that have come through in civil cases, but a lot, once they're added, get removed once again, or information has come out that disproves that those people, they just couldn't have been there at that time in that place in that way. This is one of the many aspects of Diddy's trials and court cases that you're going to be covering on your podcast, Diddy on Trial. How are you going to be covering the federal trial?
So we are going to be out in New York. We're going to be in court talking to the court reports in New York. So our wonderful New York correspondent, Neda, she'll be talking to us a lot on the podcast. Of course, Cheyenne from Rolling Stone, who we have on a lot, and Sean Kent, our criminal defense attorney, will come and do an analysis with us once a week. And...
We are going to cover every single big moment. We're going to be there every single day bringing you the news as it happens. So we won't miss a moment and we'll make sure the podcast reports everything that happens. Anushka, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Hannah. And thank you for joining us. You can check out Anushka's podcast Diddy on Trial on the BBC World Service YouTube channel or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What's In The World from the BBC World Service. We'll be back with another episode soon. See you then.