NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced former congressman George Santos, facing a federal prison sentence, has won a few months’ freedom to come up with more than half a million dollars in court fines — including from work on his new podcast.
A New York judge on Wednesday granted the Republican’s request to delay his Feb. 7 sentencing after he pleaded guilty this summer to federal fraud and identity theft charges.
U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert set the new court date for April 25, which is about three months less than Santos sought.
The judge called the short adjournment a “one-time courtesy” granted in the interest of justice.
“Since the date that the defendant entered his plea of guilty, he has not made any payments toward the amount owed nor has he indicated that he has funds to do so, despite his promises and predictions,” Seybert wrote.
Santos admitted in August that he duped voters, deceived donors and stole the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his own family members, to make donations to his congressional campaign.
He agreed to pay nearly $375,000 in restitution and $205,000 in forfeiture and faces a mandatory minimum two-year sentence and up to 22 years in prison.
In a letter to the judge Friday, Santos’ lawyers said the 36-year-old needs more time to build his newly launched podcast “Pants on Fire” in order to pay off the roughly $580,000 in fines, some of which comes due before his sentencing.
Prosecutors opposed the delay in a letter Tuesday, dismissing Santos’ promises of a forthcoming windfall as “extremely speculative.”
They also cast doubt on his claim of having little more than $1,000 in liquid assets, arguing he’s earned more than $800,000 from appearances on the video-sharing website Cameo and from a new documentary since he was expelled from Congress in 2023.
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace’s office declined to comment.
Lawyers for Santos didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
But in a letter filed Wednesday ahead of the judge’s ruling, they called prosecutors’ financial critiques “false and misleading” and said their request to buy Santos more time to “muster a substantial lump-sum payment” and prepare for sentencing was “hardly extraordinary.”
They said Santos hasn’t earned more than $400,000 from Cameo, as prosecutors claim, but closer to $350,000 and that the profits were primarily used to pay legal fees and living expenses for him and his family long before he reached a plea deal.
Since then, they said, Santos has been unsuccessful in “securing meaningful income” outside of the podcast he launched just last month.
“The government’s reckless misrepresentations to this Court,” they wrote, “appears to have been intended to capture tabloid headlines rather than advance the interests of justice it purports to champion.”
Santos was elected in 2022 to represent a wealthy New York district covering parts of Queens and Long Island.
But the once-rising Republican lasted barely a year in office as his fabricated life story unraveled. His claims of a career at top Wall Street firms and having a college degree were debunked, and questions were raised about how he funded his campaign.
Santos became just the sixth House member in the chamber’s history to be ousted by colleagues.
