Speaker 1: Do you know Sean Combs? Puff Daddy? Yeah. P. Diddy, whatever you call himself. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead. It is one of the strangest interrogations we have ever covered here on Sidebar. And in light of a criminal indictment against music mogul Sean Diddy Combs, some people are seeing it in a whole new way. We're taking another look at the bizarre claims made by a man accused of shooting up one of former President Donald Trump's Florida hotels and his connection to Sean Combs. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law & Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. As you know by now, rapper Sean Diddy Combs is facing sex trafficking and racketeering charges out in New York City, accused of using force and coercion to get people around him to facilitate and participate in so-called freak-offs, these group sex sessions that sometimes last for days at a time. The criminal indictment lays out the allegations, only names Combs as the defendant, although that could potentially change down the line. We may see more defendants. But since Combs has officially been charged and he's locked up behind bars, there have been a lot of videos that have been surfacing, particularly online. And one of those videos is the interrogation of a man named Jonathan Addy. Now this is a strange one, maybe some would say, an odd one, see what I did right there? So I want you to stay with me. So we go back to 2018 and Jonathan Addy allegedly went into the Trump National Doral Miami Hotel and Resort in the middle of the night and ostensibly went on a rampage. The state attorney's office says that Addy fired shots in the lobby and toward the chandelier, then draped a giant American flag across the front desk. There was a shootout when Miami police got to the scene and Addy was shot in the leg and tried to hide, but he was taken into custody, faces multiple charges, attempted murder, armed burglary, grand theft. Now you might be saying, well, why are you talking about him? What is his connection to Sean Combs? Well, once Addy was released from the hospital, he did an interview with police where he repeatedly asked to speak with the FBI, the CIA, Secret Service, the media. And during that conversation, he brings up, of all people, Sean Combs. Now here's the thing. You might say, Jesse, what are you about to talk about? Does this guy sound crazy? I'll leave that to you. But what he ends up saying back in 2018 is kind of eerie thinking about what the allegations are right now. And for that, I want to talk about some specifics. And I want to bring in retired NYPD Detective Tom Smith to talk more about this. Tom, thanks so much for coming on. We haven't had a chance to talk about the Sean Diddy Combs arrest, the indictment. I'll first ask you about the arrest, and then we'll get into the Jonathan Addy situation. But what's your overall reaction about what happened last week? And particularly, I thought it was really interesting because there's this video that's been surfacing, I believe TMZ published, where you can see agents arresting Sean Combs at his hotel at the Park Hyatt. He knew this was going to happen, seemingly. He came to New York to face the charges. But I don't think he knew at that moment he was about to be detained. There was a question about, did he want to surrender himself? But they detained him in the hotel lobby. What did you make of that?

Speaker 3: Well, that's how it's done. You know, you have indictment, you have an investigation and indictment. And let me tell you something about the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney's Office. They are the most powerful, strongest U.S. Attorney's Office in the country. And they do not just do a case, OK? They are airtight when they are brought to them. They do not prepare for a trial. They put so much pressure on the defense team and on the defendant with the amount of evidence they have and witnesses and electronic surveillance evidence, all of that into a packet. They don't move forward until they have you. And Diddy is in a lot of trouble with the Southern District being at the point they're at right now. He has a lot to look forward to, because like I said, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District brings cases that are airtight and they don't move forward until they're ready.

Speaker 2: Hey, by the way, we really appreciate you guys coming to us for our Sean Combs coverage. We plan to continue to bring you updates on this story. And look, the reason we're able to do this is because not only of the support that we get from you guys, but also from our sponsors. And if I can, I want to call out one right now. Upside. So this is so cool. Upside is a free app that helps you get cash back on daily essentials like gas and groceries. Real cash back money that appears in your Upside app that you can transfer straight into your bank account. Just the other day, I used Upside to find a gas station. I claimed an offer. I pay with my credit card at the pump, follow the steps on the app to get cash back. And you can use Upside at all different kinds of places, including restaurants, convenience stores. So to find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan the QR code on screen and use our promo code sidebar and you'll get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. I hope you can check it out. Yeah. And we spent a lot of sidebar episodes so far breaking down the indictment, the charges, what might be to come, why they charged it this way. But now you see things that have come out. You see these videos that have come out. And I want to talk about this interview where Adi is rambling for a while and he's talking about different conspiracy theories. And then suddenly he mentions combs. Quick aside here. The bull is a real thing. It's the senior leadership of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity. Our understanding it's the oldest postgraduate fraternity founded by and for black men. It was secret in the beginning, but not anymore. It's been rumored that Sean Combs might be a member, but he's not. Tom, first, let's start there. When you're interviewing somebody like this who allegedly just shot up a public property, you have to take what he says with a grain of salt, I imagine, but you don't want to just ignore everything he's saying. Right.

