(KTLA) — President Trump will not be pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, the President said the hip-hop mogul sent him a handwritten letter seeking a pardon, but after reading it, he decided against it.
When the Times asked when the letter was sent, Mr. Trump said, “Oh, would you like to see that letter?” However, he never showed it to them. The publication then reached out to the White House for information as to what was in the letter, but they were referred to “Mr. Trump’s comments.”
Reports of a possible pardon had been swirling for some time, seeing as Trump and Combs were seen in numerous social settings prior to his presidency.
During a media briefing in May 2025, a reporter asked Trump if he would consider a pardon for the Bad Boy Records founder. He revealed, at the time, nobody had asked him, but he knew “people were thinking about it” and were “close to asking.”
“I haven’t seen him, I haven’t spoken to him for years. He used to really like me a lot. But I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up, from what I read. He didn’t tell me that, but I’d read a little bit nasty statements in the paper all of a sudden,” he said. “I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don’t like me, it wouldn’t have any impact on me.”
The 56-year-old’s legal team said in the filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was treated harshly at sentencing by a federal judge who let evidence surrounding charges he was acquitted of unjustly influence the punishment.
Combs is currently in prison on two prostitution-related charges related to the Mann Act. He was sentenced on Oct. 3, 2025, to four years and two months. He’s serving his time at New Jersey’s Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution.
Late last year, his lawyers urged a New York federal appeals court to order his immediate release from prison and reverse his conviction on prostitution-related charges or direct his trial judge to lighten his four-year sentence.
NewsNation affiliate KTLA has reached out to Combs’s legal team about the letter, but has not heard back by the time this story was published.