President Donald Trump commuted the seven-year prison sentence of former U.S. Rep. George Santos on October 17, 2025, releasing him from a New Jersey federal facility after less than three months served for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Santos had pleaded guilty in August 2024 to stealing from campaign donors, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, and lying to Congress about his finances, with the commutation preserving his $374,000 restitution and forfeiture obligations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump cited Santos’ Republican loyalty in a Truth Social post announcing the decision, which drew sharp partisan divides including criticism from Democrats like Sen. Amy Klobuchar and support from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Santos had pleaded guilty in August 2024 to stealing from campaign donors, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":292560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,7862],"tags":[18494,11],"class_list":["post-304328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-donald-trump","tag-george-santos","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304329,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304328\/revisions\/304329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/292560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}