Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ has been under scrutiny since his former romantic partner Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Ventura filed a lawsuit against him in November 2023, accusing him of rape and repeated physical abuse. In the months leading up to September 2024, when the disgraced music mogul was ultimately arrested and indicted, Combs became the subject of several other formal complaints. It’s all been downhill for the record executive who was once seen as a “gatekeeper” of the music industry, as Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones Jr called him in an interview.

The dramatic reversal of fate has put dozens of recorded instances and moments from his history to rise like the high tide again as the internet digs into these blasts from the past. With the ongoing federal probe, Puff Daddy is also the focus of online investigation as sleuth netizens continue to keep a watch on his history chart like hawks.

As contentious as the discourse surrounding Diddy is, incendiary conspiracy theories have also taken flight. One of the newest ones to take social media by storm is Dr Umar Johnson’s suggestion that the timing of Combs’ legal troubles blowing out of the water is questionable. He firmly believes the embattled public figure has been made to stand in as a fall guy for corrupt politicians.

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Johnson, an American Black activist, psychologist and self-proclaimed pan-Africanist, recently took to social media to voice his thoughts on Diddy’s arrest and sex trafficking probe. Various handles on X, formerly Twitter, later widely circulated the video.

New Diddy conspiracy theory: Dr Umar Johnson projects Sean Combs is being used as a “distraction” from the US election

As he begins questioning the timing of the arising issue at hand, Dr Umar asks, “You know why they gave Black people Puff Daddy during election season?”

His answer soon follows: “The reason they decided to serve up Sean Puffy Combs a few weeks before the election is they want to distract you from the laws they’re passing. They want to distract you from the policies they are passing. They want to distract you from the initiatives they are implementing. This is a distraction.”

He goes on, “Because they know Black people love to see Black people disgraced, humiliated and destroyed. They said throw them one of their own. Let’s lynch another n*gro today- to send all the Black people over here while we take care of business over here.”

Johnson claimed that the lawmakers don’t want Black people to pay attention to their own actions because they’re planning something “really really big.”

He continues that while there’s nothing wrong with having conversations about Diddy, the drastic shift of media’s focus on the music mogul has also directed “Black Instagram, Black Facebook, Black TikTok” and other such platforms to submerge themselves in a pool of gossip.

“Sean Combs is a distraction,” he reiterated several times during his lengthy tirade. “In any time you see something like this, you should ask yourself: What are they trying to distract African people away from.”

Per Johnson’s belief, one of these things is that “Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have no agenda for African people.”

The activist maintained that before the media served Diddy “on a platter,” people were asking the presidential hopefuls from both front-running political parties what they had in mind for the future.

Calculating the gap between the day of Combs’ arrest (September 16) and Election Day (November 5), Dr Umar also raised doubts about why the rapper was arrested exactly seven weeks before D-Day. “Why did they do it now? To stop the Black political movement.”

Observing that it hasn’t even been a full week since the Bad Boy Records founder was arrested and people are emotionally invested in his case through and through, Johnson said that politicians had already succeeded in snatching everyone’s attention away from the election discourse.

“You have taken your attention completely off the Black agenda from 2024, and you have put it on Puff. You have been outsmarted. You have been out-manoeuvred. You have been out-strategised by the White power structure once again.”

Switching his focus to the famous owner of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, Dr Umar charged ahead, that he had a “living ‘Freak Off’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week” at the Playboy mansion, but “nobody said a word.” He then compared his case to that of Diddy, who had “intermittent ‘Freak Offs.’”

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Johnson finally concluded the message: “This is nothing but a distraction from the election. This is nothing but a distraction from Kamala Harris’ procrastination.”

Although a few agreed with his theory, others called him out for this “whataboutism.”

“Bro has lost the plot entirely,” someone commented. Someone else pointed out that the clash of both issues’ timelines had nothing to do with the erasure of conversations around the election. “I wonder if he realises that you can pay attention to more than one thing,” another replied. Meanwhile, a third user believed Johnson and dubbed Diddy the “fall guy for the rest of the corrupt politicians involved.”

In any case, Johnson’s argument largely portrayed Diddy’s arrest as the fall of a Black man in the spotlight. However, he completely turned away from referencing the charges listed against the Revolt founder in the federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday, September 17.

Dr Umar Johnson previously understated allegations against Diddy

Not too long ago, Johnson posted a similar video addressing the Diddy probe. Despite mentioning the formal allegations levelled against the rapper, Johnson’s remarks somehow managed to downplay Combs’ alleged misconduct.

“Sean Puff Combs’ federal charges have little if anything to do with domestic abuse or paedophilia. His major sex crime, federally, is he’s being accused of transporting women across state lines to engage in sex– what we call prostitution. Not Cassie, not the freak offs, not underage girls. Prostitution.”

Despite foregrounding that while he doesn’t support prostitution either, he adds it is the “oldest female business on the planet Earth… It is the sexual trafficking that Sean Puffy Combs is being accused of, not domestic abuse, not freak offs, not stomping out Cassie, not engaging in sex with underage women. It is interstate sexual trafficking.”

Fact-checking Dr Umar Johnson’s narrative

Going back to the full indictment laid out against the Bad Boy for Life, one can see that he’s been accused of three counts – racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution. However, when one zooms in to read the detailed description of these three counts on the 14-page indictment, the subtext comes to light that may not otherwise come to mind under broader terms.

Also read | Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ kids ‘in a state of shock’ after dad’s tragic phone call from jail: ‘It’s heartbreaking to…’

The overview literally begins with the first pointer highlighting that Combs “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfil his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct. To do so, COMBS relied on the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled–creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labour, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.”

The docs also accuse him of engaging in a “persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals.” Moreover, this abuse was, “at times, verbal, emotional, physical and sexual.” As Combs “manipulated” women to engage in “highly orchestrated” sexual activities with male commercial sex workers, he would sometimes ensure their participation by, “among other things, obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial supports and threatening to cut off the same, and using intimidation and violence.”

Last we checked, the United Nations’ official website describes domestic abuse as typically manifesting “a pattern of abusive behaviour toward an intimate partner in a dating or family relationship, where the abuser exerts power and control over the victim.

Domestic abuse can be mental, physical, economic or sexual in nature.” Such incidents may even result in serious physical injury or death.

And what is Combs also accused of? Assaulting “women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them.” Although the indictment doesn’t directly name-drop Cassie, it clearly indicates that some of these assaults were witnessed by others, including the one instance at a Los Angeles hotel in or about March 2016. The official pages also state that the rapper tried to bribe the staff member to ensure silence. The incident presumably being cited here is the one that CNN exposed earlier this year by sharing a years-old surveillance video showing Diddy savagely attacking his then-girlfriend. The details of the incident also mirror the complaints listed in Cassie’s lawsuit filed in November.

Further contradicting Dr Umar’s claims, the indictment also laid down that “Combs’ violence was… not limited to these women. It extends to his employees, witnesses to his abuse, and others.” Moreover, the indictment undoubtedly mentions the term “Freak Offs,” additionally accusing Diddy of filming videos of victims engaging in sex acts. After pushing them to participate in these performances, “he maintained control over his victims” through various means. The charges add, “During and separate from Freak Offs, Combs, among other things, hit, kicked, threw objects at, and dragged victims, at times, by their hair.” These incidents eventually resulted in “injuries that took days or weeks to heal.” And this isn’t even all of it.