Donald Trump believes Sean “Diddy” Combs is “half-innocent” out of his sex-trafficking trial, but there will be no presidential pardon right now for the much-accused Grammy winner.
And, just two days after Deadline exclusively reported that Trump was “seriously considering” such a pardon and the White House played its cards close to the chest, Friday’s no pardon stance makes Diddy foe 50 Cent very happy indeed.
“Can you believe he thought he was getting pardoned,” the Power franchise EP and pro-Trump rapper posted on social media with an AI generated image late Friday after a still grievance fueled POTUS told Newsmax he wasn’t inclined to grant Combs a get outta jail card. “No Sir, you are not. You said very nasty things.”
Yet, Trump being Trump, it could all change on a dime.
Sticking it to federal prosecutors sweeping case, the eight-men and four-women jury just found Combs guilty of lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution on July 2. Though the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York now want self-declared swinger and domestic violence perpetrator Combs to continued to be denied getting out on a $50 million bond and be sentenced to several years behind bars on October 2, the reality is the not guilty decision on the harsh sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges was a serious blow for now fired lead prosecutor Maurene Comey and her team.
Part of Trump’s public and behind closed door dalliance with a Combs pardon is to stick a knife in the family of ex-FBI Director James Comey. The president also wants to punish what he views as an overreaching and too independent SDNY, sources tell me.
Earlier Friday, months after Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson promised he would try to talk Trump out of any Combs pardon, the ‘In Da Club’ rapper posted a clip from the former Celebrity Apprentice host’s sit-down with the fledgling conservative cable newswer where Trump agreed with reporter Rob Finnerty that any pardon for Diddy would “more likely be a no.”
Amidst a clemency campaign from Combs loyalists to the White House and those close to the transactional POTUS and Trump being Trump, the pardon “no” tonight was qualified.
Right after a discussion about a pardon for Jeffrey Epstein’s newly cooperative confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, Finnerty asked: “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Would you consider pardoning him?” To which, a typically self-centered Trump replied: “Well, he was essentially, I guess, sort of half innocent. Probably— I was very friendly with him but when I ran for office he was very hostile and it’s hard. So, I don’t know, it’s more difficult.”
Espousing ignorance one moment and then intimate knowledge the next about both Maxwell and Combs, Trump was just slightly less inclined towards the latter back in May when he was when asked about a pardon for the now convicted Bad Boy Records founder. “I would certainly look at the facts if I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don’t like me,” Trump said on May 30 in the Oval Office just a couple of weeks after Combs’ eventually eight-week long and often horrifically depraved trial began.
Since our story on Combs receiving a possible pardon, MAGA media standard-bearers such as Megyn Kelly have pleaded Trump not to give the one-time mogul a pass. “MAGA is already upset over elites seeming to cover for each other,” the ex-Fox News host said on July 30. “This would not help. GOP struggling (with) young female voters, most of whom will hate a Diddy pardon,” Kelly exclaimed in a pretty convincing argument that also served as a warning shot to the transactional and media thin skinned Trump
Staring at a maximum of 20 years for the prostitution charges he was found guilty of, Combs remains at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Diddy has been at the often criticized facility since his arrest last September in a NYC hotel. Trying to quell a MAGA uprising over the withholding of the promised files on the vile Epstein, who died in custody in 2019, Trump has been letting loose even more of a barrage of distractions that usual to direct attention away from his well-known relationship with convicted and well-connected sex offender Epstein and what the files may say about him.
To that, just days after being granted immunity in a two-day conversation with a top DOJ official, the 20-year sentenced Maxwell was suddenly moved out of federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.
Maxwell, Combs …nothing to see here.
