George Santos Defends Social Media Tirade To Federal Judge | EUROtoday

NEW YORK (AP) — George Santos is defending his latest social media tirade to a federal decide who shall be sentencing the disgraced former New York congressman later this week on fraud prices.

In a prolonged letter forward of the Friday court docket date, Santos, 36, stated he stays “profoundly sorry” for his crimes however protests that the seven-year jail sentence sought by prosecutors as “ridiculous” and overly harsh.

“Every sunrise since that plea has carried the same realization: I did this, me. I am responsible,” wrote the previous Republican lawmaker, who pleaded responsible final summer season. “But saying I’m sorry doesn’t require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head.”

Prosecutors, in a submitting final week, argued Santos “remains unrepentant” and has not proven real regret, as his attorneys have claimed in their very own submitting looking for a lighter, two-year jail stint.

They cited a collection of posts on X, previously Twitter, by which he disparaged the U.S. Department of Justice as a “cabal of pedophiles” and solid himself as a sufferer of prosecutorial overreach.

Santos, who admitted he deceived donors and stole the identities of almost a dozen folks to fund his congressional marketing campaign, countered that his “colorful” posts are being wrongly “repurposed as a sword against me” by prosecutors.

“Contesting the severity of a proposed sentence is not the same as contesting guilt, and punishing protected speech because it questions punishment should trouble anyone who values fair prosecution over personal vindication,” he wrote.

Santos stated calling himself the “scapegoat” in social media posts was in reference to prosecutors claiming he was the “organizer/leader” of his marketing campaign’s monetary fraud and warranted a stiffer sentence. He argued his former marketing campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, who has additionally pleaded responsible and faces sentencing subsequent month, shares equal half within the blame.

“If I were the criminal mastermind they portray, I would be the clumsiest in modern memory: leaving a trail of screenshots pointing directly back to myself,” he wrote within the Saturday letter.

Santos additionally pushed again at prosecutors’ claims that he has not made efforts to pay the roughly $580,000 owed as a part of his plea deal, saying he’s “liquidated personal assets, reduced my living expenses, and tried as hard as I could to raise some money for restitution.”

He added that he has not requested any of his pals or household to put in writing letters to the court docket on his behalf, nor did he anticipate any supporters to attend Friday’s sentencing in Long Island federal court docket out of embarrassment and disgrace.

“I don’t want to bring anyone else in my life into this mess,” Santos wrote. “This is mine to deal with and mine alone.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York’s workplace, which is prosecuting the case, declined to remark.

Santos was elected in 2022 to characterize elements of Queens and Long Island however served barely a yr earlier than being ousted by his House colleagues.

Santos fabricated a lot of his life story, resulting in questions on how the political unknown had funded his profitable marketing campaign.

Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.