The former representative of former representative George Santos, RN.y., insists that he “accepted all responsibility” for a series of fraudulent schemes despite a “social media bombardment” that federal prosecutors said they suggested otherwise.
Prosecutors repeated their request for a prison sentence for more than seven years when Santos is sentenced on Friday, saying that his recent publications on social networks show that Santos, 35 years old, “does not regret their crimes.”
Santos, in a letter to the judge on Tuesday, said it can be “deeply unfortunate” and upset by the recommendation of the Department of Justice of a long prison sentence.
“But saying I’m sorry, it does not require that I feel silent while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head. The real remorse is not mute; he is aware of himself and speaks when the penalty scale jumps to the absurd,” Santos’s letter said.
Former American representative George Santos arrives at the Court in Central Islip, NY, August 19, 2024.
Stefan Jeremiah/AP, file
“Ironically, the same political ambition that supported my own irregularity now seems to boost government overreach in this case,” Hew wrote. “One would think they could have learned something from the person they chose to prosecute with such vehemence!”
Santos included a selective graph to suggest that the government’s recommendation is out of tune with other political prosecutions, citing the former Illinois representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., being sentenced to 30 months for improper use of $ 750,000 in campaign funds or the former New York representative, Michael Grimm, which is sentenced to eight months for hiding $ 900,000 in Wage E taxes.
The prosecutors alleged Santos, with the help of the former treasurer of the Nancy Marks campaign, falsified presentations of the Federal Electoral Commission, manufacturing donor contributions and inflating the total collection of funds to comply with the threshold of $ 250,000 required to join the “Young Canons” program of the National Republican Committee of the Congress. Marks declared himself guilty and is waiting for the sentence in June.
When he was informed that he had not reached the reference point of NRCC, Santos sent a text message to an associate: “We are going to do this a little different. I have it.”
The “different” approach included presenting false donations attributed to family members, fictitious individuals and even stolen identities of elderly supporters, according to the presentation.
Santos declared himself guilty of cable fraud and aggravated identity theft in August 2024. He had already been expelled from Congress in December 2023.
