George Santos faces minimum two years behind bars after guilty plea
Former Rep. George Santos faces at least two years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
How many years disgraced former Rep. George Santos will spend in prison is expected to come down to how remorseful he is.
U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, a former President Clinton appointee, is scheduled to sentence Santos in Long Island Friday. His attorneys asked for the two year minimum sentence set in law, citing his guilty plea in August 2024 to felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.
As part of the plea he tearfully admitted to filing false campaign finance reports, charging donors’ credit cards without authorization and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits, among other things.
Prosecutors requested a 87 month sentence in a recent court filing, calling his conduct a “brazen web of deceit” that defrauded donors and misled voters. In a separate filing they said Santos’ recent “social media blitz” shows he “remains unrepentant for his crimes.”
Prosecutors specifically pointed to an April 4 post on X, formerly called Twitter, that stated, “No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit.”
In a letter to the judge earlier this week, Santos said he has “accepted full responsibility,” but still has the right to publicly protest the DOJ’s proposed lengthy sentence.
“Saying I’m sorry doesn’t require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head. True remorse isn’t mute; it is aware of itself, and it speaks up when the penalty scale jumps into the absurd,” Santos’ letter said.
Santos represented parts of Queens and Long Island for 11 months before he was expelled from Congress in a bipartisan vote amid allegations in a House Ethics report of filing fraudulent campaign finance reports, embezzling funds from campaign donors and charging donor credit cards without authorization and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits.