P. Diddy’s Alleged Party Victim Was Kanye West’s Personal Assistant

.

.

.

In a shocking development, reports have emerged that one of the individuals allegedly victimized at a party hosted by P. Diddy was Kanye West’s personal assistant. This revelation has intensified scrutiny surrounding the ongoing investigation into the claims made against Diddy.

Sources indicate that the personal assistant was present at the party and has since come forward with serious allegations. The situation has raised eyebrows within the entertainment industry, as it connects high-profile figures in a complex web of allegations that has captivated public attention.

As the investigation unfolds, details regarding the circumstances of the alleged incident remain limited. However, this connection to Kanye West adds another layer to an already intricate narrative, prompting discussions about the dynamics of power and influence in the music world.

Both Diddy and Kanye West have yet to comment on the situation. Fans and observers are eagerly awaiting more information as this story develops, hoping for clarity in a case that continues to make headlines. Stay tuned for updates on this unfolding situation.

Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images

In November 2023, the singer Cassie (real name Casandra Ventura) filed an explosive federal lawsuit against her former partner Sean “Diddy” Combs, claiming he had been physically and sexually abusive throughout their relationship. The complaint alleged that Combs’s abuse ranged from beating Ventura and forcing her to have sex with other men to raping her at her home in 2018. The rapper settled the lawsuit within a day. But since then, 16 more people have sued Combs, accusing him of a wide range of abusive behavior including sexual harassment, rape, nonconsensual pornography, and sex trafficking. The situation escalated in March when federal agents raided Combs’s properties in Miami and Los Angeles, and then on September 16, federal agents arrested Combs at a Manhattan hotel following a grand-jury indictment. The music mogul was charged with racketeering and sex trafficking, to which he pleaded not guilty. A judge ruled that he be held without bail until trial, which is now set to start on May 5, 2025.

Following the raids, Combs’s lawyer Aaron Dyer maintained that his client is “innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.” The music mogul has denied all of his accusers’ allegations. “I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy,” he said in December. “Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged.”

However, in May, CNN published graphic security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in a hotel back in 2016, which lines up closely with the allegations in her suit. Following the leak, Combs issued a video apology, saying, “My behavior on that video is inexcusable.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the accusations against Combs.

Cassie alleged she was the victim of a pattern of “abuse, violence, and sex trafficking.”

Ventura sued under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave victims a onetime one-year window to sue their alleged sexual abusers and institutions even if the statute of limitations had run out. (The window expired in November.) She says she first met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. In the lawsuit, she alleges that Combs controlled nearly every aspect of her life, from her career to her personal medical records. She claims he was frequently violent, physically abusing her “multiple times a year,” and that he often plied her with “copious amounts of drugs.”

The complaint also claims that Combs forced Ventura to have sex with male sex workers in different cities — encounters she says he watched, masturbated to, and recorded. The singer says she never went to the police because she was afraid that doing so “would merely give Mr. Combs another excuse to hurt her.” She also alleges that, following a dinner in 2018, Combs forced himself into her apartment and raped her while she “repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.” Ventura says she ended the relationship for good afterward.

In her lawsuit, she referred to multiple witnesses who saw the abuse take place. One of them is her friend, singer-songwriter Tiffany Red, who wrote an open letter to Combs describing an incident on Ventura’s 29th-birthday party in 2015. Ventura and Red claim that that night, Combs and his security team forced Ventura to leave because he wanted her to have sexual encounters with other men. In a statement to the New York Times, Combs’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman said Combs denied the allegations and that the lawsuit was “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’s reputation and seeking a payday.” Ventura and Combs settled the lawsuit one day after it was filed; the details remain private. Brafman said that the settlement “is in no way an admission of wrongdoing.”

Video shows Diddy assaulting Cassie back in 2016.

In May, CNN released security footage showing Combs assaulting Ventura in the elevator bay at the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016. The video appears to support a similar incident Ventura described in her suit. “[Combs] followed her into the hallway of the hotel while yelling at her. He grabbed at her, and then took glass vases in the hallway and threw them at her, causing glass to crash around them as she ran to the elevator to escape,” Ventura’s complaint reads.

