A longtime lawyer for Sean “Diddy” Combs has claimed that the disgraced music mogul would become a vocal Trump supporter if pardoned by the president due to an “affinity” the two men share after facing criminal prosecution.
It was reported earlier this week that attorneys for Combs have reached out to the Trump administration about the possibility of a pardon.
Last month, a jury convicted Combs on two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was acquitted of the more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.
During an appearance on the 2 Angry Men podcast, Combs’s attorney Mark Geragos was asked whether the musician, who has previously spoken against Trump as a political candidate, would pledge allegiance to the president if he received an official pardon.
“You want to know the truth? I think yes,” responded Geragos. “Do you know why? I don’t know that it would be like a fealty oath or anything else.
“I think, having done this for 40-odd years, what happens to people when they go through a criminal case… I’ve watched it… I can’t remember the last time that a client didn’t say to me after a criminal case: ‘How do you do this for a living? How do you go through this?’ I remember clients saying: ‘[The prosecutors] have made a caricature of me,’ Geragos said.
“There’s something about that fraternity of people who have been accused and have gone through the process that gives you an affinity. It would not surprise me to hear Sean say: ‘I now get it. I understand it. I was wrong then.’ I don’t know if I would say he’s pledging loyalty, but I think we would probably say: ‘I now get what he went through.’”
When asked previously, the president has seemed to consider that a pardon for the rapper may be possible, though he noted during the trial that no one had asked him for that.
But in an interview at the start of the month, Trump recalled previous previous remarks made by Combs, when he called for the president to be “banished” in 2020, and, following his defeat to Joe Biden that “the number one priority is to get Trump out of office.”
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“When I ran for office, he was very hostile,” Trump said in the interview. “It’s hard, you know? 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 makes it more difficult to do.”
He added that Combs was “essentially, I guess, sort of half-innocent… He was celebrating a victory, but I guess it wasn’t as good of a victory.”
Combs had been facing up to life in prison if convicted on the most serious charges, but now faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years.
