As Sean Combs’ camp ramps up its efforts to secure a presidential pardon for the hip-hop mogul, Rolling Stone has learned there are ongoing talks among survivors to send a personal letter to President Donald Trump urging him against the idea.
“The only reason he’s coming to Trump now is because he’s desperate,” a source who testified at Combs’ eight-week criminal trial tells Rolling Stone.
Rolling Stone has reviewed a draft copy of the letter, which admonishes Combs for attempting to “reclaim control” and “rewrite history” following his conviction on prostitution charges. A pardon, the draft adds, “would not be justice” but a “devastating message to survivors everywhere: that our lives, our pain, and our truth are still negotiable.”
The letter notes signees would be willing to come to the White House to make their case against a pardon in person to Trump. “We want to tell you the unfiltered truth — free of legal obstruction, PR spin, or courtroom limitations,” the draft reads. “These stories deserve to be heard.”
Their concerns were sparked this week by renewed reports that Combs’ associates have escalated efforts to gain the president’s ear following Combs’ acquittal on more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges earlier this month. Even before a verdict was reached, Trump publicly mulled flexing his pardon power for Combs, whom he was friendly with in the 1990s through the 2010s.
The mixed verdict means Combs will most likely face more prison time after being found guilty of hiring male escorts to travel across state lines to have sex with his girlfriends as he watched and filmed the drug-fueled encounters. But Combs’ high-powered defense team has indicated the one-time billionaire is hellbent on securing his release as soon as possible. (Combs has been detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center since his September arrest.)
According to people in and out of the Trump administration, Combs’ team has intensified their behind-the-scenes campaign in recent weeks. “The pleading has gotten bigger [this month],” a Trump adviser says, referring to a conspicuous uptick in Combs allies’ attempts to woo Team Trump.
As Rolling Stone reported in May, longtime Combs associates and friends secretly worked for months — even before Trump’s January inauguration — to establish contacts with Trump officials and other MAGAworld luminaries with the president’s ear. The idea was simple: strike up enough relationships in that universe, portray Combs as the kind of victim that Trump pretends to be, play up Combs and Trump’s past chummy relationship, and lay the groundwork for begging for a pardon or clemency if needed.
It appears that moment has arrived. In the spring, it didn’t seem like the rapper had a great chance. Though Trump had spoken glowingly of Combs in the past, there wasn’t much evidence to suggest this case was on the president’s radar. Some senior administration officials who were aware of Diddy World’s outreach campaigns thought it’d be a bad idea for Trump to rescue Combs, given the nature of the criminal charges.
Indeed, there are still a number of Trump advisers who feel it would be a grave unforced error to pardon Combs around the same time that Trump and his administration are embroiled in a scandal over their handling of the investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender and accused sex trafficker. However, Trump recently refused to rule out pardoning the financier’s convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is angling to be released from prison.
And the president has seemed somewhat sympathetic to Combs’ plight, saying in late May that he “would certainly look at the facts” of the case when asked about the possibility of a pardon. “I know people are thinking about it,” he added. “People have been very close to asking.”
Based on those comments, combined with a jury finding Combs not guilty earlier this month on the most severe charges, multiple Trump advisers saw the rapper’s odds at securing clemency increase somewhat, with a growing number of people in the president’s orbit at least open to the idea that Combs was “unfairly” treated by the feds.
It’s not clear how likely it is that Trump would ultimately sign on to this. After seeking comment from the White House on this story, an official simply replied: “The White House will not confirm or deny pardons that may or may not happen.” (A rep for Combs declined to comment.)
Sources familiar with the matter say that ever since the verdict, Combs’ associates and confidants appear emboldened by the mogul beating charges that could have sent him to prison for life. And several of the Bad Boy Records founder’s allies feel that the chances of a Trump pardon are higher than at any other time.
Because of this, they are working whatever angles they can think of to get the twice-impeached, repeatedly indicted president in Combs’ corner.
In the past few weeks, longtime allies of the rap mogul have approached political operatives, lobbyists, and others with close ties to Trumpland and government officials, offering to pay them large sums of money if they agreed to help with a potential Trump pardon, three people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. One of the sources says the offer they were privy to was in the mid-six figures. However, the sources note that at least some of these offers have come with the condition that much, if not most, of the cash wouldn’t be paid out until after Combs gets pardoned by Trump.
Buttering up Trump for a pardon is one of several contingency plans Combs currently has in play. On Thursday, his legal team filed a 62-page motion asking the judge to set aside his guilty verdict entirely or retry him.
They made a range of arguments, including that Combs is an amateur porn director who was simply exercising his First Amendment rights to film so-called “freak-offs” between his girlfriends and oiled male escorts. His attorneys also returned to their original claim that it’s unprecedented that Combs was charged with the Mann Act prostitution and trafficking statute, which they blasted as having “racist origins.”
“To our knowledge, Mr. Combs is the only person ever convicted of violating the statute for conduct anything like this,” his attorneys wrote. “Even if ‘prostitution’ includes a defendant who pays to observe two other people have sex with each other, the evidence was insufficient to show that Mr. Combs had any such intent. The proof at trial showed that he typically hired the services of male escorts or dancers advertised openly through lawful businesses, that the men were paid for their time, and that they enjoyed the activities and had friendships with [Cassie and a second ex-girlfriend who testified against him] and were not merely traveling to have sex for money.”
At the very least, the attorneys added, Combs should be granted a new trial on these charges alone. They earlier indicated they’d be seeking an appeal if the judge denies their motion, and on Tuesday filed a new bid to grant Combs bail ahead of his Oct. 3 sentencing date.
If the appeal and pardon routes fail, Combs’ lawyers are pushing for a minimum sentence, no more than 27 months with credit for the 11 months that he’s already served — although that drastically differs from the minimum of 51 months imprisonment that prosecutors have referred to per sentencing guidelines.
Southern District of New York prosecutors are expected to respond to Combs’ bail application by Thursday night, as they previously demanded that he remain in custody and cited concerns Combs would go to extreme lengths to avoid any sentence.
