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Monday Updates

by David••37

 

George Santos, the first openly gay Republican freshman Congressman, was sentenced to 7 years for a litany of offenses.

Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024 and admitted to claiming relatives had made contributions to his campaign when, in fact, they had not. Santos conceded he was trying to meet the fundraising threshold to qualify for financial help from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He also stipulated that he committed other fraud, including charging donor credit cards without authorization and convincing donors to give money by falsely stating the money would be used for TV ads. He also stipulated he stole public money by applying for and receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic to which he was not entitled.ABC News

We wrote about him here a couple of times.   TAH tells how he stole funds for a disabled vet’s service dog. TAH II goes into more details on the 13 charges of which he was accused. The ABC article tells of the 7 year sentence he received… and that after serving less than 3 months President Trump PARDONED him, saying ol’ George was a “a bit of a rogue.”Santos claims he will still pay back the $600,0000 restitution the judge mandated. Any bets on how fast that goes away?

According to the clemency grant, a photo of which was posted on X by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, Trump granted Santos an “immediate commutation of his entire sentence to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation, supervised release, or other conditions.”

Right – that settles THAT question.  Well, we had the ‘Epstein files’ which went from Bondi’s desk to vanished, and now a comfortable bit of cronyism. That Mideast truce looks nice for Trump, true, but for someone who always claimed he was a businessman and not a politician, he sure imitates a politician – in the worst sense of the word – with monotonous regularity.

Might remember a while back in ’24 when we lost two SEALs out in the Arabian Sea Gulf trying to covertly board and inspect a ship suspected of running weapons for the Houthi? The ship was eventually stopped and searched, and lo and behold, a significant number of weapons/parts were found. Muhammad Pahlawan, who initially denied being the captain, was arrested and tried this summer.

The ship was found to be transporting ballistic and anti-ship missile parts, as well as a warhead.

American forces apprehended 14 people from the boat and transported them onto the expeditionary sea base ship USS Lewis B. Puller.

Stars and Stripes first reported Pahlawan’s sentencing. He worked with two Iranian brothers in the scheme — which went back to at least 2023 — to get resources to the Houthis, according to court records. He was convicted in June.

Pahlawan was sentenced for multiple crimes, including aiding and abetting weapons of mass destruction threats to the United States, conspiring to commit violence against maritime transports and witness tampering.  Task & Purpose

Pahlawan got 40 years , hopefully in PMITA federal prison. (The crew testified that they were unaware of what cargo they carried, and that their families had been threatened by Pahlawan if the crew talked.)

The trip was “part of a larger operation” funded and co-ordinated by two Iranian brothers, Yunus and Shahab Mir’kazei, said the then-US Department of Defense (now known as the Department of War) in a statement in June.

The Mir’kazei brothers are allegedly affiliated, it added, with Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) – the most powerful armed force in Iran. The IRGC is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US.

William Freer, from the UK think tank Council on Geostrategy, told BBC News that while most of the Houthi attacks have involved smaller weapons, the components found on Pahlawan’s ship are “a lot more complicated and can pack a lot more punch”.BBC

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37 thoughts on “Monday Updates”

  1. I thought I read that his (Santos) sentence was commuted vice him being PARDONED by Trump?

    2. My understanding is that the distinction between a pardon and a commutation isn’t academic – there’s a huge difference.

      From what I’ve read, in the US a pardon removes all legal consequences of a conviction. In contrast, a commutation reduces the sentence and/or penalties associated with a conviction while leaving the individual’s conviction for the crime intact.

      As a result, a felon remains a felon after a commutation, with all the resulting restrictions (which may vary by jurisdiction). A pardon restores all civil rights to the individual receiving same.

      Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer. If I’m wrong, I’d appreciate it if one of our resident lawyer commenters could correct me here.

      1. That is incorrect. Even if you are pardoned then you are still considered a felon. However; part of the (presidential) pardon may restore rights such as voting or firearm ownership. A commutation simply ends the remainder of whatever punishment was handed down by the court, and can even leave parts in place, such as fines.

        Only an expungement will remove felon status and remove the court conviction.

        1. Please read what I wrote above more carefully.

          By design, I did not say above that a pardon “erases” or “removes” a conviction. Rather, I said that a pardon removes “legal consequences of a conviction” and that receiving a pardon “restores all civil rights to the individual receiving same”.

          Yes, an individual receiving a federal pardon technically remains a convicted felon. But I never said otherwise above.

          I will admit that I could have worded my comment above more precisely to make that distinction. In retrospect, I can see how someone could reacl conclusion you did.

