President Trump is poised to pardon a slate of people convicted of emissions and clean air-related violations, and is still discussing other potential acts of clemency, including for Sean “Diddy” Combs or several other well-known figures, according to sources familiar with his plans.
The president was scheduled to have a meeting Friday afternoon on the topic of pardons and planned to decide based on recommendations from advisers, two of the sources said.
Lobbying for pardons for people in legal trouble has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks.
But neither Combs nor other high-profile cases were expected to be on the recommendations list from the pardons team, one of the sources said.
Combs is serving a sentence of just over four years in the federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, after he was convicted last year of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was acquitted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which were the more serious charges against him.
Mr. Trump hadn’t committed on Friday morning to a firm number of people who will receive clemency. He has been privately discussing whether to grant requests, including from Combs, one of the sources said.
“President Trump is the ultimate decider on any clemency related actions,” a White House official told CBS News in a statement.
The president told the New York Times in January that Combs had written a letter to him to ask for a pardon but said he was not considering the request.
Another person who has been seeking a pardon is Grammy Award-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of The Fugees hip-hop group. Michel is currently in federal prison serving a 14-year sentence, after he was convicted of criminal charges that he conspired with Malaysian financier Jho Low to orchestrate a series of foreign lobbying campaigns aimed at influencing the U.S. government under two presidents.
Low is also accused by the U.S. of embezzling $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund. Several sources familiar with the matter told CBS News Low is also seeking a pardon.
Mr. Trump had not yet decided whether Michel or Low should receive clemency, one of the sources said.
Friday’s list from the pardons team was expected to be exclusively related to Clean Air Act violations.
Last year, Mr. Trump pardoned Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake, who served seven months in prison for violating federal emissions laws for disabling air pollution-control equipment on diesel engines.
Mr. Trump’s pardon of Lake was helped along by Wyoming political consultant and lobbyist Jeff Daugherty, who worked with Wyoming Republicans to get on the case on the radar of the White House, said Stewart Cables, an attorney who now works with Daugherty on other clemency cases.
“We think this type of case is an example of government overreach,” Cables told CBS News on Friday. “That’s why we are trying to get these pardons.”
Earlier this year, CBS News was the first to report that the Justice Department had ordered federal prosecutors to drop all remaining prosecutions and investigations targeting others like Lake in connection with the sale of illicit “defeat devices” that are used to tamper with pollution control systems in diesel-powered vehicles.
The edict, issued by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, marked the first time that the Justice Department formally took steps to scale back environmental criminal enforcement since Mr. Trump took office in 2025. Blanche said at the time he was dismissing the cases “to ensure consistent and fair prosecution under the law, as well as to ensure the best use of Department resources.”
It came about after lawyers for some of the defendants had argued that the violations could not be prosecuted as crimes under the Clean Air Act, and could only be pursued as civil offenses.
Although the EPA and the Justice Department indicated that they intended to pursue only civil violations in connection with the defeat devices, the White House last month ordered them to scale back even further.
In a June 29 executive order, the president called on the EPA to deprioritize civil enforcement of tampering with emissions control devices.
Clemency has been a fixture of Mr. Trump’s second term. On his first day in office, the president granted pardons or prison sentence commutations for over 1,500 people who were charged or convicted in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Since then, he has granted clemency to a number of his allies who faced prosecution, as well as those who hired lawyers and lobbyists close to Mr. Trump.
That had led to growing scrutiny from Democrats in Congress, who have launched an investigation into Mr. Trump’s clemency over concerns about alleged “pay-to-play” dynamics, CBS News first reported. The probe is expected to ramp up should Democrats win a majority in either chamber of Congress in the midterm elections this year.
