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George Santos goes to jail!
The disgraced former congressman would match proper in with so lots of today’s political leaders. Nevertheless, he got here in a bit too early for a felony to flourish within the federal authorities.
On Friday, April 25, the court docket handed down Santos’ sentence.
Along with spending 87 months behind bars, he should pay a whole lot of hundreds in restitution.
George Santos goes to jail!
In Could of 2023, authorities indicted George Santos on expenses together with wire fraud and identification theft.
The accusations — to which he has since confessed in his allocution — have been that, amongst different issues, he merely took the cardboard numbers of his personal marketing campaign donors and spent that cash on private expenditures.
Think about donating to your native mayor’s marketing campaign after which discovering out that they accepted the donation, then reused the cardboard data to order issues for themselves.
That might be maniacal conduct. It is usually unlawful!
In 2022, a bunch of New York voters inexplicably elected Santos to Congress.
He shortly started making headlines with clownish conduct and an uncommon string of provable, absurd lies — sure, even for a politician.
Even simply easy particulars about his private historical past turned out to be complete fabrications.
The thought of a ordinary liar and a compulsive felony by chance conning their means into Congress sounds just like the plot of a 2010-era USA drama-slash-comedy, but it surely was actual life. For a short time.
Lower than one 12 months into his first (and, allow us to hope, solely) time period in workplace, he was expelled from Congress amidst a federal investigation into his felony exercise.
The ‘witch hunt’ declare didn’t age nicely
In Could of 2023, Santos referred to as the investigation, expenses, and then-fresh indictment a “witch hunt.”
Nevertheless, just a little over a 12 months later, he pleaded responsible to aggravated identification theft and wire fraud as a part of a plea deal.
It’s exceptional and uncommon to see politicians at his degree really face actual authorized penalties for his or her crimes.
Notably, Donald Trump’s conviction final 12 months had no impact, as too many events lacked the resolve to totally implement the legislation.
On Friday, April 25, the court docket sentenced Santos to 87 months in a federal jail. That comes out to over 7 years.
He additionally should pay over $370,000 in restitution. Santos additionally should forfeit sure belongings. His complete loss is wanting extra like $580,000 with that in thoughts.
It’s value noting that he was dealing with a compulsory minimal of two years in jail for the identification theft side of his crimes.
In mild of his felony exercise (and, one could assume, the deep violation of a Congressman committing these crimes), the court docket clearly felt that greater than two years was acceptable.
He has really requested solitary confinement
Whereas Santos would slot in nicely with lots of the worst people operating issues on the federal degree right now, he feels nice trepidation about how much less rich criminals will react to him.
TMZ reports that Santos appeared on (the place else however) The Matt Gaetz Present on (the place else however) One America Information Community forward of his sentencing.
There, he admitted that he has requested to spend all seven years of his sentence in solitary confinement. Apparently, he’s underneath the impression that he’s identified for a powerful anti-gang stance.
(Only for the report … it appears probably that his wire fraud expenses is not going to land him at a facility that sees a lot in the best way of gang violence. Solely time will inform, we suppose)