Speaker 3: No, not at all. And you know what? I was always taught you do when you're doing an interview like that, you do more listening than you do talking. And you let them talk because it's amazing what people will bring up when they're in the situation that this individual was in. People will give up anything they have in their back pocket, experiences they've had or who they've had them with will all come out during interviews like this. And you have to kind of break it into categories of believable 50 percent, 25 percent and 25 percent. So you have to break up what you're listening to, but you don't stop listening and you take notes. And there's a way to kind of go about doing it and not getting him off track. If he starts to go down a road that's really weird, you can always say, hey, hold on to that for a minute. I'm interested in that, but hold on to that for a minute. We're going to go back to this. The information is really interesting because that can be pushed back and seen if he is actually where he was at that time. But the information that he was given during that interview is really interesting because it's all true right now.

Speaker 2: Let's well, let's let's talk about what he said in that interview. So Adi claims that Combs is connected to this larger agenda to try and run the world. And as Adi starts to talk about Combs, he reveals something that the detectives really weren't expecting. I had sex with Cassie and Sean.

Speaker 4: Basically, he would tell me what to do with Cassie. I had like 15 encounters and I heard a lot of business because what they would do is Sean talks a lot on the, on the phone and on the TV with speaking and stuff. And I'll be in the, I was like a sex slave. Okay. For them, that's what I was. That's all.

Speaker 2: All right. Now, Cassie is Cassandra Ventura. This is Combs' ex-girlfriend who filed the initial civil lawsuit against him last November. Really kickstarted this entire legal story because we saw after that a whole slew of other lawsuits that came out. And eventually this led to the federal criminal, criminal indictment. And while she isn't named specifically in the indictment, she is believed to be the person identified as victim number one in this indictment. It's with respect to the sex trafficking charge and her story in her lawsuit and the accusations in the indictment seem to line up. And Cassie claims that Combs abused her for almost their entire 10 year relationship using his money and influence to keep her from leaving. She claims Combs would have male escorts brought to his home or hotel rooms where these freak off sessions would occur. These elaborate setups were reportedly filmed complete with lighting and support staff. Thousands of bottles of lubricant and baby oil have been found during the course of this investigation. Combs reportedly used these sessions for his own gratification, but he also held onto the videos as collateral against whomever might be featured on them. And Cassie says that she was forced to take drugs when she participated in these freak offs. Sometimes Combs would participate, sometimes he would just watch. An anonymous source told the New York Post that sometimes Combs wouldn't even be in the room but could see what was going on from an elaborate camera setup in the home. So Tom, this interview is from 2018. The fact that he is referencing this before Cassandra Ventura's lawsuit, before the indictment, before all of this came out, before all of us knew what a freak off was, that is really chilling and and kind of gives us pause.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it corroborates everything that is going on right now. And this guy becomes a witness. You know, he may have just stated they're starting a random interview back in 2018. But now he's a witness in the present day. They're going to go to him to see what else he knows. Now when you have an individual like this, when you get him in this session now of being a witness and you can kind of guardrail his way of thinking, instead of just letting him go off on tangents, who knows what else he has or what other information he has about other crimes that were committed, who else was involved. There's a lot there. And you have to, you know, take him for his word right now until it gets to a point where you don't anymore. But he's going to start corroborating a lot of the information that's out there right now.

Speaker 2: And he claims that he participated in some of these sex sessions. And he also says he caught an STD.

