Contemporary off having his jail sentence commuted by President Donald Trump, former New York Rep. George Santos wasted no time leaping again into the highlight. Inside 48 hours, he sat down for an interview with Dana Bash on CNN and reactivated his account on Cameo, the service the place he beforehand charged greater than $300 for personalised movies.
Santos, who served lower than three months of a seven-year sentence, supplied little indication of regret. When Bash requested whether or not he supposed to pay again the roughly $374,000 in restitution tied to his fraud conviction, Santos shrugged off the thought.
“I can do my best to do whatever the law requires of me,” he stated. “So I don’t know what that is. I’ve been out of prison for two days. I agreed to come here to speak with you candidly and openly and not to obfuscate. If it’s required of me by the law, yes. If it’s not, then no. I will do whatever the law requires me to do.”
Former Rep. George Santos arrives at federal court docket for sentencing on April 25 in Central Islip, New York.
He didn’t cease there.
“I do not have any pendencies with the law anymore. I have no restitution. I have no probation,” he stated on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” calling a lot of the restitution “really insane.”
In August, Santos pleaded responsible to wire fraud and aggravated identification theft after prosecutors accused him of embezzling donor funds and charging their bank cards with out authorization. A decide ordered him to pay almost $374,000 in restitution to these he defrauded, cash he used to bankroll a life-style constructed on lies.
Prosecutors stated he spent donor cash on luxurious buying journeys at Hermès and Louis Vuitton, prolonged stays at Las Vegas’ Venetian Lodge, bank card funds, and 1000’s of {dollars} in money withdrawals.
That con was a part of a a lot greater net of deceit. Even earlier than his arrest, Santos was broadly identified for mendacity about almost each nook of his life—fabricating levels, job titles, charity work, and even claiming his mom died within the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults. These lies helped him win workplace, however they ultimately caught up with him, resulting in his expulsion from the Home.
Nonetheless, Santos was stuffed with gratitude—for Trump.
On Fox, he referred to as the president a person with “such an amazing will for second chances.” And on CNN, he waved off the backlash.
“I’m pretty confident if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off the cross, he would have had critics,” he stated. “So that’s just the reality of our country.”
Then-Rep. George Santos of New York, proper, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, proven in 2023.
Santos had spent months lobbying for clemency, aided by allies in Congress. Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia even despatched a letter to the Justice Division formally requesting that Trump reduce Santos’ sentence quick.
If this feels predictable, that’s as a result of it’s. Trump’s clemency spree has been sweeping, particularly for these in his political orbit.
On his first day again in workplace, Trump pardoned greater than 1,500 individuals tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, together with people who assaulted law enforcement officials. A few of those that have been pardoned have since been arrested and/or convicted once more.
Days later, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion extremists. In early March, he granted clemency to a Tennessee Republican who was two weeks into an almost two-year sentence for marketing campaign finance violations. And Trump later pardoned a former Las Vegas Metropolis Council member with shut ties to his political community. Over the next months, his listing of clemency recipients continued to develop.
Maybe no group has benefited greater than scandal-plagued Republican officeholders, although.
Santos is the most recent in a collection of Republican officeholders or former officers to obtain clemency. Others embody Michael Grimm, a former New York congressman convicted of tax fraud, and John Rowland, the previous Connecticut governor who additionally served time in jail.
With Santos’ commutation, Trump has now pardoned or commuted the sentences of 10 present or former Republican members of Congress convicted of crimes, and that quantity will probably rise.
Historically, presidents used pardons sparingly, typically to appropriate miscarriages of justice or clear the names of these wrongfully accused. Trump’s normal is much less complicated: If you happen to’re an ally, that’s adequate. And for Santos, that loyalty paid off.
