Sean “Diddy” Combs, back in September, was indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking and other crimes. Combs is still awaiting trial, and there have been numerous developments in the case since.
Diddy has been sued by numerous alleged victims, claiming various forms of wrongdoing, bringing the number of total lawsuits to 30, and the number of accusers past 100, according to one attorney. Attorneys have hinted at other names that will come to light as part of the lawsuits, but prominent names have not been mentioned.
His jail cell has been raided, leading to a separate legal fight over whether the evidence from the raid can be used against him.
Diddy is due to stand trial next year. And when he is, we’ll likely all learn a lot more about what’s true. In the meantime, there have already been numerous true crime documentaries produced about this case, with many more to come.
(Speaking of which, there’s a new documentary available on Hulu about Moses “Shyne” Barrow, the former Bad Boy and Diddy associate who went to prison for several years for a Diddy-related shooting in 1999, later became a religious Jew, and is now a politician in Belize; in the documentary, he talks about his relationship with Diddy, new revelations about what went down in that shooting, and his reaction to the charges. See my interview with Shyne here.)
I wrote a few months ago about how Diddy’s name has begun to replace Jeffrey Epstein’s in pedophile conspiracy lore, of the sort that resembles Pizzagate and QAnon, including the added political dimension.
The Diddy List
Much like with Epstein, there is a widespread belief that there is something called “The Diddy List,” which exists, is in the government’s possession, and consists of a list of everyone who committed sex crimes along with Diddy. Also, this list contains ironclad proof of the guilt of a long list of prominent people, which is synonymous with every famous person who has ever worked with Diddy or even had their picture taken with him. If one searches the phrase “on the Diddy List,” there are numerous results, most of which are on either YouTube or TikTok.
Furthermore, on some distant day, due to a stroke of a pen, that “list” will be released to the public, leading to the arrests and convictions of hundreds of people. And the person releasing that list will be… Donald Trump, who has much closer and more documented ties to both Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs than the vast majority of people who have been named in these conspiracy theories. (To be clear, there is no real evidence tying Trump to either of their crimes.)
False Hopes
It would sure be nice if it worked that way. If there were just lists, containing undisputable proof of who was guilty in each case, it would certainly make things much easier for the nation’s sex crimes prosecutors. But in real life, that’s not how it works.
Law Enforcement and prosecutors have to build cases and get testimony and evidence. In the actual world, that job is very hard, and part of the reason why prosecuting prominent sex abusers happened so rarely, at least until the #MeToo movement finally took down the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and R. Kelly. (And even Weinstein and Cosby later had their convictions tossed.)
Besides: The president of the United States almost certainly does not have the power to release all the case files in a criminal prosecution, especially an ongoing case like Diddy’s that hasn’t even gone to trial yet. And while the president may be able to release government files related to the Epstein case, Trump did not do that the first time he was president, and has indicated that he might not.
So keep following the Diddy case, and hope for justice. But also, don’t believe everything you see on YouTube and TikTok, and don’t expect a “list” to emerge with indisputable proof of the guilty of all the names you’re expecting.
