Newly minted GOP Rep. George Santos seems to have violated campaign finance laws, as some of his top donors don't appear to exist. Mother Jones looked at his list of top contributors, and in the case of Victoria and Jonathan Regor, no one in the U.S. has that name -- and the address listed does not exist, either. That was a $2,800.00 contribution.
Via Mother Jones:
Santos' 2020 campaign finance reports also list a donor named Stephen Berger as a $2,500 donor and said he was a retiree who lived on Brandt Road in Brawley, California. But a spokesperson for William Brandt, a prominent rancher and Republican donor, tells Mother Jones that Brandt has lived at that address for at least 20 years and "neither he or his wife (the only other occupant [at the Brandt Road home]) have made any donations to George Santos. He does not know Stephen Berger nor has Stephen Berger ever lived at…Brandt Road."
The Regor and Berger contributions are among more than a dozen major donations to the 2020 Santos campaign for which the name or the address of the donor cannot be confirmed, a Mother Jones investigation found. A separate $2,800 donation was attributed in Santos' reports filed with the Federal Election Commission to a friend of Santos who says he did not give the money.
He was just sworn in, and he will be inundated with investigations.
Under federal campaign finance law, it is illegal to donate money using a false name or the name of someone else. "It's called a contribution in the name of another," says Saurav Ghosh, the director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group. "It's something that is explicitly prohibited under federal law."
That's a serious matter. And, according to his ex-boyfriend, George has too big of an ego to resign. Welcome to the new Republican-led Congress.
UPDATE: It is because of such discrepancies, and others, that the DOJ is now stepping in and asking the FEC to step aside, to look into possible criminality by the Santos campaign. That would mean real jail time and not just a slap on the wrist for those responsible. via Washington Post:
The Justice Department has asked the Federal Election Commission to hold off on any enforcement action against George Santos, the Republican congressman from New York who lied about key aspects of his biography, as prosecutors conduct a parallel criminal probe, according to two people familiar with the request.
The request, which came from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, is the clearest sign to date that federal prosecutors are examining Santos’s campaign finances.
The request also asked that the FEC provide any relevant documents to the Justice Department, according to the knowledgeable people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity
