Even More Trouble for George Santos (2023)

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From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise and this is “The Daily.”

Last year, Time’s reporting revealed the many lies that freshman Republican George Santos told about his life and his career.

Now, he’s facing legal consequences.

Today, my colleague Michael Gold on the 13 felony charges against Santos and what it means for his role in Congress. It’s Thursday, May 11.

So Michael, describe what happened in New York on Wednesday.

So on Wednesday morning, representative George Santos turned himself in to federal authorities at a courthouse in Long Island sometime before 9:00 AM. There were tons of reporters outside. But we didn’t actually see Mr. Santos in court until around 2:00 PM.

When he entered, he was wearing a dark olive sweater, a blazer, and thick-rimmed glasses that have been characteristic of his media appearances over the past several months.

His signature.

His signature. And Santos pleaded not guilty to the 13 counts against him, counts that mostly had to do with the mishandling of money. He was then released on a $500,000 bond that was secured by three people whose identities we don’t know.

And the judge told him that he could travel between his district and residence in New York and Washington where he serves in Congress and places in between. And this indictment was the culmination of months of investigation by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York who also worked with the FBI and officials in the Nassau County District Attorney’s office. And much of the information detailed in the indictment follows reporting by “The New York Times” about George Santos.

And Michael, what do we know about how authorities put this case together?

So the authorities started looking into Santos around the end of December. And their investigation was sparked largely by reporting in “The New York Times” that uncovered that the Congressman had lied substantially about his background in order to win a congressional seat on Long Island in Queens. And the lies were big and small.

Santos said that his grandparents fled first from Ukraine and then from Belgium during World War II. He said that they were Jewish refugees who were escaping persecution during the Holocaust, which turned out not to be true. From there, he talks about his mother working her way up through the world of finance and eventually being in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Though, that turned out not to be the case.

Right, it’s like he made up every single point of his biography, right? Like, I remember reading the headlines from that time and thinking is there anything this guy said about who he is that’s real? Like, he even lied about being a college volleyball star.

He lied about being a college volleyball star. I mean, it was really ran the gamut. And our reporting also found a number of questions about Santos’ financial disclosures. And in follow-ups, we and other outlets looked at questions around his campaign spending and personal finances.

So as more reporting came out about Santos’ lies, the federal authorities started to look into Santos. And we were able to report that the Justice Department had launched an investigation in late December. But we didn’t hear much about the details of that investigation.

It was fairly leakproof. And it wasn’t until Wednesday morning that the indictment was actually unsealed. And we got a look at the case that federal prosecutors were bringing against him.

Right. OK. So let’s go to the charges then. What are the charges? Walk me through them one by one.

So there are 13 counts in this indictment. But the accusations center on three schemes. And all of those schemes involve mishandling money or lying about funds. The first and biggest scheme in the indictment is one involving Santos and an associate defrauding potential contributors to his political campaign. So if you back up with me for a second, when a candidate runs for office, they launch their own Campaign Committee. But they’re often separately PACs or political action committees that are fundraising on their behalf.

These are the organizations that people tend to donate to in order to support a candidate because they’re not subject to the same contribution limits as a political campaign. So this is for political candidates a huge bucket of money. And that money is supposed to be used only for paying things related to campaigning and an election.

So that’s advertisements, that’s fliers, things that would help a candidate get elected. And Santos did have a number of PACs. But in addition to these more legitimate fundraising operations, the Justice Department says that he and an associate essentially made up a fake political committee in order to generate campaign contributions that Santos later used for personal expenses.

Like, what types of expenses?

So according to the indictment, Santos got at least $50,000 in donations. And he took the money and used it for luxury designer clothing, credit card payments, cash advances, and to pay down a car payment and other debt.

Pay down a car payment?

A car payment, yeah.

OK. So there’s a lot of sophistication to this alleged scheme, right? And it’s right there also in the open, like, for everybody to see. That’s pretty audacious.

Yeah, and my colleagues actually caught wind of the beginnings of this back in January. We had heard that someone had been soliciting money for this fund that said it was raising money for Santos. And we checked with the Federal Election Commission to see if they had any information about that fund.

And it wasn’t registered with them. And we had no idea where the money went. So we didn’t get more detail about that until the indictment.

OK. So what’s the second alleged scheme?

So the second scheme actually dates back to 2020 when Santos was making his first and maybe less noticed run for Congress. Do you remember the CARES Act?

Yes, I do. Oh, how could I forget the CARES Act?

Sure. So the CARES Act, just as a refresher, gave extra unemployment money for people who lost their jobs during the pandemic.

Right.

And Santos in June 2020 applied for unemployment benefits with the New York State Department of Labor. And those benefits were funded by the CARES Act. To get those benefits, Santos said that he was unemployed.

And according to the indictment, he had to certify that he was unemployed every week. So according to the indictment from June 2020 through April 2021, Santos told them that he was unemployed on a weekly basis. And he got more than $24,000 in funds from the government. But prosecutors say that at the time, he was actually working for an investment firm based in Florida making $120,000 a year.

