BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Hours before surrendering to federal officials in Pensacola, Florida, disgraced former Congressman Chris Collins said, this is a tough day.
The former congressman will report to a federal prison at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday. He was sentenced to more than two years in prison after he was convicted on insider trading-related charges.
"I've been preparing for this for seven months," Collins said by phone. "All my affairs are in order. I've been through everything with my daughter, who is an attorney. We're as good as we can be."
Collins says he's expecting to serve 17 months in prison.
"You get 15% off to begin with for good behavior," Collins said. That's four months. Collins said because of his age, he'll serve two-thirds of the sentence in prison and the rest under home confinement.
He was sentenced in January, though his report date has been pushed back several times because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A judge failed to grant the most recent motion to delay, which would have pushed Collins' reporting date to December 8, 2020. Attorneys also asked for a new sentence of time-served with supervised release and home confinement.
In an interview, after winning re-election in 2018, Collins sat down with Anchor Ed Drantch and said the insider trading-related charges against him were "merit-less." Now, years later, Collins told Drantch, "I don't want to go and relive all of that."
Collins explained his family has been through a lot and "to put this behind me, I've got to get it started and today's the start of the next chapter of my life."
When asked if there was anything he wanted to say to Western New Yorkers, Collins said, "Not at this time."
