Despite being dealt a crushing legal setback by a federal judge this week, Sean “Diddy” Combs remains hopeful President Trump will come to the rescue as he faces years in prison for his conviction on two prostitution-related counts.
Nicole Westmoreland was one of eight attorneys who represented Combs at trial. In a new interview with CNN, Westmoreland confirmed there have been active conversations between the mogul’s legal team and the Trump administration.
“My understanding is that we’ve reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon,” she said.
Trump addressed those efforts during a recent interview with Newsmax, but suggested he is unlikely to grant the request because of statements Combs made about him in the past.
“I was very friendly with him, I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well. But when I ran for office, he was very hostile,” Trump told a Newsmax reporter.
Related: Diddy Suffers Defeat as Judge Rejects Mogul’s $50 Million Bail Request
When asked about the mogul’s reaction to Trump’s comments, Westmoreland told CNN that Combs “is a very hopeful person, and I believe that he remains hopeful.”
In addition to Westmoreland, the Bad Boy Records founder’s legal team includes lead attorney Marc Agnifilo, Teny Geragos, Brian Steel, Alexandra Shapiro, Jason Driscoll, Anna Maria Estevao, and Xavier R. Donaldson.
Westmoreland said their strategy at trial was “to just tell the truth.”
“We didn’t need a creative story, we didn’t need to overreach,” she said. “We knew that he had not sex trafficked anyone and we knew that RICO was absurd. So, we figured, ‘hey, we’ll tell the truth and that will pay off.’ And I believe that for the most part, that strategy worked.”
On July 2, a Manhattan jury acquitted Combs on the most serious racketeering and sex trafficking charges, but convicted him on two lesser transportation to engage in prostitution counts involving his ex-girlfriends Cassie Ventura and a woman identified as “Jane Doe.”
Still, the mogul has been denied bail a total of five times — three after he was arrested in September 2024 and twice following his conviction.
The day the trial ended, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian denied his $1 million bail request after several alleged victims wrote letters to the court saying they feared for their lives.
Earlier this week, Subramanian rejected the mogul’s latest request for release on a $50 million bond backed by Combs’ Florida estate.
The judge sided with federal prosecutors who argued that Combs poses both a flight risk and is a “danger” to the community.
The rapper and producer’s legal team countered that it’s unfair their client is being held in custody while others “involved in this identical conduct” walk free.
Combs has been held in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in Manhattan, and is expected to remain there while he awaits sentencing on Oct. 3.
He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for each prostitution count.
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