Disgraced former New York Republican Representative George Santos didn't surprise a soul after he gave Fox News personality Sean Hannity a waffling answer when asked if he'll still pay back the hundreds of thousands of dollars he stole from victims of his financial schemes.
Santos' short-lived political career was derailed by allegations of fabricating his background, misusing campaign funds for luxury items and Botox, and leaving a trail of victims behind him as a known fraud and identity thief. He received a seven-year sentence for crimes that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York argued “made a mockery” of the electoral process.
The sentence Santos received sits at the high end of the sentencing guidelines, combining roughly four to five years for fraud-related charges with a mandatory two-year minimum for aggravated identity theft. However, he's now out of prison after he was granted clemency by President Donald Trump.
Hannity noted that Trump's commutation of Santos' sentence effectively erased the debt Santos owes his victims—and wondered if Santos still intended to make things right:
“Even though you’re not compelled with this commutation to pay it back, do you think you should?”
But Santos' response was...shall we say...non-commital:
“You know, Sean, I’ve put a lot of thought into that. And I’ve spoken to my legal team. And I think that the right thing to do is to explore a way to make it right."
"Part of actually squaring away with everything that has happened in my life is to start fresh and starting fresh, if it means we find a way to do it, sure."
Sounds good, right? Except that he didn't stop there.
"I just want to make sure that the record reflects, Sean, not obfuscating or deflecting, is that 85% of that sum would have gone to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which in the Merrick Garland administration at the DoJ, they determined I was to pay back restitution to the Republican Party congressional committee campaign because they believed that they invested in my campaign under false pretenses even though the merits of that was to win a race and I did. I understand the question. It's been four days, we have a lot to process."
So...that's a "No" then?
You can hear what Santos said in the video below.
Santos was swiftly criticized—he clearly feels no shame about any of his grifting.
Earlier this week, Santos told CNN he will only pay back approximately $374,000 in restitution if it is “required of me by the law.”
Santos said he will only "do whatever the law requires me to do" and in a separate interview on Fox & Friends Weekend said he does not "have any pendencies with the law anymore," adding that “most of the restitution was really insane.”
GOP leadership has also indicated Santos would even be welcomed back in the halls of Congress despite his record of criminality.
Speaking to Fox News this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would welcome Santos back to Congress now that Santos told the network he would be open to running for office again. Johnson said, "if the people duly elect a representative, then we will welcome them into the body."
Johnson went on to say that "if we're going to be intellectually consistent and if we're going to follow Scripture, if someone's turned their life around and if they want to do the right thing, then they should be open to that."
