President Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of former Representative George Santos, the disgraced Republican fabulist from New York who was sentenced to more than 7 years in prison for financial fraud.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump called Mr. Santos “somewhat of a ‘rogue’” but said that he believed that the former congressman’s sentence was excessive given the nature of his crime. The president also suggested he’d been moved by Mr. Santos’s accounts of being in solitary confinement, which he had published in a local Long Island newspaper.
“George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!”
Mr. Santos, 37, reported to prison in southern New Jersey on July 25 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He was not scheduled to be released until September 2031, after an 87-month sentence.
During his plea hearing, Mr. Santos acknowledged his involvement in a variety of other schemes. He acknowledged lying to Congress, stealing money from campaign donors and fraudulently collecting unemployment benefits.
His commutation comes after pleading from some of his Republican allies, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the brash Georgia Republican and MAGA adherent. Ms. Greene sent a letter in August asking the Justice Department for a commutation.
At that time, Mr. Trump, who has doled out pardons or clemency to staunch supporters and others favored by his right-wing base, did not rule out offering a pardon to Mr. Santos, saying in an interview in Newsmax that he had not yet been asked.
“Nobody’s talked to me about it,” Mr. Trump he said at the time. But after acknowledging Mr. Santos’s reputation for falsehoods, the president commended their shared political ideology.
“He lied like hell,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “And I didn’t know him, but he was 100 percent for Trump.”
In his post announcing Mr. Santos’s commutation, Mr. Trump cited their shared political views as a reason for his action, writing, “At least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
The post Trump Says He Is Commuting George Santos’s Fraud Sentence appeared first on New York Times.
