President Donald Trump has confirmed that Sean “Diddy” Combs has requested a presidential pardon in connection with his federal criminal case.
While speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday regarding a potential pardon for Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump mentioned that “a lot of people have asked me for pardons,” including Combs, who was sentenced Friday to more than four years in prison for his conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
In August, a member of Combs’ defense team told CNN that the music mogul’s camp had reached out to the Trump administration about a potential pardon.
“It’s my understanding that we’ve reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon,” attorney Nicole Westmoreland told CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister at the time.
Trump had previously indicated that he was unlikely to pardon Combs during an interview with Newsmax, saying, “I was very friendly with him, I got along with
him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well. But when I ran for office, he was very hostile.”
Trump added at the time that this made pardoning Combs “more difficult to do.”
When contacted by CNN regarding Westmoreland’s comments in August, a White House official said they “will not comment on the existence or nonexistence of any clemency request.”
Also on Monday, lawyers for Combs asked Judge Arun Subramanian – who sentenced the disgraced mogul on Friday – to recommend to the Bureau of Prisons that Combs be placed at a low security federal correctional facility in Fort Dix, New Jersey where he can “address drug abuse issues” and “maximize family visitation and rehabilitative efforts.”
Source: edition.cnn.com
