As Sean “Diddy” Combs awaits trial on sex trafficking charges, Ray J claimed that he knows of multiple celebrities who are doing everything they can to hide their connections to the music mogul.
“I’m hearing about artists paying victims to keep their names out of it,” Ray J, 43, alleged in TMZ’s new documentary, The Downfall of Diddy: Inside the Freak-Offs. “Somebody has a truth, somebody pays you to keep it quiet, and hopefully that money you got paid secures your happiness while you watch the lie continue to succeed.”
When asked whether alleged victims are approaching celebrities connected to Diddy’s alleged crimes and asking for hush money, Ray J said, “[It’s] the other way around. … [It’s], ‘I’ll give you money, please don’t talk.’”
As a longtime friend of Diddy’s himself, Ray J has maintained that he and many others were blindsided by the shocking allegations that came out after Diddy’s September arrest.
“We’ve never seen the stuff that’s being said and the stuff that people are finding out,” he said during a September appearance on Andrew Cuomo’s NewsNation show, CUOMO. “I’ve never been in rooms that people are talking about, and I never knew they existed.”
The “Let It Go” singer also speculated about why other friends of Diddy, 55, had yet to speak out about the allegations.
“I think a lot of people are in shock. A lot of people are dealing with it in their own way,” he said. “I hear people aren’t coming out because they either suspected this about him, or they don’t want to have any connection to him. And then I guess there’s another group who’s worried that they’re gonna get pulled in.”
Several stars’ past comments about Diddy’s infamous parties have been reexamined in the wake of a 14-page indictment, which was unsealed in September and alleged that the rapper hosted “elaborate and produced sex performances” called “Freak Offs.”
Diddy and his business associates would allegedly use “force, threats of force and coercion to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers” during the Freak Offs. Diddy pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking in September and has vehemently denied the allegations against him.
While some celebrities have spoken about choosing not to party with Diddy — 50 Cent told The Hollywood Reporter in July that he’s been “very vocal about not going to Puffy parties and doing s— like that” — others have alluded to knowing more than they can say.
“I’ve got a lot I can’t tell,” Ashton Kutcher said when asked about Diddy’s get-togethers during a 2019 appearance on Hot Ones. “Can’t tell that one either. … I’m actually cycling through them. Diddy party stories, man.”
Ray J said in The Downfall of Diddy: Inside the Freak-Offs that he thinks some stars might view him as a potential “vessel” for leaks about their participation in Diddy’s alleged crimes.
“Now they’re gonna be mad,” he said, without naming which celebrities he was referring to. “I’ve said too much.”
The Downfall of Diddy: Inside the Freak-Offs is now streaming on Tubi.
