Diddy’s rap sheet of utter depravity: Car bomb claims, gun battles, champagne-bottle bludgeoning – and now a rape settlement… MAUREEN CALLAHAN reveals Sean Combs’ monstrous past and asks: How long can he get away with it?

That’s it? Sean Combs just walks?

If we’re to believe the allegations lodged in civil court last week by his former protégée Cassie, hip-hop mogul Combs — also known as Puffy, Diddy and, laughably, Love — is one very dangerous man.

And in the wake of this filing — which Combs, through his lawyer, said was a shakedown — we’re reminded that other prominent figures have said yes, they believe Sean Combs may be capable of violence.

New York prosecutors: Are you listening?

Cassie, née Casandra Ventura, filed her civil suit on November 16. One day later, a financial settlement was reached.

If even half of what Ventura alleges here is true, there’s a good chance other victims exist. And if there’s a faster payout in recent memory, I can’t come up with one.

This is dark stuff. It recalls the monsters we now know: R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein. And remember, all three have been convicted. Only Cosby is free, on a technicality.

The Cassie-Puffy origin story, as relayed here, feels familiar. Ventura met Combs when she was 19 and he was 37; she was an aspiring star and he was a hip-hop mogul.

Months later, in February 2006, he had signed her to his record label and began to infiltrate every aspect of her life.

If even half of what Ventura (above, left) alleges here is true, there’s a good chance other victims exist. And if there’s a faster payout in recent memory, I can’t come up with one.

The Cassie-Puffy origin story, as relayed here, feels familiar. Ventura met Combs when she was 19 and he was 37; she was an aspiring star and he was a hip-hop mogul.

According to this lawsuit, Combs subjected her to violent physical assaults and rape over more than a decade and coerced her into having sex with male prostitutes while he watched, directed and masturbated — encounters he called ‘freak offs’ — and plied her with drugs and alcohol.

Ventura says he forced her to hold his gun in her handbag at least twice, to remind her how dangerous he was. She recalls Combs hearing that his rap industry rival Suge Knight — currently serving a 28-year-sentence for manslaughter — was nearby and that Combs then ‘retrieved multiple guns from a safe and ran out of his home to where he believed Mr. Knight was dining.’

In another vignette that recalls Knight at his most fearsome — taking rapper Vanilla Ice out on to his hotel balcony and, as Ice told ABC News, trying extortion by having ‘me look over the edge, reminding me how high I was up there’ — Combs once allegedly ‘picked up one of Ms. Ventura’s friends like a child and dangled the friend over the balcony of [a] 17th floor hotel suite.’

She was subjected to beatings throughout the years, she claims. A particularly savage assault is recorded here: ‘In January 2009, after Mr. Combs learned that Ms. Ventura spoke to another music manager at a party in Los Angeles, he became enraged. . . . In the car leaving the club, Mr. Combs beat Ms. Ventura, pushing her into a corner of the vehicle and stomping on her face.’

His security guard Roger Bonds, Ventura says here, tried to stop Combs but could not. When the car pulled up to Combs’s house, Ventura made a run for it, ‘but Mr. Combs followed her and proceeded to kick her in the face . . . [she] was bleeding profusely, and was ushered into Mr. Combs’s home, where she began to throw up from the violent assault.’

Who wants to hear or see from Sean Combs again?

Lest you think this a rush to judgement, consider the deafening silence from the hip-hop community. Not one significant figure, as of this writing, has come forward to say what a good guy Combs is. How he could never be capable of such sadism. How this all must be a set-up.

That’s it? Sean Combs just walks? If we’re to believe the allegations lodged in civil court last week by his former protégée Cassie, hip-hop mogul Combs — also known as Puffy, Diddy and, laughably, Love — is one very dangerous man. (Above) Combs pictured in Miami on November 18, 2023

Kimora Lee Simmons (above, center-right) — ex-wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons (above, right), himself accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women — said in a 2004 New York magazine profile that Combs threatened to hit her.

If anything, it’s the opposite. Consider this section of Ventura’s lawsuit, in which Combs reacts to messages between Ventura and the rapper Kid Cudi.

‘In February 2012, during Paris Fashion Week, Mr. Combs told Ms. Ventura that he was going to blow up Kid Cudi’s car, and that he wanted to ensure that Kid Cudi was home with his friends when it happened. Around that time, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway.’

‘This is all true’, Cudi, through a spokesperson, told the New York Times last week, confirming Ventura’s claim that his car did, in fact, once blow up outside his house.

After that car bomb — seriously, are we in the Middle East? The mafia? — ‘Ms. Ventura was terrified as she began to fully comprehend what Mr. Combs was both willing and able to do to those he believed had slighted him.’

Kimora Lee Simmons — ex-wife of hip-hop Russell Simmons, himself accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women — said in a 2004 New York magazine profile that Combs threatened to hit her.

‘I was pregnant!’ she said. ‘The moron!’

Diddy, at the time, did not return a call for comment.

His purported violence isn’t limited to women.

In 1999, record producer Steve Stoute filed criminal charges alleging Combs and his bodyguards beat him up over a music video, using a chair, a telephone and a Champagne bottle. Combs ended up paying Stoute $500,000, pled guilty to harassment and was sentenced to one day in anger management.

That same year, Combs was charged with gun possession and bribery related to a nightclub shootout in New York City that wound up getting his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez hauled to the police station. Combs was found not guilty.

‘This is all true’, Cudi (above), through a spokesperson, told the New York Times last week, confirming Ventura’s claim that his car did, in fact, once blow up outside his house.

In 1999, record producer Steve Stoute (above, right with Rihanna) filed criminal charges alleging Combs and his bodyguards beat him up over a music video, using a chair, a telephone and a Champagne bottle. Combs ended up paying Stoute $500,000, pled guilty to harassment and was sentenced to one day in anger management.

In 2015, he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery and making terrorist threats in 2015 after an incident with a UCLA coach. Those felony charges were also dropped by L.A. County.

One could say there’s a pattern here.

In yet another heartening and depressing example of women in the industry, Kesha — whose 2014 lawsuit against record producer Dr. Luke for drugging and raping her was supported by Taylor Swift, who donated $250,000 for any of her financial needs — dropped Diddy’s name from her hit song ‘TikTok’ while performing this weekend.

None of this is evidence, to be sure. But it lends credence to Ventura’s claims. So does Combs’s 180-degree turnaround: As of Nov. 16, the day Ventura filed the suit, it was a money-grab. Within 24 hours, once the gory details went public, Combs clearly offered Ventura enough to make it go away.

So for now, he’s in the clear. But Sean Combs shouldn’t rest easy.

The guy who long ago lost the cultural relevance that made him untouchable finds himself in a new era, on a new precipice: One that begins with a ‘drip, drip, drip . . .’

It will only take one or two more brave accusers. After all, look at how far, how fast this self-appointed ‘bad boy for life’ has folded already.

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