The President of the United States spent part of his Friday afternoon in a meeting about whether to free a convicted sex tourism offender, a man who helped a Malaysian billionaire loot his country's sovereign wealth fund, and a bunch of guys who illegally rigged diesel trucks to spew more pollution. This is the pardon power in 2026. This is fine.
The Diddy Question Nobody Can Quite Answer
According to CBS News, Trump has been privately discussing whether to grant a pardon request from Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is currently sitting in federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, serving just over four years after being convicted of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was acquitted on the more serious sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
The thing is, the pardons team wasn't expected to actually put Combs on the official recommendations list for Friday's meeting. So we're in this liminal pardon space where Trump is apparently thinking about it, his advisers are apparently not recommending it, and no one will say yes or no on the record. One White House official told CBS News, with a completely straight face presumably, that "President Trump is the ultimate decider on any clemency related actions." Groundbreaking stuff.
Back in January, Trump told the New York Times that Combs had written him a letter asking for a pardon and that he was not considering the request. That was January. It is now July. The request is apparently still being considered, which tells you something about how firm Trump's "no" has ever been on anything.
The Fugees Guy and the Malaysian Billionaire Walk Into a Pardon Meeting
Combs isn't the only marquee name in the mix. CBS News reports that Pras Michel, the Grammy-winning rapper from The Fugees, is also seeking clemency. Michel is serving a 14-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of conspiring with Malaysian financier Jho Low to orchestrate a series of foreign lobbying campaigns designed to influence the U.S. government under two different presidents.
That would be bad enough on its own. But Low himself is also reportedly seeking a pardon, according to multiple sources who spoke to CBS News. This is the same Jho Low who is accused by the U.S. government of helping embezzle $4.5 billion from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, one of the largest financial frauds in history. Low is a fugitive who has been living abroad and evading U.S. authorities for years. He would like a pardon now, please.
Trump had not yet decided on Michel or Low as of Friday, per CBS News. The fact that this is a live discussion rather than an immediate and obvious no tells you everything you need to know about the current state of American governance.
The Diesel Dudes Are Basically Already In
Here's the part that will actually happen Friday, per CBS News: a list of pardons for people convicted of Clean Air Act violations, specifically related to so-called "defeat devices," the illegal equipment used to tamper with pollution controls on diesel engines.
This follows a pattern Trump has been building for a while. Last year he pardoned Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake, who served seven months in prison for disabling air pollution-control equipment on diesel engines. Earlier this year, CBS News was first to report that the Justice Department, under then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, had ordered federal prosecutors to drop all remaining prosecutions and investigations targeting similar cases. Blanche said at the time he was killing the cases to ensure "consistent and fair prosecution under the law" and "the best use of Department resources." Sure. Dropping environmental enforcement cases wholesale is definitely a resource efficiency play and not a policy choice dressed up in procedural language.
So the diesel tamper guys are getting pardoned. That part's done. The sex trafficking adjacent celebrity and the fugitive Malaysian billionaire are still TBD.
The Pardon Lobby Is Having Its Best Quarter Ever
CBS News notes, matter-of-factly, that lobbying for pardons "has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks." Read that sentence again. There is a thriving cottage industry of people working to get pardons out of this White House, and it is operating at peak capacity heading into the Fourth of July weekend.
This is not a new phenomenon under Trump, but it has become something close to a sport. The combination of a president who responds to celebrity and personal relationships, an administration that has systematically dismantled normal gatekeeping functions, and a pardon power that has no checks on it whatsoever has created conditions where if you know the right people and you write the right letter, you have a real shot. It doesn't matter much what you did.
The Dingo Take
Let's just be clear about the hierarchy of outrages here. The diesel emissions pardons are bad policy, a direct message that environmental laws are optional if enough people complain loudly enough, and a gift to an industry that has been knowingly poisoning air quality for profit. They are also the most boring and predictable thing on this list, because of course this administration is pardoning the guys who cheated on pollution controls. That was always going to happen.
The Diddy situation is something else. A man convicted of federal sex crimes wrote the president a letter asking to be freed, and the president has been privately mulling it over for months. His own pardons team is apparently not recommending it, which means the only thing standing between Combs and a potential pardon is whatever Donald Trump decides he feels like doing on a given afternoon. That's the system. That's the whole system.
And then there's Jho Low, a fugitive from justice accused of one of the largest sovereign wealth fund heists in human history, who is reportedly trying to buy his way back into the good graces of the American legal system through the pardon pipeline. If that one goes through, write it down somewhere, because it will be the single most clarifying moment of this entire administration. A foreign national, wanted by the U.S. government, billions allegedly stolen, living free abroad while angling for a presidential pardon. Happy Fourth of July, everybody.
