Was George Santos, if that really is his name, really a Trump and MAGA supporter? Who would know? Given his proclivity to saying anything that serves his interests at any given moment, and given that it’s in his interest at the moment to claim to be a Trump supporter, he says he is. And for Trump, that’s good enough.

Former Representative George Santos of New York, the disgraced Republican fabulist whose lies made him an object of national scorn, was released from a federal prison on Friday night after President Trump commuted his seven-year sentence for fraud.

It’s hardly surprising that Trump commuted his sentence, and he’s hardly the first person to be pardoned or have his sentence commuted who wasn’t exactly deserving of presidential mercy. That goes for Democratic as well as Republican presidents. Remember Marc Rich (Clinton)? And then there was Crazy Joe Arpaio (Trump)? And Joe Biden’s autopen pardons on the way out the door raised serious concerns.

But this is about Santos. Why Santos?

George Santos was somewhat of a “rogue,” but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison. I started to think about George when the subject of Democrat Senator Richard “Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal came up again. As everyone remembers, “Da Nang” stated for almost twenty years that he was a proud Vietnam Veteran, having endured the worst of the War, watching the Wounded and Dead as he raced up the hills and down the valleys, blood streaming from his face. He was “a Great Hero,” he would leak to any and all who would listen — And then it happened! He was a COMPLETE AND TOTAL FRAUD. He never went to Vietnam, he never saw Vietnam, he never experienced the Battles there, or anywhere else. His War Hero status, and even minimal service in our Military, was totally and completely MADE UP. This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN! George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!

So Trump hates Blumenthal, who was never accused nor convicted of stealing campaign funds, and Santos “ALWAYS VOTE(d) REPUBLICAN!” Of course, Santos did some other things as well.

Mr. Santos claimed that he was descended from Holocaust refugees. His mother, he said, had been in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He claimed to be a college volleyball star. And Mr. Santos boasted of extensive Wall Street experience that allowed him to report loaning his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars.

None of that was true.

A person running for office lied about pretty much everything? Who woulda thunk? But he wasn’t convicted for being a fabulous liar.

As more of Mr. Santos’s claims were exposed to be false or misleading, his Republican colleagues grew increasingly uneasy. When he was indicted in 2023, prosecutors accused him of multiple criminal schemes, ranging from fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits and lying on official forms to using his political campaign to enrich himself, swindling money from donors for personal expenses and using one donor’s credit card to steal $11,000 for his personal use.

Santos pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 87 months in prison, forfeiture of $205,002.97 and restitution to his donors of $373,749.97. He’s served about three months of his sentence and will not have to repay his donors for the money he stole.

At the time, I questioned whether the sentence of seven years was appropriate for his crimes. After all, the funds he stole weren’t taken from poor widows in the dead of night, but from willing donors who handed over money to a person about whom they only knew he was running on the Republican ticket. And despite having stolen from his campaign, he won the congressional seat in New York’s third district. I note that he was my representative, though I neither contributed to his campaign nor voted for him.

The crimes to which he pleaded guilty carried a minimum sentence of two years imprisonment, and had I been the judge rather than Joanna Seybert, I would likely have imposed a sentence between 24 and 30 months in accordance with the parsimony clause. Prison would not be easy for this fabulist, although his breathless dramatic recitation of the horrors of imprisonment was hardly evidence that he was poorly treated.

Aside from omitting the fact that he requested to be housed in SHU to keep him from gen pop, where he might not have been well liked and kindly treated, he was shocked to learn that prison wasn’t nearly as much fun as people expect. By people, I mean the J6 defendants/convicted, who complained ceaselessly that they were treated like everyone else. That was before they were mass pardoned, of course, which was Trump’s most outrageous and ignorant abuse of the pardon power thus far.

Was Santos’ commutation a travesty? In the scheme of presidential pardons by Trump or otherwise, not too much. It was hardly justified, as voting Republican should not be the litmus test for a get out of prison free card, but his sentence was long, arguably longer than it might otherwise have been, and hopefully his future is bleak because he will forever be a lying, stealing fabulist joke, a taint which no commutation can remove.