Congress
Trump grants clemency to disgraced former lawmaker George Santos
President Donald Trump granted clemency on Friday evening to George Santos, whose lies about his biography and misuse of campaign funds emerged after he won a seat in Congress from New York and ultimately landed him in prison.
Santos had served less than three months of a seven-year term for wire fraud and identity theft when Trump announced in a social media post that he would commute the rest of the sentence.
The president cited the former New York lawmaker’s political support in the announcement.
“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,” Trump wrote in the post. “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.”
In imposing the prison sentence in April, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert decried Santos’ “flagrant thievery,” describing him as “an arrogant fraudster talking out of both sides of his mouth.” The former lawmaker wept as the sentence was announced, telling the court: “I betrayed the confidence entrusted to me by constituents, donors, colleagues and this court.”
His crimes spanned a range of fraudulent activity. He acknowledged he used his campaign fundraising apparatus for personal gain and admitted to submitting false reports to the FEC during his congressional run. He also admitted to stealing the personal identity and financial information of elderly and cognitively impaired campaign donors.
He admitted to stealing from donors by persuading them to contribute money to a company that he claimed was a social welfare organization or super PAC, and then using their contributions to put himself up at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, shop at Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers, pay off his credit cards and gift himself thousands of dollars in cash.
But Santos was perhaps best known for scores of lies he told about his educational and professional background, many of which were revealed by the criminal investigation and a separate congressional inquiry. He also advanced other falsehoods, including that his mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Santos had repeatedly sought clemency from Trump since the president’s reelection last year. After reporting to prison, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a letter to the Department of Justice to formally request Santos’ sentence be commuted.
In his social media post, Trump compared Santos’ actions to those of Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, an administration critic who has admitted that he mischaracterized his military service by several times suggesting he had served in Vietnam during the war when he was, in fact, stationed in the U.S.
“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!,” Trump said of Blumenthal’s statements.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
- Inside Mamdani’s fraught effort to rein in the NYPD unit he pledged to end
- Cruz blocks Senate Democrats’ bid to pass AI safety bill
- Pharma’s new top lobbyist is a former House majority leader
- White House looking to Europe to release diesel from strategic reserves
- Darline Graham rips Jack Smith for obtaining her late brother’s phone records
- Federal watchdog says Trump’s $810M funding cancellation is unconstitutional
- Sen. Eric Schmitt pins down Jack Smith — as a Caitlin Clark fan
- Mike Johnson backs voluntary regulation to ‘calm the nerves’ on AI safety
- Democrats are running pastors for office. Republicans are attacking their religious comments.
- What Jack Smith plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words