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The Situation Room

Now: Sean "Diddy" Combs Sentencing Hearing Underway. Aired 11- 11:30a ET

Aired October 03, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[11:01:24]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, sentencing for Sean Combs. Right now, prosecutors and the Combs defense team are both making their arguments for what kind of sentence he should receive after his conviction on federal prostitution related charges. We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown. And you're in The Situation Room.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

BLITZER: And we begin this hour with the breaking news, the sentencing of music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. Right now he's in a federal court in New York City and is expected to address the judge before sentencing on prostitution related charges. This is the Combs family arriving at the courthouse for the hearing a while ago. Minutes ago, we learned that two or three perhaps of his children will also address the court. And --

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: This is a video that his defense attorneys want to play in court right here, it shows positive images of Combs. You can see playing with his kids as they make their case for leniency. He has spent the last 13 months in jail and could face more than 11 years in prison.

Cassie Ventura, a former girlfriend at Combs and a star witness against him, is asking the judge to consider the victims, quote, "I know that who he was to me, the manipulator, the aggressor, the abuser, the trafficker is who he is as a human."

BLITZER: The story as it unfolds. Our correspondents and analysts are here to walk us through every twist and turn as both prosecutors and defense attorneys try to make their respective cases on this very, very pivotal day.

Want to keep -- I want you to keep an eye on the left side of your screen. No cameras are allowed in federal court so this is where we will share the latest updates from our correspondents who are actually inside the courthouse.

BROWN: Let's begin with anchor in chief legal analyst Laura Coates right outside that courthouse. Laura, we're getting a good glimpse of what the judge is saying about Combs' behavior following the trial.

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Really insightful. This is what it's going to come down to, the word remorse. There is a pre-sentencing report. It is provided and compiled by the probation office of a courthouse of a justice system who tries to give some guidance the judge of a recommended sentence. They interview the person.

They talk about recidivism, a return to crime. They think about a whole host of different issues. Well, one of the things that the defense wanted the judge to say and to know was that they don't think that Sean "Diddy" Combs has gotten credit for taking responsibility and demonstrating remorse for the actions. In fact, the judge essentially poo-poo (ph) that idea and said, well, hold on, not only is he has taken some responsibility for some of the actions but not with respect, he has actually been convicted of. And talks about him being having a full throated defense and issue with the factual findings in this case.

Now why is that important? There's a tension here. Somebody who is presumed innocent and then convicted, most people think, well, then they must all of a sudden say OK fine, you got me, I'm going to admit to everything and I'm going to tell you how sorry I am for what you convicted me of. But he still has the appellate process ahead of him and he's never recorded required by law to actually admit to the conduct even when he has been convicted of it or demonstrate the kind of remorse that maybe you or I would expect to see. It's only what he is required to do to tell the judge what he feels about an issue.

[11:05:00]

This is so important because the judge has now adopted that pre- sentencing report essentially saying, I accept what has been written and their assessment of what they believe his remorse or his statements were. Now he is calculating what the sentencing guideline should be.

Remember, this is kind of a grid. It assigns different points to past convictions, prior behavior, et cetera, that's part of the court system. And you have a sort of grid that comes out, you enter this data in and outputs an actual sentencing range. This disparity is huge. It was supposed to be very clear as to what a range would be.

But you can see from what the defense wants, they want 14 months, which would mean given time served, waiting for trial, and of course sentencing out by the end of the year. The prosecution looks at that same range and says, no, no, it's got to be upwards of 11 years. That report provided though, says five to seven. So the judge will now look at all of these things.

Final point here, the idea of victims. That is part of what the judge will weigh. Not necessarily the number of them, but the conduct that was alleged, even that which was acquitted behavior he will factor in ultimately to what he decides to sentence Sean "Diddy" Combs to. At this point in time, it is anyone's guess. With a disparity like that, what will happen before us?

I will tell you, around the court as today, the family has been here, there has been hordes of people, there is a constant presence of playing his music just less than a block away. You have signs being held up all over the place. There is a real buzz in the air here of what might happen and what will come.

