5 Days After Video of Diddy Beating Cassie Surfaces, Mayor Adams Still Won’t Revoke His Key to the City

Last September, when Mayor Eric Adams presented Sean "Diddy" Combs with the key to the city on the day Combs released his album "The Love Album: Off The Grid," the whole spectacle was already strange: Why were City apparatuses being used as a part of a coordinated album roll out? Whose call was that, and why was the administration so acquiescent to being used as a marketing tool, especially by someone about whom rumors had long swirled about his exploitative business dealings and history of being hated by pretty much everyone he's ever known? 

"The bad boy of entertainment is getting the key to the city from the bad boy of politics!" Adams exclaimed on what he dubbed "Diddy Day," immediately after which Diddy released an Instagram video of himself hanging out the window of his limousine while holding the ornamental key as he drove through Time Square. 

That decision by the Adams administration is all the more egregious following the November lawsuit by Diddy's former girlfriend and Bad Boy Records label signee Cassie. In it, Cassie alleged horrific acts of sexual violence and control perpetrated by Combs, claims that were backed up this week by the release of a gruesome 2016 video of Combs beating Cassie. In recent months, there have been several more people who have filed lawsuits alleging sexual violence by Diddy, most recently this week by model Crystal McKinney.

So is the mayor going to rescind the rare honor he bestowed upon Diddy?

When asked by PIX11 earlier this week whether he's considering taking back Diddy's key to the city, the mayor waffled. Looking stiff, Adams replied, "I think all of us were disturbed by watching that chilling video of the young lady being assaulted by him." But, he continued, "we have never rescinded a key before," adding, "we are taking everything under analysis and the team will come back [to] me with an answer."

That answer seems oddly strained for something that strikes most people as an easy moral call. Even TMZ's Harvey Levin wasn't impressed. "He was really hedging there, I gotta say. That was a big hedge!" Levin said during an episode of TMZ Live. "Yes, there's a little tap dance going on," agreed Levin's Bronx-born cohost Charles Latibeaudiere.

"Of course the key should be revoked," said Councilmember Erik Bottcher, whom TMZ was interviewing.

The fact that the "key to the city" is a cartoon-mayor-wearing-a-giant-sash-that-says-"mayor"-ass concept arising from medieval serfdom makes this an easy call—just put out a statement rescinding it and calling on Diddy to return the fake key that doesn't do anything. As Bottcher said, it's a no-brainer. And the mayor is at least feeling the heat enough to scrub the mayoral Flickr account of photos from "Diddy Day".

So what's the hold up?

We won't hold you up from clicking on these links:

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