Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) said he’s prepared to receive the maximum 87-month prison sentence that prosecutors are seeking when he appears for his sentencing on Friday, but said he hopes the judge extends him some grace.
“Right now, my expectation is I’m going to prison for 87 months,” Santos said in a phone interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. “I’m totally resigned.”
“I came to this world alone. I will deal with it alone, and I will go out alone,” he added.
In an OANN interview Thursday with former congressman-turned-host Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Santos discussed his expectations for the sentencing hearing Friday.
“What I hope happens tomorrow is that the judge is fair, balanced, and even. And, unlike federal prosecutors who are trying to drop a anchor on my head…, she is a lot more matter-of-fact and doesn’t take this… in a personal direction,” Santos said.
“I take full responsibility for bad actions I’ve made, and I regret them,” Santos added. “But I feel like seven years, you don’t see some pretty bad people get that long.”
Asked what he thinks would be a fair prison length, Santos told his former colleague, “I don’t know what would be fair, but I know seven years is pretty, pretty out there, in my opinion.”
Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year prison sentence for the disgraced former congressman who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft last year after being expelled from the chamber when the House Ethics Committee reported he deceived donors in an effort to raise funds for personal benefit.
Santos’s attorneys have asked for a two-year sentence, the minimum sentence for an aggravated identity theft charge.
Santos, a controversial figure, said he fears for his safety and plans to make an application to serve his sentence in protective custody.
“Number one is, I plan to serve the entirety of any [incarcerated] sentence in solitary confinement because I fear for my safety,” Santos told Gaetz. “So it is definitely not an easy task, and it’s a monumental one to do.”
Gaetz asked Santos, a Trump ally, whether the president’s recent pardon of a former Las Vegas councilwoman convicted of wire fraud gives Santos “any specific hope” about Trump extending him a similar grace.
“I haven’t petitioned the president for a pardon,” Santos said. “A lot of people keep asking me this, but obviously, if the president were to extend one, I’d be humbly grateful, because he’d be taking a major weight off my back.”
“But again, I hope — hope’s the last to die — like, I can hope for many things, and I do hope that hopefully he takes a look at me, too,” Santos added.
