Trump Gives Telling Update to Rumors He Could Pardon Diddy After the Rapper’s Prison Sentence ‘A Lot of People… ‘
President Donald Trump has addressed the possibility of pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs after he was convicted of prostitution charges.
The rap mogul was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday. He was found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. “A lot of people have asked me for pardons,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I call him Puff Daddy, [he] has asked me for a pardon.” Diddy has not been using that pseudonym since 2001.
Reporters also asked Trump about the possibility of pardoning Jeffrey Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell after the Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal challenging her sex trafficking conviction. “I’ll take a look at it,” Trump said. “I will speak to the Justice Department.”
Related: The Truth About Whether Usher Really Testified at Diddy’s Trial After a Witness Name-Dropped Him
Trump previously talked about pardoning Diddy in an interview with Newsmax in July. “Well, he was essentially, I guess, sort of half innocent,” he told the outlet. “Probably— I was very friendly with him but when I ran for office he was very hostile and it’s hard. So, I don’t know, it’s more difficult.”
In May, Trump talked to Fox News about his relationship with Diddy at the time amid his ongoing trial for sex trafficking and racketeering. “I haven’t spoken to him in years,” Trump said at the time. “He used to really like me a lot. I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up. … I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don’t like me, it wouldn’t have any impact on me.”
Diddy’s lawyers sent an appeal that he be sent to the low-security FCI Ford Dix federal prison in New Jersey to serve out his four-year term. In a letter to Judge Arun Subramanian, Combs’ lawyers argued that the rapper had a “spiritual reset” in jail and is “committed to the journey of remaining a drug free, non-violent and peaceful person.” The disgraced rapper had been locked up in a federal jail in Brooklyn, the Metropolitan Detention Center, since his September 2024 arrest.
