Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Friday after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Santos confessed to a number of schemes, which included lying to Congress, money laundering and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits.
The Santos legal team argued that he should only receive 24 months in prison, which is the minimum sentence for the crimes, but the judge imposed all 87 months sought by federal prosecutors, who had argued there was a need “to protect the public from being defrauded by Santos again."
At issue for the DOJ was an overall concern that Santos lacked contrition after spending time online attacking the Justice Department for pursuing him.
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"No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit," Santos posted on X, and the Justice Department cited in filings, CBS News reported in mid April.
In another post, the DOJ highlighted that Santos complained that the DOJ should spend less time going after him and instead fighting the cabal of child abusers "running around in every power structure in the world, including the US Government."
"It should go without saying that this message—which signals defiance and victimhood while characterizing the federal government as a 'cabal of pedophiles'—is hardly an expression of 'genuine remorse," the DOJ wrote, according to CBS.
His lies to donors and the public included things like the claim he had produced the huge Broadway flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. He also bragged that he was a star volleyball player in college. However, he never attended Baruch College, where he claimed to have played.
In another lie, Santos said he was a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor." As WNYC reported, both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs said there were no employment records for him. He later said he'd used a "poor choice of words" to describe his job.