BROWN: I'm curious as we await for the sentencing and it could be a while, I mean, this could go through Monday. How do judges typically weigh a lack of remorse as this judge said in a sentencing?

COATES: It is a balancing act. It's always going to be a balance of what are the most persuasive factors for this judge. The number one thing, the actual verdict, the testimony that came in as it relates to the verdict. Now, a lot of things can come into play because a judge is looking at what would be the type of sentence that will accomplish the goals of our justice system, that include not having somebody engage in repeat criminal behavior, afraid of his recidivism, the idea of an eye towards deterrence to prevent this person from committing a crime again, but also as a larger point to society.

And that point is important because in his three page letter, Sean "Diddy" Combs was very clear that although this has gotten global attention, he does not want him to become a poster child. He wants to be an example, Sean "Diddy" Combs says, of somebody worthy of a second chance. We'll see if the judge agrees.

BROWN: We shall see. All right, Wolf, over to you.

BLITZER: All right, Pamela. We're going to continue, of course, to monitor what's going on inside that courtroom. But right now, in another major development, the House Speaker, Mike Johnson is briefing reporters on the government shutdown now in day three and the enormous impact it's having. I want to listen in.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: People that should never have been there in the first place. One was able bodied young men who are riding the wagon, who should be working. We got them back to work. And the other thing that we focused on was the illegal aliens. By the CBO's estimate, about 1.4 million illegal aliens were receiving Medicaid benefits that were intended only for U.S. citizens that met the categories I just described.

They were gaming the system. They were cheating the system. And what that means is that less resources were available for the people, the Americans who actually needed it most. So we did the common sense thing, the right thing, the just thing, and we put it in the law and the president signed that, gladly signed it into law. They want to repeal it.

They want to give those resources back to illegal aliens. That's exactly what that highlighted language means on this exhibit number two over here, I feel like I'm back in court. Exhibit number two, OK, this is -- this is the specifics of what that would mean. When we say they want to give $200 billion back to illegal aliens, these are the specifics. If you read the legalese here in the language in the -- in the bill on page 57, and what follows.

That's what it's talking about. These are all the various provisions. In -- in the chart over here, those are -- those are listed in millions. So you see the final total there, $192.8 billion of your hard earned taxpayer dollars that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want to give back to illegal aliens. That's a fact, and nobody can refute it.

Now, look, what we've done is very simple. We sent over a continuing clean resolution. This is standard practice around here. And all the Democrats who are voting against it in the Senate right now, every single one of them have given impassioned speeches about how you must pass continuing resolutions, you must pass CRs. You should never shut down the government because it's dangerous and destructive and selfish and wrong.

[11:10:00]

Well, suddenly they've changed their tune. We're playing -- I invite you all after the press conference to go by the speaker's office in the hallway there, and you can see the highlight reel of all of them saying this passionately. As recently as March of this last year, when Chuck Schumer led his caucus to vote for the same CR, they did it 13 times during the Biden administration in the previous four years but suddenly they won't do it. So everybody has to ask themselves why. It has nothing to do with health care.

The subsidies that they're saying is the issue is not the issue. That is an issue for the end of the year. December 31 is when that expires. So Congress has three months to negotiate that. Certainly we could work on it in the month of October to find some consensus and figure that out what reforms there may be necessary to make all that happen.

Republicans are committed to the health care of Americans. We have already proven that. We are making health care more efficient and effective and more available so that we can bring down cost and premiums and improve quality of care. We put the goods on paper. We're doing that.

And the CBO analysis that came out August 25 said that these changes that we put in our bill are doing exactly that. Congressional Budget Office is not a Republican shop, as you all know. They typically go against what I'm doing. OK. But they had to admit that this is going to make 2.3 ineligible recipients no longer on the Medicaid rolls.

It's going to save $185 billion for taxpayers. That's exactly what we promised, and that's what's going to be achieved. But we have more reforms coming to -- to -- to try to fix Obamacare, which is not working for the people. But you need common sense, responsible Republicans who are serious about policy to fix that for the people. And that's what we're working to do.

