Traditionally, Americans presidents have issued pardons to right a wrong or to protect those who have been falsely accused of wrongdoing. In 2025, however, if Donald Trump sees a convicted criminal as a political ally, that’s apparently all the president needs to know.
What often goes overlooked, however, is the degree to which the inverse is true, too: If the Republican doesn’t see a convicted criminal as a political ally, that’s also all the president needs to know.
Take Sean “Diddy” Combs, for example.
The hip-hop titan was recently acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking at his federal trial but was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. It’s against this backdrop that there’s been considerable speculation of late about whether Combs might receive a presidential pardon. With this in mind, NBC News reported:
Trump said during tonight’s [Friday’s] Newsmax interview that he was unlikely to pardon Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, saying that the musician who was convicted on two counts during his federal sexual abuse trial was ‘very hostile’ during Trump’s presidential campaign. ‘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 said during the interview.
Asked if he was probably a “no” on pardoning Combs, the Republican president replied: “I would say so, yeah.”
As the interview progressed, Trump focused not on the case, the allegations or the factual details, but rather on his personal feelings about his own ego.
“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,” Trump told Newsmax. “So I don’t know, it’s more difficult. It makes it more — I’m being honest, it makes it more difficult to do.”
But as part of the same on-air interview, Trump was also asked about a possible pardon for George Santos, a disgraced former Republican congressman who recently reported to prison.
“You know, he lied like hell ... but he was 100% for Trump,” the president said, before saying that Democrats and journalists should share the “blame” for not uncovering the former GOP lawmaker’s lies sooner.
He added, in reference to Santos, “He was a congressman and his vote was solid.” After noting more than once that he didn’t know Santos personally, Trump concluded about a possible pardon: “With him, I have the right to do it. Nobody’s asked me, but it’s interesting.”
To recap, over the course of a single interview, the president said a pardon for Combs probably won’t happen because the entertainment mogul was “hostile” during his campaign for president, while a pardon for Santos is on the table because the disgraced former congressman “was 100% for Trump” and a “solid” partisan vote for the White House.
Trump’s critics have long argued that the president is basing his pardon decisions on whether convicted criminals are aligned with him personally, and this was a rare instance in which Trump all but admitted to a national television audience that his critics are correct.
As the political world is left to wonder who might be next on the president’s get-out-of-jail-free list, it’s hard not to marvel at the sheer brazenness of the circumstances. In Trump’s first term, the Republican effectively wielded his pardon power as a corrupt weapon, rewarding loyalists, completing cover-ups, undermining federal law enforcement and doling out favors to the politically connected, but much of these actions transpired after his 2020 election defeat — when it seemed as if his political career was over and he no longer had to concern himself with consequences.
But in his second term, it appears Trump is no longer concerned about appearances or the pretense of propriety. He’s corrupting the pardon process; he knows that he’s corrupting the pardon process; he knows that we know that he’s corrupting the pardon process; and he’s doing it anyway.
The president seems eager to act with impunity, confident in the knowledge that a Republican-led Congress will shrug its shoulders with indifference; Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have already said Trump’s office effectively puts him above the law; evidence of corruption doesn’t seem to have an appreciable impact on his approval rating; and news organizations have to divide their coverage between this and a wide variety of other presidential abuses.
The result is a dynamic in which Trump is effectively declaring, “I’m handing out pardons like party favors to my political allies, because they’re my political allies, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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