WASHINGTON – During a news conference with Elon Musk Friday at the White House, President Donald Trump said he would consider looking into pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Trump, reportedly a guest at Combs’s 1998 birthday party, was in the Oval Office when he said he was open to pardoning the music mogul if he was found guilty.
“Nobody’s asked, but I know people are thinking about it,” Trump said. “I know they’re thinking about it. I think some people have been very close to asking.”
The racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking federal trial has been ongoing for three weeks in Manhattan after the record producer pleaded not guilty.
“I would certainly look at the facts,” Trump said.
Also on Friday, in federal court, a woman who worked for Combs from 2009 to 2017 and was a close confidant of Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the singer he dated off and on for over a decade, answered his defense attorney’s questions.
The woman prosecutors referred to as “Mia” testified that she had endured his sexual assaults, sleep deprivation during forced labor, and violence during a “confusing cycle of ups and downs.”
A surveillance video showing Combs beating up Ventura at a hotel surfaced after she accused him of abuse that included forcing her to have orchestrated sex with prostitutes during “freak offs.”
Trump did not mention the victims in the case. Instead, the president focused on the possibility that Combs was being falsely accused.
“If I think somebody was mistreated,” Trump said, “whether they like me or don’t like me, it wouldn’t have any impact on me.”
Elon Musk also had a history with the troubled rapper whose Miami Beach mansion was the subject of a federal raid before he moved into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
According to the authors of the “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” the Tesla founder had described Combs as “a good friend.”
Last year, NBC published court records showing Combs was one of 95 investors after Musk took over the social media platform and renamed it X.
After Combs was arrested, Musk wrote on X, “How many people in music & entertainment knew about this?”