Speaker 4: I caught herpes and I came back and I seen herpes and I was warned. But they didn't, Mark Erivos and Ben Mercedes were his attorneys, okay? And Christopher Neons here was my attorney. They asked me to turn in that, which was the video recording, and I did so. They gave a batch in accidently and it's possible, I threw everything out, it's possible I can produce a copy.

Speaker 2: So again, this interview is taking place back in 2018. Mercedes' lawsuit wouldn't be filed until November of 2023, so the officers don't really know what he's talking about. Tom, you think he might be cooperating with the government, maybe they're speaking with him. The problem is, of course, is credibility, right? And during this interview, Adi makes references to a lot of things. He makes references to a cabal of rich people who control the government. He claims the hip hop world had its own goal.

Speaker 4: The hip hop agenda is an agenda to move drugs along in the United States. You need to invoke the DEA. They move all the dope, okay, all the dope on private jets, which don't get screened by... By customs? By DEA. Inside the United States, okay? They move what's called high-grade powered MDMA, they move cocaine, and they move, you know, liquid cocaine in the bottles, too, okay? So they put the liquid cocaine in the bottles, and they move it. I've seen liquid cocaine, I've drank it myself, having sex with Diddy and Cassie, okay? It's not good. He drinks it all the time.

Speaker 2: All right. What do you make of this? Because again, the question is, is he credible? Is the government relying on him? Maybe they're getting information from him, but maybe they won't call him as an actual witness at trial. What do you take away from it?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I'm not anticipating him taking a stand if this even goes to trial. But what you want to do is you want to get his story out there. And what can the investigators do as well? You take his picture and you show it to other witnesses that are now cooperating. Who is this guy? Start kind of backtracking to who he is and get into a profile of him. If he's telling the truth, you start showing it to people who are in the know. Because listen, there's a lot of people no one knows about yet that are cooperating in this case and giving their statements, because they want to get out in front of this. They know it's a crime. They know Diddy's in a lot of trouble, and they don't want to get swept up in it. So there's probably a laundry list of cooperators with this. And what you start doing is if the stories are the same and you don't need them, you won't use them. If something he's giving is new and credible, then they'll follow up with it even more.

Speaker 2: You know, what's interesting is that in one of these lawsuits, the one that was filed by Rodney Little Rod Jones, this is Combs' former producer, sued him for sexual assault. He writes in his complaint, quote, they were made aware of this through complaints made by Cassie Ventura and the lawsuit by former Diddy sex worker Jonathan Addy. So he's referencing him too. And now we tried to look it up. We couldn't confirm if there was a lawsuit that was filed by Addy against Combs or vice versa. And just to give everybody, here's another sampling where he talks about it as well, because the detectives try their best to steer Addy back to this issue about the shooting inside the hotel. Let's listen to what he says.

Speaker 4: I've had a great life. I've settled five, four point one, two, five million dollars with Diddy, OK, but he's scared I wasn't exposed.

Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about Diddy right now. I want to talk about you. Help me understand you. I mean, who?

Speaker 2: So, yeah, I don't think they realized at the time how potentially valuable this information could be. And there's no way to for us quite at this point to verify what he's saying. But those connections between Jones mentioning him and this lawsuit and the details, it's interesting.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But you have to understand, it's the Secret Service that's interviewing him and the Secret Service wouldn't be involved in the investigation of Diddy if it was going back even that far. It might have been a different tone if someone involved in maybe the FBI was doing that interview and heard this information, might have rang a bell with a possible investigation that was taking place then. So you have to understand the Secret Service is focusing on the shooting at the Trump Hotel. And when you start hearing this information about Diddy, I understand them trying to just get back on track with talking about the shooting, because that's why they're there. But when you're sitting there, you take note of it, you understand what he's saying and you pass it on. And hopefully they did that. You know, when you have information like that of criminal activity that's taking place, you hope that they passed it on to the right agency.

Speaker 2: I don't imagine they would give him some sort of deal like, hey, we know you have all this information about Combs and the inner workings. A, I'm not sure they need him if a lot of this is actually on videotape, like we're seeming to be reading between the lines of the indictment and some of the filings from the prosecutors. They might not need him to corroborate these sessions happen. But B, he's charged with attempted murder on law enforcement officers. I don't think that there's any kind of benefit to him that would be given for his testimony.

