Sean Combs personally wrote a letter to President Donald Trump asking for a pardon after the Bad Boy Entertainment founder was sentenced to just over four years in prison, according to The New York Times.
Trump — who used to be friendly with Combs on the social circuit of New York City in the 1990s and 2000s — didn’t seem too moved by the 56-year-old’s plight, stating he was not considering the request.
It is not clear what Combs said in the letter nor when it was sent, but Trump floated the idea of showing the letter to a room of reporters on Wednesday. A representative for Combs declined to comment.
Combs directly reaching out to Trump is the latest escalation in the music mogul’s bid to secure his freedom after he was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution charges in July. The charges were borne out of a sprawling sex trafficking and racketeering case, in which Combs was ultimately acquitted of the most serious charges. However, a jury found him liable for paying male sex workers to travel across state lines for “freak-offs” with his girlfriends.
Last month, Combs appealed the decision, accusing U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian of acting like a “thirteenth juror” during October’s sentencing. Combs’ legal team claimed defendants who are found guilty of the Mann Act “typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved.”
But Subramanian noted he was taking into consideration the “massive” amount of evidence pertaining to “the abuse in connection with freak-offs and hotel nights” when determining Combs’ prison sentence of 50 months.
“The court rejects the defense’s attempt to characterize what happened here as merely intimate, consensual experiences, or just a sex, drugs, and rock and roll story,” Subramanian said when handing down Combs’ sentence. “A history of good works can’t wash away the record in this case, which showed that you abused the power and control that you had over the lives of women you professed to love dearly. You abused them physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And you used that abuse to get your way, especially when it came to freak-offs and hotel nights. The defense’s argument that all of this was unrelated to the offense conduct in this case doesn’t hold up.”
Rolling Stone reported in May that Combs had been laying the groundwork for a pardon soon after his arrest in September 2024, his inner circle cozying up to people in Trump’s orbit soon after the November presidential election. And when Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges over the summer, his team ramped up their efforts. They began touching base with Trumpworld political operatives, lobbyists, and key players to try and secure their assistance in earning a pardon from Trump, floating sums in the mid-six-figure range if they agreed to help, according to Washington sources.
“He’s willing to do anything to get out of jail,” a source who has known Combs for a decade previously told Rolling Stone. “He’s always been this way. He’s always going to do what he has to do to get out of a situation.”
This article was updated on Thursday, January 8, at 7:40 p.m. to include Combs’ team response for comment..
