The shaming truth about Jennifer Lopez’s dark past as Diddy’s alleged ‘gun mule’: MAUREEN CALLAHAN slams her, Ashton Kutcher and all of Hollywood for their cowardly silence

Time’s up for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs — and he knows it.

As must his longtime friends, associates, colleagues, employees, politicos and an entire celebrity industrial complex that propped up this monster for decades — Jennifer Lopez included.

If there’s any justice, Diddy won’t be the only one held to account.

Former NYPD investigator Derrick Parker, who worked a 1999 shooting involving Combs and J.Lo, has compared him to the Jeffrey Epstein of hip-hop.

‘He escaped a lot because of who he was,’ Parker said. ‘Now a lot of stuff is just coming back to him.’

On Sunday, Combs released a pathetic, self-pitying video statement in which he ‘apologized’ for viciously beating his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura.

This, after decades of Diddy’s rebuttals and reverse accusations, claiming Cassie — with her allegations of systematic rape and violence — was attempting blackmail, revenge, extortion.

Everyone knew. He has long told the world exactly who and what he is.

The recent raids on his L.A. and Miami estates have been a long time coming.

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On Sunday, Combs released a pathetic, self-pitying video statement in which he ‘apologized’ for viciously beating his then-girlfriend Cassie (pictured in 2016). This, after decades of Diddy’s rebuttals and reverse accusations, claiming Cassie was attempting blackmail, revenge, extortion.

Yet here was New York City mayor Eric Adams, giving Combs a key to the city just last September.

‘Sean Combs is the embodiment of New York City attitude,’ Adams said at the ceremony. ‘[He] has proven to be a singular, generational talent.’

Please. Adams is a former New York City police officer. You can’t tell me he didn’t know anything about Combs. He has been on the NYPD’s radar since at least 1991, when nine people died and 29 were injured at an overfilled NYC basketball event Combs promoted.

Cassie, by the way, sued just two months after Combs got the key, in November 2023.

It was filed one day before a special New York provision allowing victims of sexual abuse, whose allegations would otherwise have fallen outside the statute of limitations, was to end.

That timing, to me, suggests that Cassie really struggled with her decision to file — and that she likely remains very afraid of Combs.

With good reason. His violent behavior has been known to law enforcement for decades, yet he has never been found guilty for any of it.

His rap sheet continues through the 1990s and beyond: alleged shootings, beatings, violent assaults and death threats, the explosion of a car bomb in rival-rapper Kid Cudi’s vehicle — and, of course, that infamous nightclub shoot-out involving J.Lo. We’ll get into that in a bit.

More recently, Combs has denied, denied, and denied Cassie’s claims — one particularly vicious detail has him stomping on her face, beating her to a pulp until she bled profusely and threw up, all witnessed by at least one of Combs’s bodyguards — but now he can deny no more.

Harrowing security cam video from an L.A. hotel, dated March 5, 2016, was leaked to CNN on Friday.

Seventy-two hours later — did he really need time to think this through? — Adams said he is ‘considering’ revoking the New York City key. What more proof does he need?

This footage is beyond damning. We see Diddy, wrapped only in a bath towel, grabbing Cassie by the neck, pushing her to the floor, and kicking her quite literally while she was down — immobile.

He then pulls her by her shirt and drags her along the hallway, where the assault continues until someone gets off the elevator on their floor.

That’s how emboldened Combs has been: comfortable enough to unleash grievous bodily harm against a defenseless woman in a very public place, half-naked, cameras everywhere.

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New York City mayor Eric Adams gave Combs a key to the city just last September. ‘Sean Combs is the embodiment of New York City attitude,’ Adams said at the ceremony. Adams is a former New York City police officer. You can’t tell me he didn’t know anything about Combs.

He reportedly paid the LA Intercontinental Hotel, the site of this brutal beatdown, $50,000 for the footage.

Who sold it to Combs? How many hotel employees and execs were involved in this cover-up?

If you haven’t already seen it, watch the video. You’ll never look at Combs the same way again. He is vile, irredeemable, and should be put away for life.

Yet in his apology video, he paints himself as the lone victim here.