The Democrats are stalling that because they need a political talking point. And why? Because Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democrats, is terrified that he's not going to win back his Senate seat. He's afraid that the Marxist far left corner of his base is going to challenge him in New York. Maybe many of you have noticed New York is probably going to elect a Marxist for mayor.

He's terrified by that development. Chuck Schumer is a -- is a far left, progressive politician, but he's not far enough left for this base. And so he's got to show a fight against the president. He's got to show that he's fighting Republicans. And because they're playing political games and they're not doing what he himself said passionately as recently as six months ago, that must be done, that you passed a standard bipartisan CR. Because he needs political cover, he is dragging the American people through this.

And who's getting hurt? Women, infants and children, nutrition programs that are now stalled, veterans' health services that will not be provided, people who are low income, Medicare recipients who receive telehealth and health treatment at home. Many of those programs are not being funded. We have troops and TSA agents and border patrol agents who are working without pay, protecting the country. And you have FEMA services, health insurance policies for example, that are being stalled in the middle of a hurricane season because the Democrats want to play political games and try to obscure the real facts at issue.

We challenge them. We challenge them to tell us why they're not trying to give illegal aliens health care again when they put it in their own bill. This is not Republicans playing games. I could have put Republican conservative priorities on the CR and Senate over there, but I didn't. And so when you all ask me why aren't you negotiating with them?

I don't have anything to negotiate. Leader Thune and I can't take off Republican priorities that we put in the CR and say, hey, is that better? Could you vote for that? Because we didn't put them on there in the first place. Why?

Because Republicans are being responsible. We're operating in good faith and we're trying to get the Democrats to do their job and they won't. Those are the simple facts and they cannot be obscured.

I'm so grateful for the strong leadership of my colleague and partner over in the Senate. And I'd love Leader Thune to give you a little update here.

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: Well, thank you Mr. Speaker. The speaker is right, we have an opportunity to pick up a House passed bill that if it passes the Senate will be sent to the White House, the president will sign it and the government will reopen. It's that simple and that straightforward. And that's all we're talking about here. All we need is a handful more Democrats.

We have a majority of senators. Fifty-five senators have already voted for this clean, short term, nonpartisan CR. As the speaker said, no policy riders, no gimmicks, nothing in here that benefits Republicans. This is a straight up seven week funding resolution and we need it to keep the government open. And if we don't keep the government open, you'll have all the things that the -- that speaker just alluded to, all the Americans who are adversely impacted by this government shutdown. Now, this is something, as you all know, as recently as the last administration, during the Biden administration, when the Democrats have the majority here in the United States Senate, the Democrats on 13 different occasions voted for this, a short term continuing resolution. Now, I have to ask, what's changed? What's different about this? What's different is who's in the White House. That's what it is about.

[11:15:08]

It's all about President Trump and the Democrats needing to pick a fight to satisfy their far left political base, far left activist organizations who are the tail wagging the dog right now. That's all this is about. And you have a Democrat leader from New York in the -- in the Senate, a Democrat leader in the House from New York, and you have a mayoral race in New York. You've got AOC, you've got all these people that are bringing pressure to bear on what should be a routine, simple, straightforward proposition, and that is a short term continuing resolution to keep the government funded, which is sitting right now. Sitting right now.

This is sitting at the Senate desk. We will have a vote another hour or two and it will be the fourth time that Democrats will have an opportunity to vote to keep the government open.

Now, at some point, reason, good sense, common sense has to take effect here because that's really what this is. They brought to us and the speaker alluded to all the impacts on illegals and free health care programs in this country, a bill loaded with $1.5 trillion in new spending, which includes all these.

BLITZER: All right, we're going to continue to monitor this news conference by the Republican leader in the Senate, the Republican leader, the speaker of the House in the House of Representatives, we're going to continue to monitor that. But I want to go to our correspondent, Arlette Saenz right now. She's been watching all of this unfold.