After the video was made public, Combs posted an apology video on Instagram. “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab. I had to ask God for his mercy and grace,” Combs said. “I’m so sorry.”

In an interview with Piers Morgan, Combs’s former head of security said he wasn’t surprised by the footage because he witnessed the rapper being violent toward women “four or five times.” Roger Bonds, who worked for the mogul for a decade, alleged he had seen Combs be violent toward Cassie and his former partner Kim Porter, with whom he shares three children. (Porter died in 2018 from pneumonia.) 

In October, Combs’s legal team filed a motion alleging that prosecutors had leaked the Cassie footage to CNN and therefore the court should prohibit the use of the video during trial. However, the rapper’s attorneys did not provide evidence for their claims. Emily Johnson, one of the prosecutors, denied the accusation, saying in an email to Combs’s defense team that was submitted to court that “the government possessed no surveillance video at all from the InterContinental prior to CNN’s public broadcast.”

Sixteen more people have come forward with allegations against Diddy.

Following Ventura’s settlement, Liza Gardner filed a lawsuit on November 23. She says she and a friend met Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall at an MCA Records event in 1990 or 1991. They returned to Hall’s apartment for an after-party, where Gardner says she was “offered more drinks and was coerced into having sex with Combs.” She says Combs also assaulted her friend. The lawsuit claims the encounter left Gardner “shocked and traumatized,” and as she got dressed, Hall allegedly “barged into the room, pinned her down, and forced [her] to have sex with him.” Gardner claims that Combs came to the home she shared with her friend a few days later and allegedly attacked her again. He came to the house looking for the friend because he was worried she would tell the “girl he was with at the time,” according to the suit.

In another complaint filed the same day, ​​Joi Dickerson-Neal alleges that in 1991, she “reluctantly” went on a date with Combs, who “intentionally drugged” and sexually assaulted her after their dinner. She claims that Combs recorded the assault and showed the tape to other people. While Dickerson-Neal did not go to the authorities immediately after the alleged assault, she says she did eventually file a police report with unspecified agencies in New York and New Jersey. The complaint says prosecutors told her they’d need to corroborate her allegations, but she believes possible witnesses were “terrified that Combs would retaliate against them and that they would lose future business and music opportunities if they made a statement” backing her account.

A spokesperson for Diddy said the two women’s claims are “fabricated” and accused them of exploiting the Adult Survivors Act. Another woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the complaint, filed a fourth lawsuit on December 6, alleging that Combs, his longtime lieutenant Harve Pierre, and a third unidentified assailant trafficked her across state lines from Detroit to New York City and gang-raped her at Combs’s Manhattan recording studio in 2003, when she was 17 years old. (Pierre, who previously served as president of Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment, has also been sued by a former assistant, who alleges he “used his position of authority as plaintiff’s boss to groom, exploit, and sexually assault” her several times between 2016 and 2017.)

In February, Combs’s former producer and videographer filed a federal lawsuit against the mogul, alleging Combs sexually harassed, drugged, and threatened him. According to the lawsuit, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones worked on Combs’s most recent album, Love, and lived with him between September 2022 and November 2023. Jones alleges he “was the victim of constant unsolicited and unauthorized groping and touching of his anus by Mr. Combs.” On one occasion, the lawsuit claims, Jones woke up naked and disoriented in bed with Combs and two sex workers.The complaint also claims that, in his role as Combs’s videographer, Jones “secured HUNDREDS of hours of footage and audio recordings of Mr. Combs, his staff, and his guests engaging in serious illegal activity.” The illegal activity the suit alleges includes acquiring drugs, soliciting sex workers, providing laced drinks to minors, and sexual assault. 

Jones’s suit names several other defendants, including Combs’s son Justin; Combs’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram; Universal Music Group CEO Sir Lucian Grainge; and former Motown Records CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam. Combs’s lawyer, Shawn Holley, denied Jones’s allegations.

