Donald Trump announced on Friday he had commuted the sentence of George Santos, the disgraced former New York representative and serial fabulist who had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a short-lived political career marked by outlandish fabrications and fraudulent scheming.
Santos left the Federal Correctional Institution Fairton in New Jersey just hours later and was “on his way home”, his attorney Joseph Murray told Agence France-Presse by phone late on Friday.
In a Truth Social post, Mr Trump called Santos “somewhat of a ‘rogue’” but expressed sympathy for the New York Republican. Santos was sentenced in April after pleading guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
“I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,” Mr Trump said in the lengthy post. “Good luck George, have a great life!”
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The United States pardon attorney tweeted a photograph of the signed commutation shortly after Trump’s post, writing that he was “honoured” to have “played a small role” in Mr Trump granting Santos clemency.
“Thank you, Mr President for making clemency great again,” he wrote.
Mr Murray also thanked Mr Trump, posting on Santos’s X account: “God bless President Donald J Trump the greatest president in US history!”
Santos reported to a federal prison in New Jersey in July and began serving an 87-month sentence for charges that ultimately led to his expulsion from Congress in 2023. Mr Trump’s post suggested he was moved by a letter penned by Santos that was published in a local Long Island newspaper this week. Santos wrote about his life in solitary confinement and made direct plea to the president for a “chance to rebuild”.
Mr Trump issued the commutation after a push from key Republicans allies, most notably Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene, a prominent former House colleague of Santos, had called his conviction a “grave injustice” and urged intervention after the sentence was handed down. She also sent a letter in August asking the US justice department for a commutation.
Asked at the time whether he might consider clemency for Santos, Mr Trump, who has a history of rewarding supporters with pardons, did not rule it out, but said he had not been asked.
“He lied like hell,” Mr Trump told Newsmax, “but he was 100 per cent for Trump”.
On Friday, Ms Greene thanked the president for the commutation and said of Santos: “He was unfairly treated and put in solitary confinement, which is torture!!”
Elsewhere in his post on Friday, Mr Trump compared Santos with the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He made reference to the decades-old claims that Mr Blumenthal “made up” aspects of his military record. Mr Blumenthal admitted in 2010 that he misrepresented his military service after saying he had been “in” Vietnam. Blumenthal served as a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War, but was not deployed in Vietnam.
Mr Trump, who never served in the military, has repeatedly attacked Mr Blumenthal. His account of the senator’s past misstatements have even become increasingly exaggerated in recent years.
“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Mr Trump wrote of Mr Blumenthal on Friday.
Before and after entering Congress, Mr Santos lied prolifically about his biography. Despite making history as the first out LGBTQ+ Republican elected in Congress, his fabulist tendencies caught up with him with the release of a damning report from the House ethics committee. That report detailed how Santos used campaign funds for things like travel, cosmetic treatments and luxury goods and helped fuel his spectacular fall.
But Santos, who catapulted from relative anonymity to pop culture sensation almost overnight, shared Trump’s love of the national spotlight – even when trained on his misdeeds.
“Well, darlings ... The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed,” Santos wrote in a tweet pinned to the top of his X account. “From the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it’s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried ... most days.”
The judge overseeing Santos’s case sided with federal prosecutors, who argued the former congressman had failed to show genuine remorse despite his legal team’s insistence to the contrary. That lack of contrition, they said, warranted a tougher sentence.
Santos’s commutation marks the latest in a string of high-profile interventions by Mr Trump, who has resumed the use of presidential clemency to reward political allies since returning to the White House in January.
Mr Trump, in May, issued a pardon to Michael Grimm, a former Republican congressman from New York who admitted to concealing income and wages related to a Manhattan restaurant he owned. Also pardoned was John Rowland, the former Connecticut governor whose political ascent collapsed under the weight of a federal corruption case and two prison terms.
At the same time, Mr Trump has directed his justice department to bring criminal charges against his political enemies, including his former national security adviser turned prominent critic John Bolton, who was indicted this week and has pleaded not guilty.
Mr Trump last year became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes, stemming from a hush money case in New York that he continues to dismiss as a witch hunt. – Guardian