Oh, no. So he’s allegedly lying about being unemployed, stealing from the state in the middle of a pandemic when of course, everybody is lining up to also get benefits — waitresses, hotel clerks, all over the map. Meanwhile, he’s making $120,000 a year in an investment firm?

That’s what prosecutors say. And one of the interesting footnotes to this today has been that Santos actually is one of 35 co-sponsors on a House Bill specifically meant to target this issue and to help states recoup fraudulent or overly paid pandemic unemployment benefits.

Oh my gosh.

And one kind of interesting thing that happened today is House Republican leaders were talking about this bill and talking about this being a focal issue. But at the same time, they were also saying that Santos was innocent until proven guilty. And they didn’t want to rush to make judgment on these accusations.

OK. So the DOJ is accusing him of lying about how he’s spending his campaign money and unemployment fraud. What’s the third scheme?

So the third scheme in the indictment is that Santos knowingly misrepresented his personal wealth when he filed financial disclosures with the House of Representatives in 2020 and 2022. These are disclosures that candidates and members of Congress are required to make essentially to help deal with issues that might arise from conflicts of interest if they’re elected or re-elected.

The one that he filed in 2022 is a bit of a doozy. And it was something that we raised in our initial story. On this form, Santos said that he was making $750,000 from his personal company, the Devolder Organization.

And in the indictment, federal prosecutors are saying that that’s not true. On the form, he also said he had millions of dollars in savings. And he said that his company was paying dividends between $1 and $5 million. And they said that that’s not true. So overall, the picture that he’s painting of himself in this 2022 form is that he’s a very rich man making all this money from his business. And prosecutors are saying that wasn’t the case.

But Michael, why would he do that? What’s in it for him to overstate his finances like that?

I think it ties back to the image that Santos was giving of himself as he ran for office, especially in this most recent go round. And he’s running in a district that covers a pretty wealthy part of Long Island with a lot of money managers, a lot of people who work on Wall Street, a lot of people who work on finance. He was presenting himself as this experienced financier and this Wall Street guy. But presumably, he can’t file a public disclosure that reveals that that’s not the case if he’s simultaneously telling voters that he’s working for this wealthy family firm that he owns.

So this is essentially him selling an image of himself? This was his story that he was kind of birds of a feather of the people who were in this district?

Well, that certainly seems to be what prosecutors are saying. They accuse him of misleading the House of Representatives and the public in an effort to kind of secure his seat. But we’ve seen this pattern with him where he has been lying about all sorts of things — his personal life, his volleyball history, his work with an animal charity, his mom’s ties to 9/11. The list goes on and on and on. And it’s all in service of creating a very specific underdog, inspirational life story.

But the thing that really strikes me, Michael, is like these charges don’t have that much to do with the loudest and most public lies he told, right? Like being the descendant of a Holocaust survivor or working for Goldman Sachs. The things that actually got him in trouble were the quiet lies, like the boring stuff he put on disclosure forms.

Yeah, my phone was blowing up this morning with texts from everyone essentially being like, what do you mean wire fraud? What is this about? What about the lies about being Jewish?

What about the lies about 9/11? What about the lies about Wall Street? What about the lies about college? But what we’re seeing is a case that is much more technical and much more focused on finances than I think a lot of people might have expected.

Right. In the end, it comes down to boring wire fraud.

As it so often does, it comes down to the money.

OK. So really sweeping range of charges. What kind of sentence is Santos facing?

If Santos is convicted on the top charges in this indictment, prosecutors say he could face up to 20 years in prison.

At the same time, we aren’t entirely sure whether there’s other stuff that they may be investigating and whether this is the end of the indictment. We know that prosecutors have talked to people regarding other leads.

They have looked at the work that Santos did with his purported animal rescue charity, for example. None of that’s represented in the indictment. So it’s possible that there may be more to come. We just don’t know yet.

OK. So we have a congressman facing federal charges. How is that going to affect his role in Congress?

Well, based on what we’re hearing today, not a whole lot.

We’ll be right back.

OK. So Michael, explain why exactly these charges might not have much of an effect on Santos and his role in Congress.

So first of all, legally speaking, there’s nothing in the Constitution that stops someone who’s been accused or even convicted of a crime from serving in Congress. People are innocent until proven guilty obviously. But theoretically, Santos, if he were convicted and sentenced to prison, could serve from prison. He just wouldn’t be able to vote in the House.

Whoa. Interesting.

And that’s just strictly logistics and the legal context. But I think maybe more importantly for him, Santos is sort of being insulated by the politics of the moment and by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

OK. So explain that. How is he being insulated?

So one thing to note is that Santos has actually already been stripped of some of his power and standing in Congress. In January, he said that he was going to step down from the two House committees to which he’d been assigned. And we know now that he did so because of pressure from Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership.

At the same time, Santos is still a pretty vital vote for McCarthy and House Republicans. The Republican Party has a pretty slim majority. They’ve only got four votes in the House. And that caucus is very fragmented right now.

McCarthy has been facing challenges from people who are further to his right and further to Santos’s right. And so far, Santos has been a fairly reliable vote for McCarthy. So House Republicans need him in order to get their legislative priorities done.

Right. Like McCarthy has very little room to maneuver, right? And losing Santos would give him even less room.

