{"id":7565,"date":"2025-08-29T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-wants-a-trump-pardon-heres-how-he-might-try-to-get-one\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T15:32:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:32:00","slug":"diddy-wants-a-trump-pardon-heres-how-he-might-try-to-get-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/diddy-wants-a-trump-pardon-heres-how-he-might-try-to-get-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Diddy Wants a Trump Pardon. Here\u2019s How He Might Try to Get One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA<\/span>fter Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs<\/strong>\u2019 partial acquittal on sex trafficking charges in a bombshell criminal trial earlier this summer, the music mogul\u2019s legal team has been public about their efforts to secure a\u00a0<\/strong>presidential pardon. But is that even possible? What would the process look like? And how might Combs\u2019 reps try to win over President Donald Trump?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCombs was acquitted on July 2 of racketeering and sex-trafficking, the most serious counts he faced in a trial over his drug-fueled, marathon sex-parties known as \u201cfreak-offs.\u201d The rapper was convicted only of hiring sex workers for the orgies, significantly reducing his potential prison sentence from decades to likely just a few years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThough Combs\u2019 team of lawyers celebrated the verdict as a major win, they\u2019re not done fighting and will likely appeal Combs\u2019 counts of conviction after his October sentencing hearing. And then there\u2019s the possibility of a pardon; one member of Combs\u2019 defense squad told CNN <\/em>earlier this month that they have approached Trump about clemency.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are actually two ways that Trump could free Combs: a pardon, which wipes a conviction from someone\u2019s criminal record; or a commutation, which just erases a prison sentence while leaving the record intact. Trump has not said publicly yet whether he\u2019d consider granting either type of clemency to Combs. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo what does the process look like for Combs\u2019 attorneys to pursue a pardon? According to Mark Osler<\/strong>, a leading clemency attorney and law professor at the University of St. Thomas, there really isn\u2019t any process under Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

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\n\tOsler says that in the past, clemency lawyers filed form applications to the Department of Justice\u2019s Pardon Attorney, and these petitions would then go through several levels of review before making it to the White House. But Trump broke with tradition at the end of his first term by granting several pardons that hadn\u2019t gone through this process, and then-President Joe Biden did the same this past December and January. Now, with Trump back in the White House, pardons are coming straight from his desk without review in large numbers \u2014 including\u00a0a blanket grant of clemency to over 1,000 January 6 insurrection defendants.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe mechanism is falling apart,\u201d Osler tells Billboard<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say many people are confused about what the process is now. Some people are filling out the form, some people are trying to appeal directly to [Trump\u2019s so-called pardon czar] Alice Marie Johnson, some people are trying to talk to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, some people are trying to get on Fox News to pitch their case. It\u2019s hard to tell what will work and for who.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Trump now making so many pardon decisions on his own, it\u2019s likely that Combs\u2019 reps are trying to make their case directly to the president\u2019s inner circle. This is no small feat: as Osler puts it, \u201cPeople are spending a lot of money trying to get in front of the right people to be considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThis begs another question: if Combs\u2019 team does go through the trouble to get in front of Trump\u2019s advisers, what pitch will they make? Osler says it\u2019s common to appeal to a president\u2019s personal values \u2014 which for Trump, he says, are \u201cloyalty and celebrity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCelebrities do make up a sizable chunk of Trump\u2019s pardon history. If Combs ends up getting clemency, he\u2019ll join the ranks of other musicians like Lil Wayne<\/a>, Kodak Black and YoungBoy Never Broke Again \u2014 all of whom were pardoned of weapons charges by Trump. \u00a0
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Combs\u2019 lawyers also could try to pitch Trump that the rapper\u2019s conviction is unjust or even racist. The music mogul was found guilty of prostitution under the Mann Act, a 1910 statute that has a sordid history of being used to target Black men and interracial couples. (It was originally known as the \u201cWhite-Slave Traffic Act.\u201d) \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Mann Act is rarely used today,\u201d says JaneAnne Murray<\/strong>, a clemency lawyer and professor at University of Minnesota Law School. \u201cIt comes out of a puritanical era, and its enforcement was driven by sexist and racist assumptions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe fact that these Mann Act counts were the lowest-level charges in an indictment that accused Combs of the far splashier and more serious crimes of sex-trafficking and racketeering could also be key to a pardon argument.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Combs was acquitted of racketeering and sex-trafficking, his lawyers have a strong case to argue that he never should have been charged with these higher-level crimes in the first place. And Murray says that if Combs had been charged only with prostitution under the Mann Act, \u201cIt\u2019s almost inconceivable that any resolution of the case would have involved a custodial sentence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the arguments I make for my clients is, \u2018Look, they went to trial and were acquitted of the first-degree [murder charge]. They got convicted of the second degree\u2014 but had they been properly charged in the beginning, we would have negotiated from that lower baseline, and they would have received a much more lenient sentence,\u2019\u201d Murray tells Billboard<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAll that said, Combs still faces an uphill climb in securing a pardon from Trump. According to Osler, presidents tend to think seriously about\u00a0the potential political ramifications of their pardoning decisions. Trump\u2019s White House may not want to be associated with the sordid details and admitted abuse that came out during Combs\u2019 trial \u2014\u00a0especially in light of the public relations firestorm ignited in recent months by renewed interest in\u00a0Trump\u2019s past associations with Jeffrey Epstein.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHistorically, sex crimes have kind of been the third rail of clemency,\u201d says Osler. \u201cAlmost never have you seen grants for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 partial acquittal on sex trafficking charges in a bombshell criminal trial earlier this summer, the music mogul\u2019s legal team has been public about their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[296,1207,6701,409],"class_list":["post-7565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-diddy","tag-heres","tag-pardon","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}