In April, a separate lawsuit was filed against Combs’s son Christian Combs, in which a woman alleged that the 26-year-old drugged her and sexually assaulted her on a yacht chartered by the music mogul in December 2022. The suit also names Combs as a defendant. In her complaint, Grace O’Marcaigh accused the rapper of aiding and abetting his son. O’Marcaigh, who worked on the yacht as a steward, also claimed she witnessed partying and drug use between celebrities and “constant rotation of suspected sex workers.”

Then, in May, another suit was filed in federal court by Crystal McKinney, who alleges Combs forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2003. The lawsuit was brought under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which gives survivors a two-year look-back window to file civil claims against their alleged abusers after the statute of limitations has passed. Combs has yet to comment on the allegations.

On May 24, April Lampros became the seventh person to file a suit against Combs, accusing him of drugging and assaulting her over several years beginning in 1995, per NBC. Lampros claims she first met Combs in 1994, when she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She alleges that the next year, she met up with him at a bar and gave into pressure from Combs to drink because of his “delusional and violent outbursts.” After a few sips, Lampros felt “uneasy” and says she was guided into a car that took her and Combs to a hotel, where he forcibly kissed and grabbed her. Despite her telling him to stop and saying that she felt unwell, “Ms. Lampros was being raped by Mr. Combs, and she soon passed out,” the lawsuit claims. Lampros says that after the incident, Combs wooed her back by sending lavish gifts and flowers. Per NBC, the lawsuit includes a photo of a handwritten Valentine’s Day card signed from “Puffy.”

Combs allegedly assaulted Lampros for a second time later in 1995 and a third time in 1996, forcing her and his then-girlfriend, Kim Porter, to take ecstasy and have sex with one another. Lampros says that she “vocally opposed this idea,” but Combs reminded her that “he could make her lose her job,” the suit claims. Lampros claims that Combs watched the women while he masturbated before sexually assaulting her.

The eighth accuser, Derrick Lee Cardello-Smith, sued Combs alleging the producer drugged and sexually assaulted him at a party in Detroit in 1997. Cardello-Smith, 51, says that he met Diddy while working at a restaurant. The men allegedly went to a party, where they met a group of women, and later had sex with them. The lawsuit claims that Combs offered Cardello-Smith a drink, which he believes was spiked. He alleges he passed out and woke up to the producer having sex with a woman and telling him, “I did this to you too.”

Cardello-Smith was convicted of sexual misconduct in a separate case and is currently incarcerated. At a preliminary hearing conducted virtually in August, he testified that Combs offered him $2.3 million in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. He rejected the settlement offer. He also produced prison visitation records showing Combs’s name.

On September 9, Combs failed to show up to a virtual hearing on the case. As a result, Lenawee County Circuit Court Judge Anna Marie Anzalone awarded Cardello-Smith a $100 million default judgment, to be paid in $10 million installments beginning in October. But on September 18, Anzalone set aside the judgement after Combs’s legal team successfully argued that Cardello-Smith did not serve the lawsuit in accordance with Michigan law. And because Cardello-Smith’s allegations date back to 1997 and are well outside the statute of limitations, the lawsuit is expected to be dismissed.

Dawn Richard, a former member of the group Danity Kane, filed a federal lawsuit against Combs on September 10, accusing him of sexual battery, harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and unlawful imprisonment. In her complaint, Richard painted the picture of Combs as an explosive boss who manipulated her over the course of a decade, making her believe that “abuse and exploitation were required for female artists to succeed in the music industry.”

She accused Combs of groping her and retaliating against her when she denied his advances. Richard also claims she witnessed the producer abusing Cassie on multiple occasions. Combs’s lawyer Erica Wolff has denied the allegations. In a statement to Variety, she accused Richard of manufacturing “a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a pay day.”

