Donald Trump announced on Friday that he had commuted the sentence of George Santos, a disgraced former Republican congressman who was serving a seven-year prison term.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before repeating debunked claims about the Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Additionally, the president claimed Santos “has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated” and praised the ex-congressman for having “the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
Santos, who was expelled by colleagues from Congress in 2023 after making a series of brazen false claims about his life story, had appealed to Trump earlier in the week for a reprieve.
“I have faced my share of consequences, and I take full responsibility for my actions,” Santos wrote in a letter to the president published by The South Shore Press, a New York news outlet. “But no man, no matter his flaws, deserves to be lost in the system, forgotten and unseen, enduring punishment far beyond what justice requires.”
In the message, Santos said he has been in solitary confinement since August following an alleged death threat against him.
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene praised the president for freeing Santos.
“He was unfairly treated and put in solitary confinement, which is torture!!” Green wrote on X.
Santos pleaded guilty last August to defrauding voters to fund his congressional campaign, stealing credit card information, and lying to the Federal Election Commission. He was ordered to pay $580,000 in penalties, including restitution.
In 2023, he was initially charged with 23 felony counts, with prosecutors accusing him of using multiple schemes to bilk donors and government assistance programs to fund his lavish lifestyle.
Outside of the criminal charges, media reporting revealed that Santos made a number of claims about his background that were not true, including that his mother survived the 9/11 terror attacks, that he was Jewish, and that he worked for top Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs.
Santos eventually leaned into his reputation for scandal, hosting a podcast called Pants on Fire.
Since resuming office, Trump has issued controversial pardons and commutations for the perpetrators of the pro-Trump January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and for Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes whose mother had raising millions for Trump’s campaigns.
