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A lawyer for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul whose houses have been raided by federal brokers on Monday, known as the searches “a gross overuse of military-level force” and criticized them as “nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”
“There is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated,” the lawyer, Aaron Dyer, mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday. “Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities. Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family members have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way.”
On Monday, armed brokers from Homeland Security Investigations searched two of Mr. Combs’s houses in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla. The authorities didn’t say whether or not Mr. Combs was a goal or what felony prices they have been investigating. Video taken by a neighborhood tv station in Los Angeles, Fox 11, showed armed officers coming into a house within the unique Holmby Hills space of town.
“This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs,” Mr. Dyer mentioned. “There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations. Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”
On the identical day as these searches, federal brokers additionally stopped Mr. Combs at an airport within the Miami space as he was making ready to go away with relations for the Bahamas, and took quite a lot of digital gadgets from Mr. Combs, in line with a person with information of the matter. Mr. Combs was not arrested, and remained within the United States, in line with that person.
The raid was a hanging improvement for Mr. Combs, who has been one of many highest-profile figures within the music business for many years, credited with reworking hip-hop and R&B within the 1990s into a worldwide enterprise. He labored with stars like Mary J. Blige and the Notorious B.I.G., and as lately as final fall was being showered with business accolades.
Videos and images from the raid that have been broadcast by information organizations, and circulated broadly on social media, confirmed brokers apparently pulling down a door at Mr. Combs’s mansion and confiscating computer systems and different gadgets.
The investigation was led by prosecutors within the Southern District of New York, in line with a law-enforcement official. Federal investigators in New York have been conducting interviews asking potential witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations in opposition to Mr. Combs for a number of months, in line with a person conversant in the interviews.
The raid this week got here after a collection of civil lawsuits in current months which have accused Mr. Combs, usually in graphic and disturbing element, of sexual assault. The first, in November, was filed by Casandra Ventura, generally known as Cassie, Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend and an artist as soon as signed to his report label, Bad Boy. She alleged that along with rape and bodily abuse, Mr. Combs compelled her to have intercourse with male prostitutes in motels throughout the United States over a interval of years.
Ms. Ventura’s case was settled in simply at some point, with she and Mr. Combs each saying they’d reached their settlement “amicably,” and a lawyer for Mr. Combs noting that the settlement was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing.”
Suits by three different women have been filed in fast succession, every accusing Mr. Combs of sexual assault. And in February, a music producer filed one other swimsuit, saying that he had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Combs and compelled to rent prostitutes and take part in intercourse acts with them.
In earlier statements, Mr. Combs and his legal professionals have vehemently denied the allegations in these fits, saying they have been filed by folks in search of a “payday.” But the fits have made Mr. Combs a pariah within the music business and put a lot of his wider enterprise empire in danger.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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