NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs has returned New York’s honorary Key to the City, at the direct request of Mayor Eric Adams, after shocking video released last month showed the music mogul violently assaulting his ex-girlfriend.
The Harlem native, who was awarded the key last September, turned it into City Hall nearly a week after Adams sent out formal letters to Combs’ offices in New York and Los Angeles.
Declaring his solidarity with domestic violence survivors, Adams said the surveillance footage left him “deeply disturbed,” according to the letters obtained Saturday by TMZ.
“The Key to the City of New York is presented to individuals whose service to the public and the common good rises to the highest level of achievement, and who act as a model for fellow and future New Yorkers,” Adams wrote.
The mayor previously told 94.7’s “Jonesy in the Morning” that he and his team, who had never before revoked a person’s Key to the City, had been discussing next steps in the wake of the video’s publication.
Determining the honor should no longer belong to Combs following those internal deliberations, the mayor ultimately requested Diddy “immediately return his Key to the City.”
The letters were dated June 4, and Combs reportedly returned his key on Monday.
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Last month, CNN published the 2016 surveillance footage for the first time. The video showed the Bad Boy Records founder brutally beating R&B singer Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway.
Combs later said he takes “full responsibility for my actions in that video” and “was disgusted then when I did it” and is “disgusted now.”
Ventura in November sued Combs in a blockbuster lawsuit, claiming years of sexual and physical abuse throughout their relationship. One particular incident described in the suit closely aligned with what was shown in the hotel footage.
While Combs and Ventura settled the suit the following day, several others have since filed their own lawsuits accusing Combs of similar offenses.
The video surfaced two months after Homeland Security raided Combs’ Miami and Los Angeles properties in March, in what they confirmed was part of a federal sex trafficking probe.
The investigation into Combs is ongoing, with federal authorities reportedly preparing his accusers to potentially testify before a grand jury in a New York City.
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