          1. I read you right the first time.

            A pardon doesn’t “remove all legal consequences of a conviction” as you wrote. It could potentially remove most consequences, depending upon how it is written.

            One of the consequences of a conviction is to have a court record showing the conviction. Even if all rights are restored, all fines and jail time forgiven, the conviction still will stand on the record as a legal conviction which can affect security clearances, employment, credit etc. This is a legal consequence.

            1. That’s a fair criticism. The use of the term “all” in that statement was incorrect.

              However, I repeat: nowhere above did I say that a pardon “removes” or “erases” the fact of a conviction.

              I’ve acknowledged my error. Your turn.

              1. My turn is that it is a legal consequence and I was correcting that misunderstanding, at your request, although I am not a lawyer, I do know the answer. I never said anything about “erases” despite your quotation marks.

                Second paragraph, as I wrote, removal of that legal consequence can only be done with an an expungement. If you have bad feels about that well, don’t ask questions if you aren’t going to like the answer. I tend to be direct but I also tend to have a high degree of accuracy. If I don’t know, I don’t answer.

      2. It is a commutation. Which means he is still a convicted felon. And it carries all the disabilities with it, like being barred from voting.

  2. Santos was commuted not pardoned.

    He follows a long list of gay and bisexual Republican congress members who were arrested for various crimes, only some of whom went to jail. Most of them were arrested for sex offenses with minors (under 18).

    I know there was a bit of moral outrage when the gay Democrat staffers took a video of themselves doing the dirty in a congressional office building but Jon Hinson beat them there by decades. He was also an “openly secret” gay as he had been arrested for gay related offenses before the election and even survived a fire in a gay movie theater when he was found under a pile of dead bodies. None of that would have survived scrutiny today.

    Mark Foley of course used the congressional page pool as his own personal tadpole pond with top cover from fellow house member and child diddler Jim Kolbe. Larry Craig probably brought them up as he had been diddling pages since at least the 80s, probably till he resigned after his arrest.

    The difference here between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Democrats don’t try to hide it.

  3. All of you are dead correct – a couple of the first articles I read used the term ‘pardoned’ and I ran with it. Mea culpa. Complaints can be registered with AW1Ed at your convenience.

      1. Post pictures of those “plastic abominations” and you get tagged for “other duties as assigned.” /g

        1. Hey, I can post a Glock 19, 26, 34, and 43 while using essentially the same pic. It’s for efficiency.
          *grin*

  4. Santos did some other shit as well, IMO the GOP is much better off without him and his baggage. Hey, what was the name of that D-rat pol some years ago who had one of his “friends” caught scoping out junior high schools? Ahh yes, Barney Frank.

          1. 3 and 2, bittered by time from the ConVaids scam —and being in enemy-occupied CT— I couldn’t in good conscience give him the third general vote.

            Sometimes the hornets’ nest, no matter how petty, requires a kicking.

    3. Are you a traditionalist ultra conservative? You do understand that sometimes building renovations to improve the function of a building are necessary? Having a large room at the White House that will host a 1000 people will be helpful for heads of state for hundreds of years to come.

      I know sometimes people don’t like to let go of the past but in this he is making a major improvement to the White House.

    8. So, you are one of the cretins that think (although thinking is not one of your capabilities) Trump has made himself a King.

    9. Eyyeah Major Moonbat, let’s not forget that FDR did major renovations to the White House, ditto with Harry Truman, but it’s oookay when D-rats do it, right? The Trump Ballroom is overdue, and it’s NOT costing even a single tax dollar, it’s privately funded, now go grab your paper bag and hyperventilate into it over there in the corner of your “safe space”!

      1. The east and west wings are additions to the original building, it’s not like there’s no precedent to this. My first thought when this ballroom was announced was “what took so long?” Probably one of the better ideas to ever come out of DC, only because there’s literally zero government involvement. If there was, it’d take 10 years for the bidding process alone.

        1. “…10 years for the bidding process alone.”
          YES indeed. Government, especially at the US Federal level will ALWAYS do in six to twelve years what anyone in the private sector would do in the same amount of months!

    10. Now let’s give the communist a little slack. He’s probably confused by all of the renovation going on at the California State Capitol building. The cost for the CA renovation is now estimated to be 1.1 billion dollars of CA tax payer money (yes, that’s with a b). I forget how many redwood trees were torn out of the capitol garden to make room for the work; but, I do remember the temper tantrum my leftist neighbor threw when I cut down two fruit trees outside my shack because they had serious root rot.

      Perhaps this is a new mantra for the left, “Build what you will as long as tax money pays for it.”

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