The disgraced former New York Republican congressman George Santos is expected to plead guilty on Monday in a deal with prosecutors on charges that he defrauded his campaign during his 2022 midterm elections, according to multiple reports.
Hints of a plea agreement came on Friday ahead of Santos’s federal criminal trial, which was set to start early next month. Prosecutors and defense attorneys suddenly scheduled a hearing without explicitly saying why.
Multiple donors to Santos’s previous election campaign told Talking Points Memo that they had been informed that a plea deal would be announced on Monday. TPM was the first outlet to report on alleged fraud by Santos involving the diversion of campaign funds for personal spending.
Santos’s attorney, Joe Murray, and the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, the federal prosecuting body with jurisdiction over the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
The former Republican congressman, a political unknown who flipped a key New York Democratic district stronghold in 2022, drew headlines after it was revealed that much of his résumé had been elaborately fabricated.
Despite this, Republican leadership in the House spent months standing by him. He was finally expelled in December 2023, less than a year after being sworn in to Congress. The Democrat Tom Suozzi won the special election to fill the vacated seat.
Santos, 36, a first-generation Brazilian American, had run as a member of a “new generation of Republican leadership” and as the “full embodiment of the American dream”.
He falsely claimed to have graduated from a New York college, worked at a major New York bank and run a pet rescue charity, and that his family owned a portfolio of 13 properties and that his mother had been at the World Trade Center when it was attacked by hijackers on 11 September 2001.
The holes in Santos’s story soon came to wide attention and he was ultimately indicted on 23 charges that included allegations of lying to Congress and spending campaign funds on luxuries including trips to casinos, Ferragamo shoes, Botox treatments and OnlyFans payments. He had pleaded not guilty and seemed to revel in proclaiming his innocence to a scrum of reporters outside court.
A scathing House ethics committee report on Santos’s conduct said he “was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits” and had “made over $240,000 cash withdrawals for unknown purposes”.
After leaving Congress, Santos began a sideline career as a Cameo performer, posting greetings to paying customers. It was success, at least briefly, with Santos earning more than he had as a US congressman.
He also attempted a congressional comeback, this time as an independent candidate, but that effort quickly fizzled.
If a plea deal emerges next week, it will follow a similar agreement with Santos’s campaign fundraiser, Sam Miele, who pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges last year, and that of his former campaign treasurer Nancy Marks.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