Yeah, and I think that’s especially crucial to consider right now, in light of the debt ceiling standoff that’s happening in Washington. There’s going to be a vote on that sometime soon. And Santos has said that he would vote to support McCarthy on this Bill. McCarthy needs his vote. But I think even beyond the immediate future and the debt ceiling vote, McCarthy is kind of making a calculation here based on politics.

And what is that calculation?

So if Santos were to resign this year, you would need to hold a special election in order to replace him in Congress. And it’s worth noting that Santos actually flipped his district in 2022. It had been held by a Democrat for a decade. And there’s no guarantee that another Republican would win if Santos were to resign. And so McCarthy’s vote margin would go from 4 to 3.

And what’s McCarthy saying?

McCarthy has largely been defending Santos’ right to stay in Congress.

He said that he would not pressure Santos to resign over these federal charges but that he might reconsider if Santos were to be convicted. And other house Republican leaders double down on that position on Wednesday morning.

With Representative Steve Scalise —

— and Elise Stefanik both saying that they would let the legal process play out and that they wouldn’t rush to take action against Santos based solely on the indictment.

OK. So leadership is definitely not going to get rid of him. But what about the rest of Congress?

So in order to expel Santos from the House, the House of Representatives would need a 2/3 vote. And there are certainly some Republicans who have called on Santos to resign.

And we saw a few more add to that handful on Wednesday morning. But the coalition that wants Santos to step aside is far from 2/3 of the total House of Representatives. There are other options. Santos could of course, decide to resign at any time. Though, all indications from him suggest that he has no intention of doing so.

And it’s possible that Santos might agree to a plea deal. If that were to happen, the House Republicans might feel pressured to force him to resign since he would be acknowledging that some of these accusations against him were in fact true. And it’s entirely possible that he could offer to step down as part of whatever deal he might make should he make such a deal with federal prosecutors.

And how likely is that scenario, I mean, that he would take a plea deal?

At this point, it’s pretty hard to say. Santos just saw the charges on Wednesday morning just like the rest of us. So it’s going to take some time for him and his lawyer to evaluate them and figure out what their next option is. So a plea deal wouldn’t happen immediately if it happens at all.

And the other possibility is that given all this scrutiny, Santos could decide not to seek re-election. But he just announced his re-election bid two weeks ago. And already he is fundraising off of today’s court proceedings, suggesting that voters might want to give him some money in order for him to continue to fight for freedom of some kind.

Whoa, interesting.

Yeah, it was a real turn. So far, he has really shied away from using the scandal or the controversy in order to fundraise.

But it sounds like what you’re saying is that really when it comes down to it, any form of real accountability is going to have to come from a conviction or from the voters because it’s not going to come from his own party in Congress.

That certainly seems to be the case. There’s not enough pressure on him at the moment from the people in Congress who actually matter and help make these decisions to get him to resign. And we know that Santos remains pretty unpopular in his district. There was polling from January that found that 78 percent of voters in his district wanted him to step down. But he’s not bowing to that pressure. And so it looks like he’s going to be a member of the House for the foreseeable future.

And what does Santos himself say?

So we actually heard from Santos after the hearing on Wednesday. He came out of the courthouse and was immediately mobbed by reporters and TV cameras.

And in his remarks to the media, he sounded incredibly defiant.

He said that this was a witch hunt and promised that he would ultimately clear his name.

As he took questions, he seemed to grow increasingly more frustrated with the press and increasingly more defiant.

And he basically abruptly ended the press conference, waved to the press, got into a car, and sped away.

I mean, what do you make of all of this in the end?

So if I can take you back for a second to answer this question, when you look at that first week, his first day on Capitol Hill, I was there. And he looked very quiet and very ashamed. And then I think as he realized the exact nature of this Republican caucus, that it was very fragmented, that if he could reliably vote for McCarthy, McCarthy had little incentive to do anything about him, he seems to have become bolder and bolder and bolder. And he seemed to realize that he had a firm grip on his seat in Congress.

And he reaches a point where he feels comfortable running for re-election in April, which is a calculation that he seems to be making that he’s going to weather this storm and make it to 2024 and that he can go beyond that. But now he’s looking at this legal case, and that’s a lot harder to avoid. And it’s the kind of thing that the political reality of Washington can’t get you out of.

Michael, thank you.

Thank you.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you should know today. On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump appeared on a major television network for the first time since 2020. And through a stream of lies, half-truths, and name calling, showed that he had not changed his politics.

Speaking at a town hall held by CNN in New Hampshire, Trump praised January 6 rioters and said he would pardon many of them.

He once again refused to concede that he had lost the 2020 election. And —

— he counseled Congress to let the federal government default on its debt if President Biden did not agree to the deep spending cuts that Republicans have demanded. And scientific advisors to the federal government gave the first indication that the birth control pill might soon be available without a prescription. A panel of experts to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously that the benefits of making birth control available over the counter outweighed the risks. It was a significant step in the decades long push to make oral contraception available on a mass scale.

Today’s episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Eric Krupke, and Diana Nguyen. It was edited by Liz O. Baylen, Rachel Quester, and Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell and Mario Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

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