Donald Trump has confirmed that Sean “Diddy” Combs requested a presidential pardon from the U.S. president in connection with his recent federal criminal conviction.
The disgraced music mogul was sentenced last week to more than four years in prison after being convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
Trump was asked about the possibility of pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend.
In his response, the 47th President revealed, “A lot of people have asked me for pardons,” adding that Combs, 55, was among those who had made a request.
Trump’s confirmation comes two months after a member of Combs’ legal team first disclosed that discussions with his administration camp had taken place.
Nicole Westmoreland, an attorney representing the Bad Boy Records founder, told the news outlet at the time, “It’s my understanding that we’ve reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon.”
However, the chances of the controversial music executive receiving clemency appear slim, largely due to his previously “very hostile” attitude toward Trump.
The 79-year-old politician recalled previously that while he and Combs had once shared a friendly rapport, things changed when he ran for office in 2020.
During an interview, Trump acknowledged the difficulty of separating personal feelings from presidential decisions.
“It’s hard, we’re human beings,” he said. “We don’t like to have things cloud our judgment, right? But when you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office and he made some terrible statements so I don’t know. It’s more difficult.”
For the unversed, Judge Arun Subramanian handed down the 50-month sentence on Friday, October 3, a punishment that landed between what prosecutors and Combs’ defense team had been fighting for.
After nearly two-month the federal trial ended with the former American rapper being convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but was acquitted of more severe charges, including racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.
Diddy Requests Low-Security Prison To Serve His Sentence
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers want the hip-hop mogul sent to a low-security federal prison in New Jersey to serve his four-year, two-month prison sentence, telling a judge Monday that the facility’s drug treatment program will help him stay clean.
In a letter, Combs’ lawyers urged the judge presiding over his case, Arun Subramanian, to “strongly recommend” that the federal Bureau of Prisons place Combs at FCI Fort Dix, a massive prison located on the grounds of the joint military base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
FCI Fort Dix, one of several dozen federal prisons with a residential drug treatment program, will best allow Combs “to address drug abuse issues and to maximize family visitation and rehabilitative efforts,” Combs lawyer Teny Geragos wrote.
Combs’ sentencing Friday on charges he transported people across state lines for sexual encounters capped a federal case that featured harrowing testimony about violence, drugs and so-called “freak-offs,” and exposed the sordid private life of one of the most influential figures in music.
Combs has been locked up at a Brooklyn federal jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center, since his arrest in September 2024. That time will be subtracted from his sentence, meaning he could get out in about three years.
Subramanian has not yet acted on the request to place him at FCI Fort Dix.
Judges often make recommendations about where inmates should serve time, but it’s ultimately up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide. Those decisions, the agency has said, are based on a variety of factors, including the severity of the offense, the required security level and an inmate’s programming needs.
FCI Fort Dix, the largest single federal prison by population with just under 3,900 inmates, is about 64 miles (103 kilometers) southwest of New York City, where Combs was born and rose to fame as a rapper and entrepreneur in an array of businesses, including fashion, television and liquor. An adjacent minimum-security prison camp has 210 inmates.
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