Gay pathological liar and financial fraudster, former Rep. George Santos (R-NY), has deleted his personal X social media account after publishing a post claiming that he’s no longer seeking a presidential pardon for his upcoming 6.5-year prison sentence. Santos claimed he has accepted his fate after his “so called ‘friends’” told him to “go f— myself.” He has maintained his other X account as well as accounts on other social media platforms, like Instagram.
“For those asking… Even though I initially considered the prospect of petitioning the president with a pardon application I have [ceased] that approach as I will not spend the last 61 days I have of life scrambling on how to get past a bunch of guard dogs,” he wrote in a post on his now-deleted X account, @MrSantosNY. “The so called ‘friends’ I have that said they’d help legit should have just told me to go f— myself, because that’s what has essentially happened with their actions. I’ve accepted my fate and don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
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Earlier this month, Santos cried on television and said he had begun the process of applying for a presidential pardon after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in 2024.
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“President Trump, I appreciate if you can give me a consideration,” Santos said in a May episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored. “I’m not an altar boy, not pretending to be one, but I’m not a hardened criminal who deserves to be in prison for seven years, off what I would call ‘ambitious mistakes’ and something that I deeply regret, and I would like to take all of the bad I’ve done and transform it into a positive… to be able to sniff out other bad actors doing similar actions that I did.”
Santos claimed that the trial against him was “politicized” and accused the court of violating his free speech rights by using his old social media posts as justification to give him a 6.5-year prison sentence, instead of the two-year sentence that his lawyers sought.
Santos has said that he’s worried about being “seriously harmed” in prison by immigrants angered by his anti-immigration rhetoric and feels sad that his prison sentence may separate him from his four dogs and his autistic niece who depends on him for medical support.
Santos has also said that he will flee the United States after he is released from prison around age 44—but his promise is doubtful, considering his long history of lying and breaking promises.
The disgraced former congressman stole and used another man’s checks in his home country of Brazil (and lied about it), appeared in public as a drag queen (and lied about it), lied about extensive parts of his campaign biography while running for office — including about being Jewish — and then professed complete innocence of the charges against him until he accepted a plea deal to avoid more prison time.
The court ordered Santos to pay off the $374,000 in restitution owed to his victims before he has to surrender himself to prison authorities. While he said he could pay off the amount before going to prison, he hasn’t explain where he would get the money from.
What is George Santos guilty of?
Last August, Santos admitted to using campaign funds, another person’s identity, and their credit cards for his own personal benefit. A November 16, 2023, House Ethics Committee report accused Santos of illegally spending campaign funds on luxury goods, OnlyFans subscriptions, and cosmetic Botox treatments. Immediately after, the House voted to expel Santos in a 311-114 vote that included 105 Republicans and surpassing the 290 votes needed for expulsion.
Santos originally faced 23 federal charges of campaign finance fraud, including wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making materially false statements to both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. House of Representatives.
Santos has since admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and living at a fake address in his congressional district. He provided no additional proof to back up claims that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets, that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, and that his mother died in connection to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
After his expulsion, Santos began making money creating personalized videos on the Cameo platform. Santos claimed that his largely fake campaign biography — which he previously admitted fabricating due to “stupidity” and “insecurity” — was actually falsified by an unnamed “former campaign staffer.”
“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” Department of Justice prosecutors wrote in their request for a seven-year prison sentence.
After joining Congress, Santos cosponsored a bill to roll back LGBTQ+ civil rights and one to ban LGBTQ+ books from schools. He also made public statements against transgender people and the so-called “radical rainbow mafia.” Additionally, he said that LGBTQ+ families “create troubled individuals.”
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