Does a video authentically show Sean "Diddy" Combs speaking from prison in 2024? No, that's not true: The video clip in this social media post is from 2010. The primary topic of the full video was the impact of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on the X platform on September 25, 2024, with the caption:
Sean 'Diddy' Combs speaks from prison!
What are your thoughts?👀
This is what the X post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct. 2 15:29:11 2024 UTC)
Combs appears to be wearing casual clothes in the video, not the typical jail or prison jumpsuit or coveralls. Also, there appears to be decorative trim on the wall behind him.
A search on YouTube led Lead Stories to the original January 16, 2010, video blog post (archived here) rapper/entrepreneur Combs published on his verified YouTube music channel. It was titled "Diddy Blog #1001....A message to Haiti."
The clip in the post begins at 49 seconds into the full YouTube video:
... the money will be used properly, but as you know, I'm glued to the TV, trying to figure out what's going on. Like how is this happening?
Sometimes it's like, you know, I got to turn the TV off because it's so overwhelming. Nowhere as overwhelming as it must be ...
This 35-second clip lacks the context of the 5:51-minute video, where Combs explicitly mentions the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Starting at 10 seconds into the video, he says:
I'm here today to talk to you all about our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Words can't explain how heavy my heart has been since the earthquake has gone down.
Lead Stories also searched for credible news reports mentioning "Diddy" and "speaks" in combination with "video" and "prison" on Google News (archived here). Other than unrelated stories mentioning the keywords and a fact check by Reuters, we found no reporting on Combs, a global celebrity, speaking from prison.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Sean Combs can be read here.
