{"id":61084,"date":"2025-08-05T21:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/61084\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T21:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T21:21:15","slug":"marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-for-george-santos-prison-sentence-to-be-commuted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/61084\/","title":{"rendered":"Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for George Santos’ prison sentence to be commuted"},"content":{"rendered":"

It might be hard to find someone to have your back in politics if you get caught lying about your life story, become one of a handful of people ever expelled from Congress and then are thrown into federal prison. <\/p>\n

But George Santos<\/a> is no ordinary former politician. <\/p>\n

In a letter Monday, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a> formally came to the aid of the disgraced ex-congressman with a request that his seven-year prison sentence be commuted, arguing that the length of the term represented \u201ca grave injustice.\u201d <\/p>\n

The plea, which was sent to a Justice Department pardon attorney, came less than two weeks after Santos began his sentence. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile his crimes warrant punishment, many of my colleagues who I serve with have committed far worse offenses than Mr. Santos yet have faced zero criminal charges,\u201d Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote without elaborating. \u201cI strongly believe in accountability for one\u2019s actions, but I believe the sentencing of Mr. Santos is an abusive overreach by the judicial system.\u201d <\/p>\n

Republican President Donald Trump, in an interview with the conservative news outlet Newsmax last week, said no one has talked to him about taking action in Santos\u2019 case, but added \u201cthat\u2019s a long time\u201d when told of the ex-congressman\u2019s seven-year sentence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Nancy<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe lied like hell,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t know him but he was 100% for Trump.\u201d <\/p>\n

Santos pleaded guilty<\/a> last year to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft following a damaging indictment that alleged he stole from political donors, paid for personal expenses with campaign contributions, lied to Congress and collected unemployment benefits while working. <\/p>\n

Santos was once heralded in the Republican Party for winning a perennially contested New York congressional seat covering parts of Queens and Long Island. However, it all began to unravel when it became clear that he fabricated much of his life story. <\/p>\n

At one point, he falsely claimed that his mother died in the 9\/11 attacks. At another, he had to clarify that he was \u201cJew-ish,\u201d not Jewish, when pressed about a claim that his grandparents had fled the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

The lies made him a political pariah before he even got to Washington. Once there, he survived two expulsion attempts before a scathing House ethics committee report in late 2023 sealed his fate. He was expelled<\/a> from Congress after a vote later that same year, becoming the sixth member in the chamber\u2019s history to be removed by colleagues. <\/p>\n

Santos, long a Trump loyalist, has been holding out hope that his support of the Republican president could result in a reprieve from his criminal sentence. <\/p>\n

In a dispatch from prison published Monday in the The South Shore Press, a newspaper on Long Island, Santos wrote, \u201cIt\u2019s been just over a week now, but I can tell you this much: when people say \u2018prison sucks,\u2019 they aren\u2019t just talking about the bars and the bunks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just the loss of freedom \u2014 it\u2019s the erosion of your dignity. It\u2019s realizing how many basic human rights we all take for granted on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might be hard to find someone to have your back in politics if you get caught lying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,10771,3827,12,9092,793,31511,681,787,3073,2221,13409,2005,1999,2004,3,2007,111,10585,795,21,19,22,20,25,24,800],"class_list":["post-61084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-campaign-finance","tag-domestic-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-ga-state-wire","tag-general-news","tag-george-santos","tag-georgia","tag-government-programs","tag-indictments","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-marjorie-taylor-greene","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-wire","tag-news","tag-ny-state-wire","tag-politics","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}