George Santos Cries As He’s Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison
George Santos was sentenced on Friday to more than seven years in prison in what is the culmination of one of the wildest political scandals in memory.
The disgraced former congressman sobbed as Judge Joanna Seybert handed down his sentence, which includes two years supervised release, in a Long Island federal courtroom. “I offer my deepest apologies,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “I cannot rewrite the past, but I can control the road ahead.”
Santos, 36, pleaded guilty to counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft last summer. Prosecutors were granted the 87-month-long sentence they sought for the man they called a “pathological liar and fraudster.” He has been ordered to surrender by July 25.
In 2022, Santos was largely unknown when he ran for a congressional seat covering parts of Queens and Long Island that was left open by Democrat Tom Suozzi. Though the North Shore Leader, a small local newspaper, unearthed discrepancies with Santos’s financial disclosures prior to the election, it wasn’t until he secured his victory that fall that more questions began to surface about his past.
What emerged was a seemingly endless wave of falsehoods: lies about Santos’s employment history, his education, and even the cause of his own mother’s death. Deeper still were the inconsistencies with Santos’s campaign finances and his net worth, including reports of dubious contributions.
In 2023, federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment against Santos, alleging the representative defrauded campaign donors by directing their contributions to his personal accounts and using the funds to purchase designer clothes and pay bills. They also alleged that he fraudulently applied for pandemic unemployment benefits despite being employed. A subsequent superseding indictment alleged Santos conspired to inflate his campaign’s financial records to qualify for assistance from the national party as well as stole the identities and financial information of his donors to make contributions in their names unknowingly. The 23 total counts against Santos ranged from wire fraud, money laundering, aggravated identity theft to making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.
Santos was initially defiant, rebuffing calls for his resignation and vowing to run for reelection. But the beleaguered representative soon made history in 2023 by becoming only the sixth member of the House to be expelled from the political body following a damning ethics report that found “substantial evidence” of his rule breaking.
But ahead of his sentencing hearing, Santos sought to portray himself as remorseful, pushing back against the prosecutors’ assertions that he is unrepentant due to his social-media rants railing against the justice system. “Every sunrise since that plea has carried the same realization: I did this, me. I am responsible,” he wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, according to the Associated Press. “But saying I’m sorry doesn’t require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head.”
Speculation has grown as to whether Santos will seek a pardon from President Donald Trump. Former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who voted twice to impeach Trump, appears to be publicly courting a pardon from the president following his own conviction on federal corruption charges. Santos told NY1 this week that he has no such plans.
“I believe in the process. I believe that also the president is aware of my situation. I don’t think I need to petition him if he feels like I am worthy of a commutation or of clemency or whatever the case is,” he said. “He can make that decision without me having to put a spectacle on television, like most people are doing right now.”