![Sean "Diddy" Combs speaks and performs to the crowd after being presented with the key to the city by Mayor Eric Adams on Times Square in New York on September 15^ 2023](https://dehayf5mhw1h7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2313/2024/06/18090020/Shutterstock_2362342617803621.webp)
Per a request from New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Sean “Diddy” Combs returned his key to the city last week. Adams requested that Combs return the key after the 2016 video showing the music mogul attacking his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, went public. The mayor’s office confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the city received the key on June 10th; Adams initially awarded Combs the key in September 2023.
Adam’s office had originally requested the key’s return on June 4 via a letter from the mayor sent to Combs’ offices in New York and Los Angeles, which stated that Adams was “deeply disturbed” by the attack and added, “I strongly condemn these actions and stand in solidarity with all survivors of domestic and gender-based violence. Our city has worked tirelessly to make sure survivors are heard and seen by our administration.”
Security video from March 2016 obtained by CNN (which the network made public on May 17) shows Combs attacking his ex-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel hallway near an elevator, grabbing her and throwing her onto the ground. He appeared to kick her twice and drag her by her sweatshirt. Later in the footage, he returned to kick her again, and then threw an object from a nearby table at her.
Following the video’s release, Combs apologized on social media, saying he took “full responsibility for my actions in that video” and that he “was disgusted then when I did it, and I’m disgusted now.” Ventura accused him of repeatedly raping and physically abusing her during the course of their relationship in a lawsuit last November, but settled the case shortly after the filing. Combs has since faced multiple new lawsuits this year, accusing him of rape, sexual assault and sex trafficking. He has denied all of the allegations.
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