Trump: George Santos sentence commuted

(CN) — President Donald Trump on Friday said he commuted the prison term of famed fabulist and former U.S. Representative George Santos, letting him out of a seven-year prison sentence that began in July.

“I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, adding, “Good luck George, have a great life!”

Santos, who represented New York’s 3rd Congressional District, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in August 2024, avoiding a trial scheduled weeks later. He faced a minimum two and maximum 22 years in prison.

Under his plea, Santos admitted he lied to federal and state institutions to get unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic. He also overstated his income and assets in a financial disclosure statement submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of his second campaign for office.

The 37-year-old reported to a minimum security facility in southern New Jersey on July 25. He has been housed alongside fewer than 50 other inmates.

The commutation comes just days after the South Shore Press published a letter from Santos from prison, wherein he appealed to Trump for “redemption and renewal,” and claimed that he had been placed in solitary confinement after a death threat.

“Mr. President, I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for fairness — for the chance to rebuild. I know I have made mistakes in my past. I have faced my share of consequences, and I take full responsibility for my actions. But no man, no matter his flaws, deserves to be lost in the system, forgotten and unseen, enduring punishment far beyond what justice requires,” Santos said in the letter published Monday.

Two months before he surrendered, Santos said he’d decided not to seek a pardon from Trump and lamented “so called ‘friends’” who failed to help him petition the president.

“I’ve accepted my fate and don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Santos wrote in a post on X.

But he found an ally in early August when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene asked Trump to grant clemency to her erstwhile colleague in Congress.

Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th District, called Santos’ seven-year sentence “excessive, especially when Members of Congress who’ve done far worse still walk free.”

“George Santos has taken responsibility. He’s shown remorse. It’s time to correct this injustice,” Greene wrote.

However, it was Santos’ apparent lack of responsibility for swindling 21 victims out of hundreds out thousands of dollars — among them a 73-year-old physically disabled woman with brain damage and two 86-year-old men, one of whom had dementia — that seemed to sway U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert to impose the 87-month sentence requested by the government, rather than the minimum two years Santos asked for.

“Where is the remorse? Where did I see it?” the Bill Clinton nominee asked rhetorically at Santos’ sentencing. “It’s always somebody’s fault.”

Ahead of the hearing, Santos took to social media calling himself a scapegoat and accusing the government of missing a filing deadline.

“No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit,” he wrote on X.

In court, a tearful Santos said: “I stand here humble, chastened, and fully accountable for the choices I made.”

Expulsion from Congress

Santos was expelled from Congress in December 2023 after the House Ethics Committee concluded in a report that he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit."

He made false statements to the Federal Election Commission and spent campaign funds on Botox, designer clothes and the adult content platform OnlyFans, the committee found.

After Santos’ expulsion, Democrat Tom Suozzi won a special election last year and reclaimed his previous seat representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District. He had the job from 2017 until 2023 when Santos took over, having won after Suozzi opted to run for governor.

Even before prosecutors unsealed charges against him in May of 2023, Santos’ brief political career was marked by discoveries that he’d told a series of blatant, at times bizarre, lies about his personal background during his campaign.

He falsely claimed to have graduated from Baruch College in New York and lied about working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He also stated that his mother was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks when in fact she died in 2016, and misrepresented his ancestral and religious background, claiming to be both Jewish and Catholic.

In his commutation announcement, the president called Santos “somewhat of a ‘rogue,’” but said, “there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison.” He named Democrat Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who stated in the early 2000s that he had “served in Vietnam” when in fact he was never deployed there.

Addressing criticism for the claim during his 2010 Senate campaign, Blumenthal said he had misspoken.

Blumenthal responded to Trump’s comments in a statement Friday: “This rant is fabricated nonsense. There’s no excuse for commuting George Santos’ sentence.”

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