{"id":88997,"date":"2025-10-18T16:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/88997\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:07:09","slug":"trump-says-he-has-commuted-sentence-of-george-santos-in-federal-fraud-case-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/88997\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says he has commuted sentence of George Santos in federal fraud case \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> announced on Friday he had commuted<\/a> the sentence of George Santos<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Santos left the Federal Correctional Institution Fairton in New Jersey just hours later and was \u201con his way home\u201d, his attorney Joseph Murray told Agence France-Presse by phone late on Friday.<\/p>\n

In a Truth Social post, Mr Trump called Santos \u201csomewhat of a \u2018rogue\u2019\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY,\u201d Mr Trump said in the lengthy post. \u201cGood luck George, have a great life!\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trump officials ask US supreme court to permit national guard in IllinoisOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The United States pardon attorney tweeted a photograph of the signed commutation shortly after Trump\u2019s post, writing that he was \u201chonoured\u201d to have \u201cplayed a small role\u201d in Mr Trump granting Santos clemency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Mr President for making clemency great again,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Mr Murray also thanked Mr Trump, posting on Santos\u2019s X account: \u201cGod bless President Donald J Trump the greatest president in US history!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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 \u201cchance to rebuild\u201d.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgrave injustice\u201d and urged intervention after the sentence was handed down. She also sent a letter in August asking the US justice department for a commutation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe lied like hell,\u201d Mr Trump told Newsmax, \u201cbut he was 100 per cent for Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Ms Greene thanked the president for the commutation and said of Santos: \u201cHe was unfairly treated and put in solitary confinement, which is torture!!\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cmade up\u201d aspects of his military record. Mr Blumenthal admitted in 2010 that he misrepresented his military service after saying he had been \u201cin\u201d Vietnam. Blumenthal served as a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War, but was not deployed in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump, who never served in the military, has repeatedly attacked Mr Blumenthal. His account of the senator\u2019s past misstatements have even become increasingly exaggerated in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!\u201d Mr Trump wrote of Mr Blumenthal on Friday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But Santos, who catapulted from relative anonymity to pop culture sensation almost overnight, shared Trump\u2019s love of the national spotlight \u2013 even when trained on his misdeeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, darlings … The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed,\u201d Santos wrote in a tweet pinned to the top of his X account. \u201cFrom the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it\u2019s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried … most days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge overseeing Santos\u2019s case sided with federal prosecutors, who argued the former congressman \u200bhad failed to show genuine remorse\u200b despite his legal team\u2019s insistence to the contrary. That lack of contrition, they said, warranted a tougher sentence.<\/p>\n

\u200bS\u200bantos\u2019s commutation marks the latest in a string of high-profile \u200binterventions \u200bby Mr Trump, who has resumed the use of presidential clemency to reward political allies since returning to the White House in January.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u200bAt 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.<\/p>\n

\u200bMr 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. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump announced on Friday he had commuted the sentence of George Santos, the disgraced former New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,56711,42,43,40,38,41,39,20966,115],"class_list":["post-88997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-santos","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump-presidency","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}