‘It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life,’ he says, voice all too casual.

Tears? None.

‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you gotta do that. I was f**ked up. I mean, I hit rock bottom.’

Poor him.

‘But I make no excuse,’ says the man who has spent years lying and making excuses. ‘I take full responsibility for my actions in that video’.

It goes on like that: I, I, I. Me, me, me.

Not once does he mention Cassie, or the pain he caused her, or what he can do to make amends.

Combs claims to have gone to therapy and rehab — no dates, no details, no insights offered — and then, of course, to have asked God for ‘grace’.

Even God would like Sean Combs to lose his number.

The Cassie video is a bombshell, for good and for ill.

The LA County District Attorney’s Office quickly announced that Combs cannot be prosecuted, because at eight years old, this video falls outside the statute of limitations.

Unconscionable. But this is how violence against women is still viewed — too bad, really, but there’s a time limit on holding so-called men who rape and brutalize to account.

Women have to matter more than this. It’s time to eliminate the statute of limitations for domestic violence and sex crimes.

Investigators are no longer hamstrung by the ‘he-said-she-said’ claims of 20 or 30 years ago. We live in a world with security cameras everywhere. We all carry personal recording devices and GPS systems in our phones. Evidence is often multiple.

Years after an assault, as we see with the Cassie video, incontrovertible proof can emerge that a claimant is telling the truth, and that a dangerous predator needs to be taken off the streets.

Combs should be in handcuffs immediately. Shame on every politician, prosecutor and lawmaker who fails to correct that.

Despite his NYC rap sheet, Combs wasn’t known as a violent criminal nationally until 1998, after his arrest for brutally beating Interscope record exec Steve Stout in 1999.

Why? Combs didn’t like the edit for one of his music videos.

‘He punched me in the face and then he grabbed the phone and bashed me in the head with it,’ Stoute told the LA Times.

‘If somebody can get away with walking into the headquarters of the world’s biggest record company and beating up a senior executive over a disagreement,’ Stoute said, ‘I guarantee you this is going to be a great business for criminals to thrive in.’

Truer words.

Combs was sentenced to one day of anger management. Did he have police or prosecutors on his payroll — then and now?

Next up: The Times Square nightclub incident the same year, in which three people were shot, one young woman in the face, Combs the prime suspect and J.Lo his alleged ‘gun mule’.

Lopez was arrested, as was Combs. She spent 14 hours in custody before being released without charges — but not before allegedly demanding someone fetch her some cuticle cream. Priorities.

Combs was found not guilty, but his protégé ‘Shyne’ Barrow — long suspected to be the fall guy — did ten years.

Victim Natania Reuben, to this day, contends that it was Combs who shot her, not Shyne.

‘I literally watched them pull out the guns,’ she said in March. ‘I had a clear point of view. I mean, for God’s sake — I got shot in my nose.’

As for J.Lo: A recent lawsuit filed by Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones alleges that on the night of the 1999 club shooting, it was Lopez who ‘carried the gun into the club for [Combs] and passed him the gun after he got into an altercation with another individual.’

Lopez has so far remained silent about what happened that night and what really went on in their two-year relationship.

She’s not the only one. His great pal Ashton Kutcher, who defended convicted rapist Danny Masterson, has also remained silent.

And what of the nearly 30 artists such as John Legend, H.E.R, Mary J. Blige, and The Weeknd who collaborated on Combs’s laughably-tiled ‘Love’ album last year?

Diddy partied with princes, with Trump and the world’s top CEOs and stars.

If allegations of a sprawling sex trafficking ring are true, well — how many people knew?

As the allegations and accusations against Combs mount — everything from Usher’s inference that he was exposed to dark events under Combs’s mentorship, to sex trafficking and rape allegations involving minors, to Lil Rod’s claims Combs and actor Cuba Gooding Jr. sexually assaulted him — well, clearly a federal indictment is in the offing.

Justice, it seems, will finally now prevail. But at what cost? How much human carnage could have been spared?

As Combs undoubtedly knows, he’s in for as much hurt, if not more, as he’s allegedly inflicted over the years.

Even the most hardened prisoners don’t take kindly to woman-beaters and rapists.