Sean “Diddy” Combs is making it clear that he is continuing to push back against his sentence.
According to TMZ, Combs’ legal team filed an appeal on Friday attacking the 50-month federal sentence he received in October 2025, arguing that the judge punished him for allegations a jury had already rejected. In the filing, his lawyers reportedly called the sentence a “perversion of justice” and said the court relied on conduct tied to the sex trafficking and racketeering counts he was acquitted on. They are asking for immediate release, a judgment of acquittal, or a new sentencing hearing.
The appeal turns on the split result of Combs’ 2025 trial. After a roughly seven-week federal case, the jury acquitted him in July 2025 on the more serious racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges, but convicted him on two Mann Act counts tied to transporting people across state lines for prostitution-related encounters. At sentencing, Combs’ lawyers argued a term of about 14 months made sense for those convictions. Judge Arun Subramanian instead sentenced him to 50 months in prison, plus a $500,000 fine and five years of supervised release.
That is where the appeal gets more specific. Combs’ lawyers say the judge effectively used “acquitted conduct” to increase the sentence — meaning he factored in trafficking, coercion, and exploitation allegations that the jury did not convict on. In the filing described by TMZ and other outlets, the defense argues that if the jury said not guilty on trafficking, the court should not have sentenced Combs as if that conduct had been proved anyway.
The filing also brings back one of the more controversial arguments from the trial. According to the reports, Combs’ lawyers again argued that recorded sexual encounters discussed in court were staged, directed performances, and tried to frame them as protected expression. That theory had already been rejected by Judge Subramanian during earlier proceedings.
Combs has been in custody since his September 2024 arrest, and the appeal has reportedly been fast-tracked, with oral arguments set for April 9, 2026. That hearing is now the next pressure point in a case that still refuses to cool down.
