Did singer Usher delete his X account after Sean "Diddy" Combs was arrested for sex trafficking and are the two events related? No, that's missing context: While Usher Raymond's X account appeared to have had all past posts deleted, he posted a message that his account had been hacked. An archived version of his account shows the messages the hackers appear to have posted. His account was back with all his old messages as of September 23, 2024. There was no evidence that Usher had deleted his account because of Combs' arrest.
The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 22, 2024 (archived here). It said:
Usher just deleted all of his tweets. The Diddy tapes are about to send hundreds of celebrities to prison.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 22 10:42:11 2024 UTC)
Combs was arrested on September 16, 2024, for alleged sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution (archived here). He pleaded not guilty.
As of the date of this fact check's publication, Usher had not been arrested for or connected with any of the crimes of which Combs was accused, as a keyword search on Google (archived here) shows.
The account on X that implied Usher had deleted his X account in connection with Combs' arrest did not post a screenshot that showed that all the tweets on Usher's account had been deleted; it just said they were. The message on X about Usher's account was posted at 1:16 a.m. on September 22, 2024.
At 6:13 p.m. on September 22, 2024, Usher posted a message (archived here) on X that he had been hacked, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 23 16:35:11 2024 UTC)
An archived version of Usher's account on ghostarchive.org, searched by using "https://x.com/Usher/highlights," shows spam-style crypto messages on his account:
(Source: Ghostarchive.org website screenshot taken on Mon Sep 23 17:23:44 2024 UTC)
As of September 23, 2024, all of Usher's tweets were back on his account, as this archived version shows:
(Source: archive.ph website screenshot taken on Mon Sep 23 17:11:13 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Usher can be found here. Our fact checks of claims about Combs can be read here.
