George Santos Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Identity Theft
Category: News & Politics
Via: hallux • 3 months ago • 4 commentsBy: Grace Ashford, Michael Gold Nicholas Fandos and Nate Schweber - NYT
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
George Santos, the disgraced former Republican congressman from New York whose penchant for lying led to one of the oddest sideshows in modern U.S. politics, pleaded guilty on Monday to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
While Mr. Santos’s plea will allow him to avoid a trial on a total of nearly two dozen charges — including money laundering and stealing public funds — it all but ensures he will face at least two years in prison and as long as two decades. The trial was set to begin next month.
The plea offers a coda to the tale of a political underdog who catapulted to Congress less than two years ago and watched his career quickly unravel as his seemingly endless series of falsehoods came to light. Mr. Santos, long given to a pattern of deceit that he has yet to fully account for, repeatedly insisted that he would defend his innocence in court, only to reverse course as the opportunity approached.
The Mr. Santos who appeared in court bore little resemblance to the shameless provocateur whose antics grabbed headlines. On Monday, that bravado was replaced by a wavering voice and words of contrition.
Mr. Santos’s sentencing was postponed until Feb. 7. He agreed to pay $373,749.97 in restitution.
The outcome was welcome news to Republicans in New York, where the party is preparing to defend a half dozen swing seats that could decide the House majority.
The party already lost control of Mr. Santos’s seat, representing parts of Queens and Long Island, to Democrats in a special election in February , held after Mr. Santos was expelled from Congress. But a high-profile trial would have also cast a shadow over other races on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley.
The criminal investigation into Mr. Santos began after The New York Times reported that much of his biography and aspects of his campaign’s finances appeared to have been fabricated.
Additional reporting from The Times and other news organizations revealed a bizarre array of lies: from inane claims of playing volleyball in college to fundamental deceptions about his education, résumé and cultural heritage.
Last year, Mr. Santos was charged with 23 felony counts for a number of schemes, including stealing money from donors and lying to the government to cover his tracks. He originally pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Prosecutors painted Mr. Santos’s campaign as so desperate for cash that it turned to lying, cheating and stealing to finance its operations. But they also assert a pattern of self-dealing, which saw Mr. Santos repeatedly using his campaign account as a personal piggy bank.
Prosecutors said Mr. Santos used one donor’s credit card information to steal $11,000 for his personal use. He convinced other donors to contribute to what he said was a super PAC supporting his campaign. Instead, he used some of the money to buy designer clothing and pay his personal credit card bills.
Mr. Santos was accused of falsifying campaign finance records to include a $500,000 loan to his campaign that never existed in order to qualify for financial and operational support from the national Republican Party. His campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, previously admitted to having helped Mr. Santos falsify the records. She pleaded guilty to one felony count in October and faces up to four years in prison.
And Mr. Santos was also charged with unemployment fraud and lying on House financial disclosure documents.
At the time, he was heralded as a new kind of Republican. Young, Latino and gay, Mr. Santos was a proud adherent of former President Donald J. Trump who embraced his attention-grabbing style of politics and widely debunked claims of election interference.
But even before he was sworn in, Mr. Santos’s lies began to unravel. After reports of irregularities with his campaign finances, investigators initiated a probe that culminated with a 13-count indictment. Subsequent charges were later added after Ms. Marks pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
Despite the legal headwinds, Mr. Santos remained in Congress until late last year, when a report from the bipartisan House Ethics Committee revealed that he had not only defrauded donors, but had used the ill-gotten gains to buy designer goods and Botox.
Republicans joined Democrats to expel him from Congress in December, making Mr. Santos one of only six congressmen in the nation’s history to be kicked out of office. More than two-thirds of his colleagues in the House voted in favor of expulsion, including more than 100 Republicans.
All the while, Mr. Santos dismissed his criminal case as a “witch hunt,” echoing Mr. Trump’s defense against his own legal troubles.
But as the moneymaking media appearances and legal filings suggested, he was also facing financial calamity. It was never clear how — or if — Mr. Santos was paying his legal bills.
In the past week, Mr. Santos, whose bio on X now describes him as an “opinion writer at large,” has signaled that he might be ready to change his tune.
Amid posts about a fragrance line and the newest “Alien” movie, Mr. Santos seemed to suggest that he might retreat from public life, writing “I’m done” with an emoji of a peace sign.
That same day, he quoted the poet Maya Angelou, saying: “It may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from.”
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George is about to get friendly with a bar of soap.
poetic justice. george is about to experience what republicans have been doing to the US for the last 165+ years. too bad he'll probably enjoy it immensely. hopefully he'll be sentenced and remanded into custody today. I wonder if he remembered to put some chapstick and tic tacs into his pocket before he left for court today ...
good riddance
Slippery George is on his way.