Former Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was sentenced on April 25 to more than seven years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, who was appointed by former President Clinton, granted the Justice Department's request of seven years and three months in prison during the sentencing in Long Island.
U.S. Attorney John Durham told reporters that Santos was also ordered to pay more than $370,000 in restitution and forfeit another $200,000. Santos was ordered to surrender to federal custody by July 25.
"From the moment he declared his candidacy for Congress, Santos leveraged his campaign for his own enrichment and financial benefits," Durham said. "He did this by targeting specific supporters and constituents. He saw them as easy marks and he made them victims of his fraud."
The length of Santos' sentence was expected to be determined based on whether he was remorseful for his actions.
Santos' attorneys had asked for the two-year minimum sentence set in law, citing his guilty plea in August 2024 to felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.
As part of the plea, he tearfully admitted at a prior hearing to filing false campaign finance reports, charging donors' credit cards without authorization and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits, among other acts that began years before he ran for Congress.
As he left the courthouse, Santos was greeted by a small, livid group of former constituents who surrounded his SUV, chanted and waved signs, saying he'd destroyed their faith in government. He and his attorneys did not speak to reporters.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly, who contributed to the federal investigation, called Santos "the polar opposite of what a public servant should be."
"He is without integrity, unconcerned with his constituents and self, interested in every way," Donnelly told reporters. "Designer clothes were more important to him than following the rule of law; luxury more important to him than the oath he took to serve his country and the people who elected him. He had a responsibility to those people. They counted on him to deliver for them. Instead, they got an empty man in an empty designer suit financed by fraud, a man who to this day is not truly remorseful for his actions."
Prosecutors requested the 87-month sentence in a recent court filing, calling his conduct a "brazen web of deceit" that defrauded donors and misled voters. In a separate filing, they said Santos' recent "social media blitz" shows he "remains unrepentant for his crimes."
Prosecutors specifically pointed to an April 4 post on X, formerly called Twitter, that stated, "No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit."
In a letter to the judge earlier this week, Santos said he has "accepted full responsibility," but still has the right to publicly protest the DOJ's proposed lengthy sentence.
"Saying I'm sorry doesn't require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head. True remorse isn't mute; it is aware of itself, and it speaks up when the penalty scale jumps into the absurd," Santos' letter said.
Santos represented parts of Queens and Long Island for 11 months before he was expelled from Congress in a bipartisan vote amid allegations in a House Ethics report of filing fraudulent campaign finance reports, embezzling funds from campaign donors and charging donor credit cards without authorization and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits.
After the sentencing, New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon called Santos a "fraudster" who knowingly claimed in New York to be unemployed week after week while receiving a $120,000 salary from a New York court.
"It is a decision of his own making," Reardon said. "Every week he lied to the state... every week he had a chance to change it and he didn't."