Featured Image Credit: Getty/Patrick McMullan
Topics: Donald Trump, Diddy, Crime, US News
Joe Harker
Donald Trump has said it will be 'more difficult' to pardon Sean 'Diddy' Combs after the rapper was convicted of two counts of transportation for prostitution.
Diddy was the subject of a major trial in which he was found guilty on two of the five charges he faced, and since he has not yet been sentenced the amount of time he might spend behind bars is unclear.
He had requested bail with his legal team saying that he should spend some time outside jail before his sentencing date of 3 October, but it appears that he'll stay locked up for now.
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US President Donald Trump has been asked whether he'd consider pardoning Diddy, after he pardoned rapper NBA Youngboy from gun-related charges and reality stars Todd and Julie Chrisley for tax evasion and bank fraud.
However, it sounds like Diddy will probably not get a pardon as while Trump said the rapper was 'sort of half-innocent' after his trial he would find it 'more difficult' to hand out a pardon because the rapper had criticised him in the past.
Trump had previously described Diddy as a friend and they have met on multiple occasions, but the rapper does not seem to have been such a fan of his.
In 2017 Diddy said he didn't 'really give a f**k about Trump' and in 2020 declared that 'white men like Trump need to be banished', adding that 'the number one priority is to get Trump out of office'.
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These declarations may have scuppered Diddy's chances of getting a pardon as Trump told Newsmax's Rob Finnerty: "He's still in jail or something, but he was celebrating a victory. But he seems, I guess it wasn't as good as a victory.
"Probably, you know, I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great and seemed like a nice guy - I didn't know him well. But when I ran for office, he was very hostile.
"And it's hard, you know, I'm like you - we're human beings, and 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, it makes it more - I'm being honest - it makes it more difficult to do."
When asked if that meant his answer to a pardon was 'more likely a no', Trump responded with 'I would say so'.
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None of this sounds very much like a good way to run a justice system, with the fate of convicted criminals possibly dependent on whether or not they said mean things about the president.
It sounds like Diddy's legal team are in the dark over any possibility of a pardon from Trump, as his lead counsel Mark Agnifilo told Variety: "I am not involved in that in the least. I have literally no idea.
"There are times I think there’s nothing to it, and there are times I think it’s just rumor mill stuff. But, I do not purport to know the president’s mind. I really don’t know."
Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to face questions over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as Bloomberg has reported that Trump's name was in the Epstein files before being redacted out by the FBI along with the names of several others on the grounds that it would be an 'unwarranted invasion of privacy'.