It’s up to you, New York, New York
The Empire State can probably undo Trump’s commutation of Santos’s sentence
George Santos, who walked free Friday night after serving less than 5% of his seven-year-plus sentence, may have the distinction of being the most shameless thief and prolific fraudster ever to sit in Congress. Santos pleaded guilty last year to a raft of federal charges—wire fraud, money laundering, false statements to the FEC, and stealing from his own campaign. Santos siphoned off thousands in donations, including through identity theft of others’ credit cards, spending the money not on the campaign—which was broke—but on designer clothes, luxury goods, and hobnobbing with rich Republicans.
The crimes he admitted to cover only a fraction of his grift. Santos has been a sociopathic flimflam man for at least the better part of 20 years. He left a trail of victims across two continents—and in a sense, we were all among them. His cynical playbook—staying one step ahead of the law by hugging Trump ever tighter—turned him into a political parasite. Every vote and utterance during his brief congressional tenure was in lockstep with what Trump wanted. Given the razor-thin House margins at the time, his servility helped advance some of the administration’s most self-serving and anti-democratic measures.
Santos’s criminal career stretches back to Brazil, where he was charged with check fraud for using stolen checks to buy clothing and other goods. As he emerged on the American political scene, he fabricated virtually every part of his background. He lied about being a star volleyball player at the college he lied about attending. He lied about working at Goldman Sachs. He claimed that his mother died in the 9/11 attacks—she wasn’t even in the country at the time—and that his grandparents fled the Holocaust. He lied about his religious background. He lied about his personal wealth and real estate empire.
And then there’s this despicable gem: he mounted a GoFundMe campaign supposedly to save a veteran’s dying service dog, and pocketed the money.
A shameless fraudster who lies about everything and steals from everyone. Sound familiar?
I recognize that he also was, in many ways, a comic figure. If I had five cards to play to reverse Trump’s unjust acts of clemency, I doubt I would waste one on him.
But his crimes were no joke—especially not to the individual victims and the people of New York’s Third Congressional District, whom he directly betrayed. They sent Santos to Washington expecting honest representation; what they got was a walking confidence game. When the scandals finally forced him out, the district was left voiceless for months—collateral damage in Trump’s ongoing campaign to turn government into an instrument of personal reward and revenge.
More importantly, Donald Trump’s decision to let Santos walk free last Friday turns farce into open rot—a corruption of the justice system itself.
Trump did not pretend that Santos had been unfairly charged or convicted. On the contrary, in discussing the commutation, Trump said that Santos was “somewhat of a rogue.” He followed that up by saying that Santos had the “Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
Earlier, explaining that he was considering commuting Santos’s sentence, Trump said Santos “lied like hell, but he was 100 percent for Trump” during his few months in Congress before the walls closed in. That’s a spectacular pot-kettle moment even by Trump standards. More to the point, it’s a crystal-clear demonstration that in Trump’s moral universe, loyalty is the only currency that counts.
Trump’s stated rationale was that he believed Santos’s sentence was excessive given the nature of his crimes. It goes without saying that Trump knows nothing about condign sentences for Santos’s crimes, which were well within the heartland for his offenses. But in any event, that rationale can’t begin to justify a reduction of sentence from 87 to 3 months—topped off with a full pass on the $370,000 of restitution to the victims that he had been ordered to pay.
Remarkably, this particular outrage may actually be reversible—and the power to reverse it lies with the people of New York. And that’s because they established that power after being snookered by Trump in 2018.
In the wake of Trump’s pardon of Paul Manafort, New York lawmakers foresaw precisely this danger: a president abusing clemency to shield political allies. At the time, the state’s double-jeopardy rule barred prosecutors from bringing state cases based on the same “transaction” as a federal one, even if the federal conviction was later wiped away by pardon.
So in 2019, lawmakers in Albany closed the “Manafort loophole.” The legislature passed, and Governor Cuomo signed, CPL § 40.51, allowing state prosecutions to proceed even when the same conduct had been the subject of a federal charge—when the defendant has received “a reprieve, pardon, or other form of clemency” from the president.
The law rests on solid constitutional ground. Under the Supreme Court’s “separate sovereigns” doctrine, federal and state systems draw authority from different sources. A federal pardon ends only federal exposure; it does not preempt state prosecution.
The new statute has received very little treatment in the courts, but the phrase “other form of clemency” seems to comfortably reach the commutation of sentence in Santos’s case. It’s an act of mercy outside the normal processes of the criminal justice system. Indeed, the legislative history of the bill states that it “closes a loophole in New York’s double jeopardy law to ensure that individuals who receive a pardon, reprieve, commutation, or other form of clemency from the President may nonetheless be prosecuted under New York law for crimes arising from the same acts.” Numerous cases in the federal and state systems expressly recognize commutations as a form of clemency.
It follows that there is no bar in New York or federal law against charging Santos with state crimes based on the same conduct or transactions as the federal crimes to which he pleaded guilty.
Many of Santos’s federally charged acts also violate New York law. His schemes to mislead donors and divert campaign funds fit neatly under the Scheme to Defraud and Grand Larceny statutes. His false filings and fake identities implicate Falsifying Business Records and Identity Theft, both felonies. There are more potential charges under New York law. Moreover, several victims live in Nassau County, giving local prosecutors clear jurisdiction.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly has been here before. Her office opened an inquiry into Santos in early 2023 after revelations about his fabricated biography and campaign finances. That investigation was put on hold once federal prosecutors filed their sweeping case in the Eastern District of New York. Now that Trump’s pardon has erased the federal judgment, Donnelly can—and should—reopen the file.
The Santos pardon distills Trump’s worldview to its essence. Equal justice under law has been replaced by a three-track system: one for Trump’s enemies, one for his lapdog servants, and one for everyone else.
On the first track are his perceived foes—figures like James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James—targeted with political prosecutions. On the second are obsequious servants like Santos, for whom criminality is immaterial so long as the criminal is “100% for Trump.” And on the third are ordinary Americans, still subject to the law unless their fates intersect with Trump’s whims.
Santos’s fawning open letter to Trump in a Long Island newspaper pleading for freedom captures the rot perfectly. He told Trump that “I was all in. … I never wavered. During my short tenure in Congress, I stood firmly behind your agenda—100% of the time [and] I did it proudly, Sir.”
Trump’s act wasn’t simply a huge favor to a disgraced ally—it was a declaration that the federal justice system runs first and foremost on personal loyalty to him.
But New York has both the moral authority and the legal tools to answer back. Indeed, CPL § 40.51 was written for this moment. Trump’s brazen commutation stole justice from the citizens of Nassau whose trust Santos so thoroughly defiled. DA Donnelly is in a position to reinstate it. She should give that every consideration.
Santos’s story began as a farce. It doesn’t have to end that way. The people and elected officials of New York can still deliver a moral counterpunch—a reminder that truth and accountability, though battered, are not beyond recovery.
We are a lawless country now, I guess? If you can get away with the things this man has done, there is no justice at all. This should outrage every American. Especially any American who has been scammed by a criminal like this. To just let him get by with it like that? Ask yourself, why would trump do that? I'll tell you why, because birds of a feather..., that's why!
New York should definitely prosecute!