Someone’s working very hard to create an image of public support around Sean “Diddy” Combs, according to a bystander who told the Daily Beast she was offered $20 cash to wear a “Free $Diddy” shirt outside the court where he’s standing trial.
Sali Coulibaly, a 29-year-old tech project manager, was standing outside the U.S. District Court in New York’s Southern District on Friday, watching the public gathering attracted by Combs’ ongoing sex trafficking trial, when she said she came across a strange sight.
“I saw a group of [people] awkwardly standing outside of the playground across the street from the courthouse,” Coulibaly told the Daily Beast of the moment she spotted several clumped together strangers wearing “Free $Diddy” and “Free Puff” t-shirts.
“I was wondering why they were wearing those shirts,” she continued. “I was curious. I crossed the street, and I’m standing there with my phone out, and then this older lady is staring at me. She’s just staring at me for a period of time. Then she tells me, ‘Do you want to come out here and wear a shirt for $20 an hour?’”
The woman then motioned over to a younger man and told her, “‘Just go to that guy. If you’re already standing out here, you may as well get paid.’”
A video of Coulibaly posted by freelance journalist Emilie Hagen went viral Friday, racking up millions of views. Rapper 50 Cent was among those who reposted it during his latest Diddy trolling session over the weekend. “Diddy paying people to wear Free Diddy shirts is diabolical, but $20 an hour ain’t bad,” he quipped.
Who exactly is paying the bystanders to don the paraphernalia remains unclear. But drumming up the appearance of support is reminiscent of Combs’ early days as a musician and producer—when he and others of the “mixtape generation” would pay people to buy up his mixtapes, generating hype for a new music release.
Coulibaly told the Daily Beast that most if not all the paid protesters outside Combs’ trial appeared to her to be unhoused. At least one seemed to be on “drugs or something, since he just kind of looked like he didn’t know where he was.”
She continued to observe the situation, noticing that a more coordinated version of the t-shirt operation seemed to be underway in the park near the courthouse.
“I went inside the park and I see the young man that was giving away the shirts, was sitting on the bench with maybe a bag or a box-full,” she said. “And I can see a group of [people] were changing in the park. He was asking for their sizes.”
An investigation by Hagen uncovered that the shirts promote $DIDDY coin, the growing internet currency token representing Combs’ media moment—and thus, may be more of a cash grab than an ego boost for Combs. Even though Combs’ camp denied involvement with the t-shirts, according to Hagen, his X account did at one point promote the $DIDDY crypto currency.
20 dollars a head seems to be motivation enough for the people milling around the courthouse to keep the shirt gambit going for now, whatever its endgame may be. “She was very persistent, like she just wanted me to wear it so bad,” Coulibaly added of the woman who approached her. “I just walked away.”
Combs hopes to do the same, now that he’s turned down a plea deal to face the federal charges against him and risk spending the rest of his life in prison.
After his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura has finished her bombshell testimony, Combs’ lawyers are hard at work to defend him from more state-presented evidence that he coerced mass numbers of victims into sexual activity through threats, blackmail, and violence. Combs has consistently denied all charges.
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