Former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from the idea of pardoning disgraced ex-Rep. George Santos, who began serving a seven-year prison sentence last week for fraud and identity theft.
Despite Santos’ claims that he had been privately seeking clemency from Trump, the former president said he had no knowledge of any such effort and showed little interest in stepping in.
“He lied like hell, I have to tell you,” Trump said in a Friday interview with Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty. “And I didn’t know him, but he was 100% for Trump. I might have met him, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know.”
Trump added that no one had approached him about granting Santos a pardon. “Nobody has talked to me about it,” he said, noting the length of Santos’ prison term. “It’s a long time.”
Santos, 37, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after prosecutors accused him of using donor funds to bankroll personal luxuries—ranging from Botox and OnlyFans purchases to designer clothes and casino trips. He also fraudulently claimed $250,000 in campaign contributions to qualify for the GOP’s “Young Guns” program and unauthorizedly charged elderly donors’ credit cards, according to the indictment.
Although Santos denied some of the accusations, he pointed fingers at his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, who cooperated with federal investigators.
Trump acknowledged that while Santos was a reliable Republican vote in Congress, the extent of his deceit surprised many. “You could blame the other side for not checking him out,” Trump said. “The media missed it. Everybody missed it. They found out about it after the election was won.”
Santos became notorious for fabricating much of his personal and professional background, including claims that he attended New York University, played collegiate volleyball, worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and had Jewish grandparents who fled the Holocaust. In reality, his grandparents were born in Brazil, and Santos later quipped he was “Jew-ish.”
He was expelled from Congress in December 2023 in a rare bipartisan vote—only the sixth House member in U.S. history to be removed.
Since his ouster, Santos launched a podcast titled Pants on Fire and made media appearances, including on the “Tucker Carlson Show,” where he admitted to being fearful of prison. Though he initially pursued a pardon from Trump, Santos announced in May that he had abandoned that effort.
“Even though I initially considered the prospect of petitioning the president with a pardon application, I have seized that approach,” Santos said, noting he wouldn’t spend his remaining free days “scrambling on how to get past a bunch of guard dogs.”
Despite Santos’ loyalty to Trump, the former president appears uninterested in offering him a lifeline.
