A judge has denied an attempt by disgraced gay former U.S. House Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to delay his sentencing for federal fraud charges. Santos — who became infamous for lying about his biography and using campaign funds for lavish personal finances before Republicans kicked him out of the House in December 2023 — said he needed more time to pay criminal fines using earnings from his recently launched podcast, Pants on Fire with George Santos.

Santos wanted to delay his sentencing — originally scheduled to occur next month — until August to give him more time to pay off the $205,000 he owes in forfeiture 30 days before his sentencing hearing after pleading guilty last August to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert only allowed the sentencing to be delayed until April 25, noting that he hasn’t made any payments toward the amount he owes “despite his promises and predictions” since pleading guilty.

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This comes after Santos pled guilty to criminal charges.

In recent court hearings, Santos’ lawyers argued that he deserved a delay in sentencing now that he has a “viable path” to pay the fine through the “promising revenue stream” of his podcast which was launched just last month, The Hill reported.

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However, prosecutors argued that Santos had sufficient time to secure the funds to pay his $205,000 fine since pleading guilty. They called his claims of being able to pay the fines through his podcast “speculative” and said that delaying sentencing could set a “perverse incentive structure” that rewards famous defendants. Despite this, Judge Seybert said she’d delay his sentencing as a “one-time courtesy.”

In August, Santos admitted to using another person’s identity and credit cards as well as campaign funds for his own personal benefit. He originally faced 23 federal charges of campaign finance fraud including wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making materially false statements to both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. House of Representatives. He initially pleaded “not guilty” to all charges, calling them a “baseless” “witch hunt,” but later accepted a plea deal to avoid a public weeks-long trial and possible decades in prison time.

In addition to that fine, he owes an additional $375,000 in restitution and could face up to eight years in prison for his criminal misdealings.

“It’s clear to me now that I allowed ambition to cloud my judgment, leading me to make decisions that were unethical and guilty,” Santos said outside the courthouse after pleading guilty. “Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I’d take, but it is a necessary one because it is the right thing to do. It’s not only a recognition of my misrepresentations to others, but more profoundly, it is my own recognition of the lies I told myself over these past years.” 

On November 16, 2023, the House Ethics Committee issued a report accusing Santos of illegally spending campaign funds on luxury goods, OnlyFans subscriptions, and cosmetic Botox treatments. Immediately after, the House voted to expel Santos in a 311-114 vote 

After his expulsion, Santos began making money creating personalized videos on the Cameo platform. Santos claimed that his largely fake campaign biography — which he previously admitted fabricating due to “stupidity” and “insecurity” — was actually falsified by an unnamed “former campaign staffer.”

Santos has provided no proof to back up his previous biographical claims that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, that he attended the Horace Mann preparatory school, that his mother died in connection to the September 11th terrorist attacks, or that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

Santos was part of Rio’s drag scene in the late 2000s (despite initially claiming that he was never a drag queen). He also denied an accusation of check fraud in Brazil but later formally confessed to it. Some have questioned whether he married his ex-wife just so that she could obtain U.S. citizenship.

After joining Congress, Santos cosponsored a bill to roll back LGBTQ+ civil rights and one to ban LGBTQ+ books from schools. He also made public statements against transgender people and the so-called “radical rainbow mafia.” Additionally, he said that LGBTQ+ families “create troubled individuals.”

Santos said last March that he would leave the Republican Party to run for congressional re-election as an independent in New York’s 1st District. However, he dropped this plan last April, saying that he didn’t want to pull away votes from the district’s Republican incumbent.

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