He made the point, John Thune, the Republican majority -- Republican leader, minority leader in the Senate, the Democrats are the majority in the Senate, that they need a few more Democrats right now to vote in the next hour or two in favor of what's called this clean continuing resolution that would reopen the federal government right away. How does that look?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, right now it appears pretty unlikely that enough Democrats will cross over to support this Republican plan. But what you heard from the Republican leaders just moments ago is them really trying to keep the pressure on Democrats once again to get on board with that seven week stopgap funding bill. In order for Republicans to get this across the finish line, they would need a total of eight Democrats to side with them. So far, there are only three that has said that they will do so. That leaves five remaining Democrats that they need to get on board.

But still at this time, people are really hardening their positions and digging in on how they think the end to the shutdown could be achieved. Republicans say the answer is that seven week stopgap funding bill while Democrats continue to insist that they want to have negotiations around issues including on health care. At the heart of this is really those Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Democrats want to see a permanent extension and they want to enter into talks with Republicans over this issue.

Now, there have been some informal talks between a bipartisan group of senators and some of those conversations have centered around those expiring Obamacare subsidies. But right now those are just informal. They haven't actually reached anywhere close to a formal negotiation stage involving leadership or most importantly, President Trump. Democrats ultimately believe that the president will need to get on board with any changes, any extension of those Obamacare subsidies. And so that is part of the reason why Democrats have been pushing a tour meeting with the president that has not --

BLITZER: Arlette, hold on, hold on a minute. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to go back to the speaker. He's beginning to answer questions from reporters.

JOHNSON: To shut the government down, it shifts the authority to the executive branch. That's how the process works. The person who has decided to put the White House in that situation is Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democrats. The 44 who keep voting to keep the government from opening up, they're voting to shut it down.

So, what happens in that situation? Whoever is the president, whoever is sitting in the White House and their staffs at the Office of Management and Budget are given an unenviable task. It's a regretful situation. They have to then determine, since the spigots have been effectively turned off and there's no more money coming in, they have to then prioritize triage, effectively federal spending. They have to look at all of that and say, you know, which things are deemed essential and which are non-essential, which priorities, policies and personnel must be kept to keep the government operating and which are less of a priority.

So, whomever is sitting in the White House gets to then apply their lenses of review. We happen to have a Republican, a conservative administration, we're very grateful for that. We're limited government conservatives. We think the government's too big. We think the federal government is too big and it does too many things and it does almost nothing well.

And so it serves the taxpayers to send less of their hard earned money to Washington and keep more in their pockets. That's what we're advancing through the one big beautiful bill and all the legislative priorities that we achieve.

[11:20:02]

But see, sometimes Democrats, not sometimes, all the time, Democrats don't agree with that because they love big government. I mean, listen to them, they want the government to control every aspect of your lives and they need all of your hard earned dollars to do that. In fact, they'd like to take them all. That's what the socialists are arguing for. That's what the Marxists believe.

We believe the opposite. So here's this situation. Here's the President, the current occupant of the White House, that's been given this opportunity by Chuck Schumer, and he's a limited government conservative. He's looking at that and saying, gee, you know, this is inefficient, this is ineffective, and we'd never get Democrat votes to limit that because they never vote to limit government, ever. It's against their religion.

But he has that opportunity now to say, this is a program that would serve the American people if it were not funded because government would be more efficient and effective and that serves everyone. So they're going to make those decisions. Now, are they taking great pleasure in that? No. Is he trolling the Democrats?

Yes. I mean, yes, because that's what President Trump does. And people are having fun with this. But at the end of the day, the decisions are tough ones. And I've met with him.

I talked yesterday at length with Russ Vought, who's the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Russ takes no pleasure in this. Russ wants to see a smaller, more efficient, more lean, effective federal government as we do. But he doesn't want people to lose jobs. He doesn't want to do that, but he has -- that's his responsibility.

So he's very carefully, methodically, very deliberately looking through that to see which decisions can be made in the best interest of the American people. That's his obligation and that's his real desire. The president -- the president takes no pleasure in this. But if you're -- if Chuck Schumer is going to give Donald Trump the opportunity to determine what the priorities are, he's going to exercise that opportunity and that's where we are.

Chad.

