New York Republican Representative and probable future federal inmate, George Santos, was just hit with a surprise superseding indictment including 23 new charges! Whoo doggie. This comes just one week after his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, struck a sweetheart deal with prosecutors and pleaded to just ONE felony count related to crimes committed while she was working with Santos.
My guess - she provided a litany of evidence related to Santos' crimes as part of her deal. Cooperating witness and all.
The New York Times is reporting that the new charges include "criminal schemes, including stealing the identities and credit card details of donors to his campaign."
The new charges were laid out in a 23-count superseding indictment that presented a devastating picture of how Santos "charged his donors’ credit cards repeatedly and without their authorization, distributing the money to his and other candidates’ campaigns and to his own bank account." The new charges include conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsifying records to obstruct the commission.
Yikes.
These are not usual crimes politicians commit. They are crimes a common grifter, conman and dumb criminal would commit.
For example, one of the crimes laid out was as follows: "Prosecutors say that Mr. Santos stole a donor’s credit card number to transfer more than $11,000 to his own bank account, and swindled $50,000 from two other donors using a fake nonprofit — using the money to buy designer goods and settle personal debts. They say he faked being wealthy to impress Republican leaders, reported a fictitious $500,000 campaign loan to get their financial support and made up tens of thousands in donations to give the impression of runaway political success."
.
The charges came down when Santos was in a House meeting the determine who the GOP nominee would be for Speaker of the House. Phones were not allowed, so media was able to get a real time response from Santos as he found out the news right in front of the cameras.
He, of course, had no comment, but you could read the fear on his face. Surely he knew this was coming after Nancy Marks plea deal from last week. Or, maybe he was so overconfident that he thought he could talk his way out of it.
Let's see how badly the GOP needs his votes or if they are willing to expel him.
Who are we kidding? They won't expel him.
