George Santos Charged
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Former campaign treasurer, pleads guilty
Nancy Marks, the former treasurer for embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge.
Marks allegedly filed the names of false donors to Santos' congressional campaign. Federal prosecutors said she did so to inflate the amount of campaign donations Santos appeared to have amassed so he could qualify for national party support.
The names of Marks' and Santos' family members were among those falsely reported to have lent his campaign $500,000, despite not having the financial means to do so, prosecutors said.
"These reports were created to artificially inflate his funds to meet a threshold," federal prosecutors said Marks told them.
Her attorney, Raymond Perini, said his client does not have a cooperation agreement with the government in place, but "if they subpoena her, she'll do the right thing."
"With today's guilty plea, Marks has admitted that she conspired with a congressional candidate to lie to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of the candidate's campaign for New York's Third Congressional District, falsely inflating the campaign's reported receipts with non-existent contributions and loans," United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
Marks is scheduled to be sentenced next April.
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A new indictment filed Tuesday charged U.S. Rep. George Santos with stealing the identities of donors to his campaign and then using their credit cards to ring up tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges.
Prosecutors said some of that stolen money ended up in his own bank account.
The 23-count indictment replaces one filed earlier against the New York Republican charging him with embezzling money from his campaign and lying to Congress about his wealth, among other offenses.
The new charges include allegations that he charged more than $44,000 to his campaign over a period of months using cards belonging to contributors without their knowledge. In one case, he charged $12,000 to a contributor’s credit card and transferred the “vast majority” of that money into his personal bank account, prosecutors said.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4250089-george-santos-house-expulsion-new-york-gop-freshmen/
A House Republican will move to expel Rep. Santos from Congress.
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D’Esposito said the resolution will be co-sponsored by fellow first-term GOP Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy and Brandon Williams, all from New York.
Esposito and Langworthy are co-sponsors of my bill too.
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As he fights a growing list of federal fraud changes, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) vowed on Wednesday that he’d fight until “the bitter end”—but made clear he found the whole ordeal an annoyance. “It's frustrating to me that I have to sit here and now have to defend myself for things that I pay someone else to do,” Santos said while speaking to a gathering of reporters Wednesday. “‘The buck stops with me’ is an exaggerated term, especially when you’re a candidate ... I'm not an experienced politician,” he said. Santos insisted that “I did not create a fake campaign,” and that he was “pretty much denying every last bit of charges,” but ultimately equivocated on whether he improperly took COVID-19 relief money while making six-figures at an investment firm. “Even if I were to have taken two checks too many, let's make it very clear: Nobody in this country gets indicted for taking a check or two more than they are entitled to during unemployment period or in that case and completely extenuating circumstance of the pandemic,” he said.
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2/3 majority required to remove him from office.
I assume that all Democrat will vote to remove him. Then it will require about 78 Republics to also vote to remove him.
It will be in interesting vote.
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With the election a year away, there's probably little risk to removing him. The Governor will appoint a (Democrat) replacement who will then probably win the seat in 2024. Legislatively and politically, I think the GOP is at the point where the loss of one seat matters little.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in George Santos Charged:
Do you hear me Congressman Menendez?
(Senator)
I'm waiting for something other than "He should resign" statements from the Democrats. Has anyone filed a motion?
One can make the case that his (alleged) crimes are of a more serious nature than Santos'.
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Republican-led push to expel George Santos fails in the House
The resolution needed a two-thirds majority to succeed, but fell well short. The final vote was 179 to 213 with 19 members voting present.
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@Axtremus Interesting
The resolution, introduced by Santos' fellow freshman Republicans from New York, received 179 votes, while 213 voted against it.
24 Republicans broke with their party and voted to expel Santos, but 31 Democrats voted against expelling him. Four Republicans and 15 Democrats also voted present.
Many of the Republicans who voted to expel Santos were moderates or swing-district members, including Santos' fellow New York freshmen who introduced the resolution.
What we're hearing: Some Democrats were concerned about the precedent of voting to expel Santos before either a conviction or an Ethics Committee report, several senior House Democrats told Axios.
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@taiwan_girl said in George Santos Charged:
What we're hearing: Some Democrats were concerned about the precedent of voting to expel Santos before either a conviction or an Ethics Committee report, several senior House Democrats told Axios.
I've read that the representative who introduced the measure to expel Santos plans to reintroduce it after the Ethics Committee releases its findings.
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Why did they elect him, exactly?
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Embattled Rep. George Santos said Thursday he will not seek reelection in 2024 after the House Ethics Committee released a scathing report that concluded there is “substantial evidence” the New York Republican “violated federal criminal laws,” including using campaign funds for personal purposes and filing false campaign reports.
"I will continue on my mission to serve my constituents up until I am allowed. I will however NOT be seeking re-election for a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time," Santos said in a statement on the social media site X.
In its wide-ranging 56-page report, the Ethics subcommittee tasked with investigating Santos found "a complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos’ campaign, personal, and business finances. Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit."
"He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit. He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign—and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported 'repayments' of those fictitious loans," the report continues.
Santos "used his connections to high-value donors and other political campaigns" to enrich himself, the report contends. "And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience," it says.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