Another accuser, Thalia Graves, filed a federal lawsuit against Combs following his arrest. She alleges that the producer and his bodyguard Joseph “Big Joe” Sherman raped her in 2001. Both men have denied the allegations.

According to the complaint, Graves was 25 and dating one of Combs’s employees at Bad Boy Records when the music mogul reached out and asked to meet to discuss her boyfriend’s employment. She says Combs and Sherman picked her up at her mother’s home in Queens, and, when she entered the car, the rapper offered her a glass of wine that she now believes was laced. Graves says she began “to feel lightheaded, dizzy, and physically weak” after just a few sips, and when they arrived at the studio, she found it difficult to walk. The suit claims that once they reached a private room, Graves lost consciousness on the couch, and when she later came to, she was naked and her hands were tied behind her back. The lawsuit alleges that Combs proceeded to violently rape her, to the point where she vomited, defecated, and passed out again. When Graves regained consciousness, she says that Sherman forced her to perform oral sex and she once again passed out. When she woke up, she was alone and managed to escape from the studio, the lawsuit says. Graves claims that she didn’t report the assault because she was scared of Combs’s power and over the years he and Sherman warned her to stay silent.

In November, 22 years after the alleged assault, Graves says she learned the rape had been videotaped and the two men had shown the recording to other people. She claims she became suicidal upon discovering this information. Graves is seeking undisclosed damages.

In October, six anonymous accusers filed federal lawsuits against Combs in the Southern District of New York, accusing the entrepreneur of sexually assaulting women, men, and a 16-year-old boy. The alleged incidents occurred between 1995 and 2021, including two at Combs’s infamous “White Parties.”

In one lawsuit, a Jane Doe says that in 1995 she met Combs at a music-video after-party, where he “unexpectedly” kissed her. After she tried to get the rapper to slow down, she alleges Combs “violently struck her, slamming her head against the wall and causing her to fall to the floor” and raped her. Another claim involves a John Doe who accuses Combs of sexually assaulting him at a White Party in the Hamptons in 1998, when he was just 16 years old. In a third lawsuit, a Jane Doe says she was 19 when she and a friend attended a photo shoot and after-party at Combs’s hotel in 2004. Doe alleges that the rapper ordered her friend “to perform oral sex on him or else he would have them both killed.”

The fourth lawsuit details an incident that allegedly took place in 2006, when a John Doe was working security at a White Party. Doe accuses Combs of giving him two laced drinks before forcing him into a van and sexually assaulting him. Another John Doe alleges that in 2008, Combs forced him to give him oral sex at the Macy’s flagship store in New York. Doe, who worked for a clothing brand and was in the store’s stockroom, claims that the rapper threatened to kill him and that when he reported the assault to security, they did not investigate. Instead, Doe alleges that Macy’s executives pressured his bosses to fire him and covered up the assault.

The sixth lawsuit was filed by a John Doe who says that he attended a party at Combs’s New York home in 2021, where he became disoriented after having a single drink. The next thing he remembers is being in a bedroom and feeling paralyzed. He alleges that he was raped by at least three men, including Combs, who at one point the plaintiff says stood above him naked.

Combs denied all the allegations. “Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process,” his legal team said in a statement to CNN. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”

One lawsuit claims Combs groomed his accuser “to pass him off to his friends” and traded on his celebrity connections.

In his suit, Jones says that he feared Combs was grooming him and “that fear became a reality” when actor Cuba Gooding Jr. allegedly assaulted him during an outing on the music mogul’s yacht. An amended version of the lawsuit filed in late March names Gooding as a defendant, People reported.

The lawsuit also says that Combs’s circle enabled his behavior in order to have access to celebrities that he knew and socialized with. “Mr. Combs was known for throwing the ‘best’ parties,” the suit reads. “Affiliation with, and or sponsorship of Mr. Combs sex-trafficking parties garnered legitimacy and access to celebrities such as famous athletes, political figures, artist[s], musicians, and international dignitaries like British Royal, Prince Harry.” (The complaint does not include any allegations of wrongdoing against Prince Harry.)