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When George Santos walked out of prison after serving less than three months of his sentence, he took a remaining chunk of law enforcement credibility with him.
The expelled ex-congressman, whose 7-year sentence was commuted by President Trump, isn’t just a clownish liar who invented wild stories about himself. He is a scam artist who cost his victims plenty of money, and then pleaded guilty.
But there is a much larger question about the Trump Justice Department and whether vast sums being used to investigate his political enemies also includes the use of his pardon power to let favored crooks, mostly Republicans, off the legal hook.
On the offensive end, the president has ordered investigations of such political foes as James Comey and Letitia James – both of whom were indicted by a loyalist when the professional prosecutor was fired for insisting there was insufficient evidence – along with Adam Schiff and George Soros.
GEORGE SANTOS VOWS NOT TO ‘DISAPPOINT’ TRUMP AFTER SURPRISE RELEASE, SAYS HE FOUND GOD IN PRISON
On the defensive end, Trump already pardoned Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner (Jared’s father) at the end of his first term. And pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters when he regained the White House.
In fairness, Joe Biden handed out lots of last-minute preemptive pardons to protect his allies from Trump, including, of course, his son Hunter.
But here’s the thing. DOJ spent many thousands of dollars investigating Santos, gathering evidence and bringing it before a grand jury.
President Trump commuted the prison sentence of disgraced former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The ex-lawmaker fraudulently claimed unemployment benefits.
He diverted money from his donors for personal expenses, charging $11,000 from one victim’s credit card for designer clothing from Hermes and Sephora, cosmetics, OnlyFans purchases and, not surprisingly, Botox. For him, Botox was probably the most important expense.
So the entire investigation was a waste of money, given the get-out-of-jail-free card he was handed at the end.
He claimed to have been a star volleyball player at a college he never attended. He claimed he ran a pet charity (false) and raised money for surgery on a service dog, which wasn’t really sick.
He claimed his mother was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. He claimed his Jewish grandparents fled the Nazis, but records show they were living in Brazil; he later insisted he’d never said he was Jewish. He claimed to own 13 properties and have a $750,000 salary, both untrue. He claimed he had produced the Spider-Man flop on Broadway.
Most importantly, he claimed to have worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which said there was no record of him having been there – a false claim meant to give him street cred in raising money.
GEORGE SANTOS EXPRESSES GRATITUDE TO TRUMP FOLLOWING COMMUTATION OF HIS 7-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE
Santos became a national punchline. But it was no joke in the House, where more than 100 Republicans joined the Democrats in ousting him at the end of 2023.
Another Trump tactic is to slam the brakes on existing investigations, depending on his political preferences, which retroactively turn these probes into an exercise in futility. And that can include Democrats.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, some of whose top aides had been convicted, was under indictment on corruption charges related to Turkey when Trump took office. Adams had supported Trump on illegal immigration, and the president shut down the probe – again, rendering the law enforcement efforts a waste of taxpayer money.
Trump also pardoned former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was serving a 14-year sentence for trying to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in a shakedown attempt. The president had commuted his sentence in the first term.
Trump’s pardons and commutations can cross party lines – just ask Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo)
But back to Santos. While the New York Times exposed much of Santos’ false resume, by that time he’d already been elected as a congressman from Long Island.
But a local paper, the North Shore Leader, had exposed him before the election.
“We all smelled a fake,” Publisher Grant Lally told PBS’s “NewsHour,” adding: “We knew Santos was a fraud.”
It was “very disappointing” that no one picked up the scoop before the election. “We did send the paper out to a lot of the local organs, a lot of the media.”
Santos caught Trump’s eye, in part, after writing a column on prison life. (Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images and Win McNamee/Getty Images)
I wish he’d sent it to me. The excuse was the national press was busy with other New York stories.
I’ve never met Santos and have nothing against him. He simply became a national embarrassment.
Santos got Trump’s attention in part by writing a column on prison life for Long Island’s South Shore Press. Trump said the convicted fabulist had been held in solitary confinement for long stretches and “horribly mistreated.”
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One rap against Santos is that he has never showed much remorse.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, he said: “People are going to hate me. It doesn’t matter whoever gets clemency in the future, whoever that person might be. I’m pretty confident that if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off of the cross, he would have had critics. So that’s just the reality of our country.”
Geez.
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When the story of his serial fabrications first broke, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, now director of national intelligence, sharply questioned Santos during a Fox interview, demanding:
“Do you have no shame?”
The question still hangs in the air.
