The federal investigation into George Santos has dragged on for months, but as John reported last night, some action was finally taken. The feds hit Santos with 13 charges, including multiple felonies that could add up to a serious amount of time behind bars if he’s convicted. Today he was arrested and detained for a while. (He was later released on $500,000 bail.) Santos has continued to describe his many lies as harmless embellishments to his resume. The FBI clearly thinks otherwise and they’ve been following the money trail in many directions. (CNN)
The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed 13 federal charges against Rep. George Santos and the New York Republican is in custody, a spokesperson for the Eastern District of New York said. Santos has been charged on seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds and two counts of making materially false statements to the US House of Representatives.
You can read the Justice Department’s report on the investigation here. I had been expecting Santos to face some campaign finance fraud charges, but they got him with so much more. (That’s probably why the investigation took as long as it did.) The multiple counts of wire fraud probably involve campaign contributions from individual donors. The money laundering charge appears to involve his efforts to shuffle money around to hide it.
The theft of public funds charge is reportedly based on his receipt of tens of thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits while he was actually employed. The two charges of making materially false statements to Congress could be related to almost anything. What did the guy say that didn’t turn out to be a lie?
I wonder if the court is taking the possibility of Santos being a flight risk into account. It certainly seems like it would be in character for him. Then again, holding a member of Congress in jail while awaiting trial would be a pretty major move.
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Another interesting wrinkle in the case was brought up by Matt Vespa at Townhall. Did the FBI have an informant working inside of Santos’ congressional office?
I can publicly confirm that during my brief time in the Congressman’s office I had met secretly with agents from @FBI in an effort to work as a confidential informant and human asset against the Congressman during my course of employment in his office. I cannot go into further…
— Derek Myers (@DerekMyers) May 9, 2023
Well, it’s either true or somebody is making up a story about working for him. That should be easy enough to verify. But if you’re working as a rat for the FBI while collecting a taxpayer-funded salary, are you supposed to go public like this? Perhaps it’s okay after the investigation ends, but I’m honestly not sure what the normal protocol is.
