From the Liveblog of
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Trump says no pardon for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
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Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for prostitution-related crimes, has asked Donald Trump for a pardon, but the US president says he does not plan to grant clemency to the hip-hop star.
Trump, in an interview with The New York Times, also says he does not plan to issue pardons to several other high-profile individuals, including deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The 56-year-old Combs was convicted last July of two counts of transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
A jury acquitted the music mogul of the most serious charges — sex trafficking and racketeering.
Trump tells the Times during the interview that Combs had sent him a letter asking for a pardon but he was not inclined to grant it.
Asked about pardoning Maduro, who was seized by US forces over the weekend and is facing drug trafficking charges, Trump says: “No, I don’t see that.”
In November, Trump pardoned Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted of drug trafficking.
Trump also says he did not plan to issue pardons to disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence, and former Democratic senator Robert Menendez, who is serving an 11-year sentence for accepting bribes.
The Times says the Republican president was also asked whether he would consider pardoning Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer convicted of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, whose death sparked nationwide racial justice protests.
“I haven’t been asked about it,” Trump says.
On the day of his inauguration Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who had been convicted or were facing charges for involvement in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
He has carried out a slew of other pardons since then of other loyalists.
The Times of Israel Community.