The curious question of a Santos pardon from Trump
Former Rep. George Santos outside the courthouse in Central Islip in August 2024. Credit: AP/Stefan Jeremiah
U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert is scheduled on April 25 to sentence disgraced former Rep. George Santos on the felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges to which he pleaded guilty last August. The Justice Department asks that the shady 36-year-old Republican serve seven-plus years in prison.
Santos, of course, is likely to be remembered on and off Long Island as an impostor who faked not just his finances but the very facts of his life story.
Suspense about Santos looms beyond his sentencing. The question is whether White House intervention, in the form of a commutation or pardon from President Donald Trump, is in the cards. That isn’t a wild prospect these days.
Trump’s handling of Justice Department issues is, more than ever before, a product of his personal wishes and goals. Santos has been a MAGA adherent all the way; his most useful moment for the movement came when he surprisingly rode into office in 2022 amid a midterm backlash against the Joe Biden presidency.
In Washington, Santos befriended Rep. Matt Gaetz — whose judgment on criminal issues was so well regarded by Trump that upon his return, Trump nominated Gaetz for attorney general; Gaetz, buffeted by serious ethics issues, was later forced to withdraw. Santos voted to make Rep. Jim Jordan, a Trump favorite, speaker of the GOP-controlled House, but Jordan lost. Santos wore an AR-15 rifle pin on his lapel as a Second Amendment sop. In an echo of Trump, Santos even lied at one point to MAGA demonstrators that he’d lost to incumbent Tom Suozzi in 2020 due to vote fraud.
And whatever else he may be, Santos has never been considered a violent thug. One would think, therefore, that he’d have a better argument for getting a presidential break than did Jonathan Braun of Atlantic Beach, a loan shark and drug smuggler granted clemency by Trump in early 2021.
Braun recently returned to federal custody after several incidents in Nassau County that included bizarre physical assaults against a toddler, his child’s nanny, his wife, his father-in-law, a nurse, and a man during a Sabbath dinner. Braun’s release by Trump was backed by pardoned felon Charles Kushner, the father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Others, without family connections, were thanked by Trump for their MAGA services with presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards — Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Jan. 6 rioters, for example.
In comparison, Santos, who didn’t serve in Congress during either Trump presidency, proved to be only a marginal, fleeting, and ultimately embarrassing presence in the MAGA-verse. During his half-term in office, his three Long Island GOP colleagues — Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota and Anthony D’Esposito — pressed vocally for Santos’ removal. He was finally expelled on Dec. 1, 2023 by a 311-114 margin.
The humiliation of having Santos in the spotlight seemed especially sharp for Nassau County Republicans — who are and were all in for Trump.
Pardons and commutations are like a regal scepter a president wields at will. Presuming that Trump leaves office as the Constitution requires in January 2029, he could hypothetically help Santos, if he chooses. But would he want to do that? Trump doesn’t seem to like those who’d latch on to his own parade without an invitation.
For the national party Trump came to own, Santos’ quick public career was bad for business. That could be his biggest obstacle to winning Trump’s magisterial favor.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
