The Economic Misuse of Social Welfare in Political Campaigns: The Indictment against George Santos on a Charged Bipartisan Candidate for the White House
The additional counts in the indictment — that Mr. Santos defrauded the unemployment insurance system and that he lied to the House about his finances — are embarrassing enough that his Republican colleagues should kick him back to Long Island, though they won’t because Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs every vote he can get these days. The indictment charges that Mr. Santos raised money for his campaign and then used it to pay for everything from cars to luxuries on his personal credit card.
The speaker of the house declined to say if he would push for the removal of the president.
Santos also faces a charge that in 2020, he fraudulently applied to receive unemployment benefits when he was employed and running for Congress in his first bid for public office.
Some prominent GOP lawmakers from New York have called for the resignation ofSantos, who was elected by the Nassau County Republican Committee.
“Close to 80% of people polled think he should not be in office,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., told NPR in February, after urging Santos to step aside.
The Department of Justice will bring charges against a liar in the near future, because of the indictment against George Santos issued on Wednesday. The era of widespread abuses, and the fact that many abuses are either technically legal or occur in a gray area, makes it hard for law enforcement to keep up.
Justice decided that it HAD to be a no-brainer of a case that Mr. Santos was charged with a scheme that was spectacularly dumb in both conception and execution. If Mr. Santos structured his political money stream like grown-ups do, he could have gotten away with it.
Mr.Santos was indicted for telling donors to give to a social welfare organization that would then buy TV ads for his campaign. These so-called social welfare groups — such as Leonard Leo’s Marble Freedom and the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity — already constitute one of the greatest abuses of the tax code and the campaign finance system, because they allow donors to give large amounts anonymously and were never supposed to be used for political purposes. They started being used as a way to introduce dark money into politics by Republican operatives in the 2010 congressional elections. The I.R.S., to its lasting discredit, allowed the practice, as long as the primary activity of a group wasn’t politics.
Republicans in New York are facing tough fights to keep their seats in the next election, due to the Santos controversy.
He also faced multiple investigations into how he raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash, including a mysterious $700,000 gift he made to his own election effort.
Santos lied in interviews about his education and professional accomplishments and about his family’s experiences in the Holocaust.
After his election in last November’s polls, the freshman lawmaker pushed the boundaries of conventional political scandal. It was revealed that he fabricated most of the persona presented to voters.
Anne Donnelly, District Attorney for Nassau County said in a statement that George is accused of applying for unemployment benefits at the peak of the Pandemic in 2020.
According to the criminal indictments, Santos claimed the money would fuel his bid for office, but instead spent the cash on luxury designer clothes and to make a car payment and pay personal credit card bills.
“This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Republican Rep. George Santos surrendered to federal authorities at a courthouse in suburban Long Island on Wednesday facing 13 counts of criminal wrongdoing.