Speaker 3: Yeah, probably not. And again, when you look at the enormity of this, I am sure all the information that he gave has already been put out there, put into the indictment, put into the criminal activity, which resulted in him getting arrested. There's probably many, many more that are giving more information about this situation in him. So I could see them trying to avoid him. You want to get credible people involved in this. And again, like I said before, U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District are masters at this. They know who to use, what statements to use and who they want in the event that it does go to trial. So he may not be on their list.

Speaker 2: And by the way, we looked it up and it seems that his case is pretty much been in limbo since 2018. He's still behind bars in Miami-Dade County. His case has been continued again and again and again. His next hearing, I believe, is scheduled for October 10th. There was one other thing that he mentioned, you know, the idea of the drugs, right? And we've heard about this before. There have been multiple allegations made against Combs when it comes to drugs. Drug use was reportedly rampant within Combs' inner circle. When Combs came to New York reportedly to turn himself in last week, police searched his hotel room and authorities say they found a baggie of pink powder that tested positive for cocaine. His attorneys have said that he's been getting therapy and treatment. They didn't say what kind of treatment specifically. And although he is not charged specifically with drug offenses, that makes up underlying crimes within the racketeering case, this criminal enterprise, this organization that committed a bunch of crimes. He's also not hit with specifically federal gun charges, but there were accusations and then indictment of possessing guns with obliterated serial numbers. Again, these kind of underlying charges. From an investigative point of view, when you think about the raids and you think about the connection between drugs and guns and this criminal organization, what jumps out to you?

Speaker 3: Well, it all makes sense. You know, these criminal activities that are happening is under an umbrella. You know, you see it all the time where there's drugs, there's money. There's money. There's guns. You said it's just a equation in law enforcement that we dealt with for decades. And I did personally. So, you know, the other thing is just just because this case is in the midst of going on and he's been arrested, doesn't stop the investigation. The investigation continues because information is going to continue to flow in. And if there's more criminal charges that need to be added to this, there will be.

Speaker 2: Let me ask you one final question. You know, he was denied, Combs was denied bail twice, once by a magistrate judge, another by a district court judge. Big themes that he's a danger, that he was allegedly reaching out to witnesses and victims and intimidating them and gaslighting them and providing them false narratives, that he could potentially be a flight risk. And there was an offer put on the table by the defense where they said, we'll put up a 50 million dollar bond secured by his house. He'll have no access to a phone. He'll have no access to the Internet. We will hire a third party security team to monitor him 24 seven. He'll wear a GPS monitor. We will give you a log of people that come to and from his home. But the judges felt that that was insufficient, given the allegations asserted by prosecutors. Right decision.

Speaker 3: Absolutely. One hundred percent. You cannot let him out because I think the number one thing is the flight risk. I think personally, that's the biggest threat for him.

Speaker 2: Even though he never left, even though he came to New York voluntarily, there was communications between his attorney and the the prosecutors in this case, the United States, the United States attorneys for the Southern District, where they told them constantly Combs is going here. Combs is going here. We have his passport. That's what his lawyers were telling the government. So even that, you still think the flight risk was the big the big thing here?

Speaker 3: Yeah, because now he's charged and in jail, your mindset changes. You know, the reality of sitting in a jail cell maybe for the rest of your life gets into your head now. So that's why I think the flight risk is the biggest thing. And listen, it is an intimidating guy. He knows a lot of people, a lot of powerful people. And the intimidation factor with possible witnesses is certainly on the minds of the U.S. attorney and the judge.

Speaker 2: Tom Smith, thank you for coming on, breaking down this odd situation with Jonathan Addy. I can't be the only person who does that. I mean, I think I might be, but I don't know. I feel like other people might make that connection. But Tom, where can everybody check out your content? Where can everybody see you if they want to learn more about your perspective on these big stories?

Speaker 3: Well, I'm always on with you, which is great. A long crime, make an appearance on Newsmax every once in a while. And on our podcast, The Gold Shield Show, you can check us out there.

Speaker 2: All right. Tom Smith, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: Thank you, Jesse. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.