According to the clemency grant, a photo of which was posted on X by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, Trump granted Santos an \u201cimmediate commutation of his entire sentence to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation, supervised release, or other conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview on Fox News\u2019 \u201cFox & Friends Weekend,\u201d Santos said, \u201cI do not have any pendencies with the law anymore. I have no restitution. I have no probation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos, 37, was less than three months into serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison.<\/p>\n
In announcing the commutation on his social media platform, Trump said Santos had been \u201chorribly mistreated\u201d and called him a \u201cbit of a \u2018rogue,\u2019\u201d but \u201cat least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024 and admitted to claiming relatives had made contributions to his campaign when, in fact, they had not. Santos conceded he was trying to meet the fundraising threshold to qualify for financial help from the National Republican Congressional Committee.<\/p>\n
He also stipulated that he committed other fraud, including charging donor credit cards without authorization and convincing donors to give money by falsely stating the money would be used for TV ads. He also stipulated he stole public money by applying for and receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic to which he was not entitled.<\/p>\n
Santos claimed Sunday that others, like former President Joe Biden, had also used their pardon power for politically charged reasons, \u201cSo pardon me if I\u2019m not paying too much attention to the pearl-clutching of the outrage of my critics, and of the people, predominantly on the left, who are going to go out there and try to make a big deal out of something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to like me. People are going to hate me. It doesn\u2019t matter whoever gets clemency in the future, or whoever that person might be,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty confident if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off the cross, he would have had critics. So that\u2019s just the reality of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos said he wasn\u2019t ruling out future political aspirations, but not within the \u201cnext decade.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 37 years old. I can tell you this, not that I can see in the next decade,\u201d he said. \u201cI am all politicked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his time behind bars made him want to focus on prison reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica today has 250,000 federal inmates, approximately, and I think it would be much nicer to look at reducing that number. And if I can be a part of helping that, I would, I think that would be a great road to follow in the future,\u201d Santos said.<\/p>\n
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According to the clemency grant, a photo of which was posted on X by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, Trump granted Santos an \u201cimmediate commutation of his… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45315,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-45314","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n