Disgraced Congressman George Santos can’t stay out of the spotlight — even from a federal prison in New Jersey, where he’s been writing a weekly diary to gripe about life in lockup, his state-issued jumpsuit and even the “sandpaper soap.”
In “My Life Behind Bars,” Santos sulks about his new gig in the prison kitchen while unleashing a torrent of complaints about the “erosion of his dignity.”
The former fashion plate is especially indignant the “fluorescent yellow … state-issued polyester” jumpsuits he must wear.
And he has a beef with the mold and the broken AC too.
“I went from standing at the pinnacle of power and prestige, attending galas, navigating multimillion-dollar fundraisers in glittering Manhattan apartments and Long Island mansions, to the rock bottom of federal confinement,” he whines in the entries published by The South Shore Press, a Long Island news outlet.
Santos, 37, who was expelled from Congress in December 2023 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in August 2024, was sentenced in April to seven years in prison.
He is being held with 46 other inmates in the medium-security FCI Fairton prison in Fairfield Township, where his fellow prisoners are well aware of who he is.
“From day one, I’ve encountered characters who could populate a novel. Within hours of my arrival, a man walked right up to me, no hesitation, and said, ‘You’re the congressman, but you can call me the senator.’”
“That was my welcoming committee,” he wrote.
There’s at least one familiar face: his former campaign fundraiser, Sam Miele.
Miele, 28, was sentenced in March to one year and a day in prison for impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide while raising campaign cash for Santos.
“Sam is a very smart guy who got caught up in the hurricane of my very public unraveling, and seeing him here reminded me just how many lives were altered when my world collapsed,” Santos wrote.
“Today, instead of discussing campaign strategy in penthouses and estate living rooms, we find ourselves reflecting on the past while lying on prison bunks,” he wrote in another dispatch.
“We talk openly about our so-called ‘fall from grace,’ but we also talk about rebuilding, about the future, about proving that this is not our final chapter.”