CHAD: Square something for me, how can you say that they take no pleasure in this and then the next minute say, oh, they're just having fun and trolling people?

JOHNSON: Yes.

CHAD: This is a government shutdown. On one hand you say, this is very serious, the people's jobs are on the line. On the other hand you say, oh, this is just fun and games and controlling.

JOHNSON: So the effects are very serious on real people, real Americans. We support federal employees who do a great job in all these different areas. But what they're having trying to have fun with, trying to make light of is to point out the absurdity of the Democrats position. And they're using memes and all the, you know, tools of social media to do that. Some people, you know, find that entertaining.

But at the end of the day, the decisions are hard ones. And I'm telling you, they're not taking any pleasure in that.

Yes, yes. Jake.

JAKE: The Democrats are saying you need to -- they would like you and the leader to put in writing that you want, you know, how you'll handle the Obamacare stuff.

JOHNSON: So, so Jake is asking the Democrats latest demand, apparently I haven't heard that, but they want -- they want us to put in writing how some of these unresolved questions will be resolved. Here's the problem. Some of the issues that they're bringing to the table and they're demanding immediate, easy answers for are not easy answers. And they take a long time to deliberate. That is the process.

This is a deliberative body and a very large one. We got 435 over there and 100 over here. We can't snap our fingers. And he and I and two other leaders in a room go, oh, well, this is the resolution. That's not how it works.

So what we're trying to do to buy the extra time to get to November 21st is to give both chambers and this whole body seven more weeks to figure that out. So it's not an easy solution. They know that very well. They know it as well as we do. But they're using that as a red herring because they want to drag this along so they can get political points.

Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know that you both believe that the Democrats are always to blamed here, but at the end of the day, this is happening on your watch. Do you take any responsibility for what's happening? And what is the justification for not holding votes in your chamber this week and potentially yours this weekend when there are some bipartisan conversations happening in the Senate? Why not just stay here and work this out?

JOHNSON: I'll give you my quick answer, I'll yield the leader. But my quick answer is very simple, the House did its job. The House did sent a bipartisan, very simple, very conventional 24 page continuous resolution to keep the lights on. And it's been -- and we sent it over, we passed it and it's been rejected by the Senate. So the House will come back into session and do its work as soon as Chuck Schumer allows us to reopen the government, that's plain and simple.

THUNE: Well and as I mentioned all the things we aren't doing, right? So we're in a -- we're in a shutdown posture here because of Senate Democrats. There is united support House Republicans, Senate Republicans, a few Senate Democrats, the President of the United States in support of keeping or opening the government back up and right now it's being blocked by the Senate Democrats. And all it takes as you point out is a handful of more, we get four or five more votes and we can actually pass this thing. And there are discussions going on with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but at some point they have to take yes for answer.

I mean, we are -- the things that people want, and I don't disagree with this at all, is a normal appropriations process, putting bills on the floor, getting conference pass bills on the floor of the House and Senate so we can actually fund the government the old fashioned way and I'm all for that and we've made that very clear to them.

[11:25:10]

We can't make commitments or promises on the COVID subsidies because that's not something that we can guarantee that there are the votes there to do. But what I've said is I'm open to having conversations with our Democrat colleagues about how to address that issue. And I think that the -- but that can't happen while the government is shut down. I mean, we got to open up the government.

And with respect to the -- our schedule, like I said, I don't know how many times they're going to give them a chance to vote no and hopefully over the weekend they'll have a chance to think about it and maybe some of these conversations start to result in something to where we can start moving some votes and actually get this thing passed. But there's no -- there's nothing to be gained at this point by negotiating something that there's nothing to negotiate. I mean, I think that's essentially where we are. This is a, again, a straightforward, simple solution to keep the government open. And then all these other issues that we're talking about, we're happy to sit down and have conversations.

BLITZER: All right, clearly a very, very sensitive moment right now in this government shutdown, federal government shutdown. We're watching what's happening. You're hearing what the Republican leadership in the Senate and the House are saying. Democrats have very different views right now. We're going to continue our special coverage on this major breaking news right after a quick break.

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