George Santos: McCarthy changes tune to say he will not back Santos re-election bid after arrest

Freshman representative arrested and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to the House of Representatives

George Santos pleads not guilty to 13 charges, including wire fraud and theft

George Santos, the New York Republican congressman who rose to prominence for a string of exaggerations, lies, and irregularities related to his personal background and campaign finances, has pleaded not guilty after being hit with a series of federal charges.

He told the press after exiting a Long Island courthouse on Wednesday that the probe amounted to a “witch hunt” and that he is planning to run for re-election.

Mr Santos surrendered to the authorities and was taken into custody earlier in the day before being released on a $500,000 bond ahead of his next court appearance on 30 June.

He has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

In the 13-count indictment, unsealed on Wednesday morning, federal prosecutors accused Mr Santos of lying on financial disclosure forms he filed to the House when he became a candidate, first by overstating his income from one job and failing to disclose income from another, and second by lying about his earnings from his company, the Devolder Organization.

Prosecutors also allege that Mr Santos fraudulently used donations to his political campaign for his own benefit, spending “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

The indictment alleges that Mr Santos’ fraud began before his successful run for Congress, accusing him of running an unemployment insurance fraud scheme in which he applied for government assistance in New York while still employed by a Florida-based investment firm.

“Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself,” Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Utah GOP Senator Mitt Romney led the calls for him to go, saying: “He has demonstrated by his untruthfulness that he should not be in the United States Congress – perhaps should not even be on the public streets.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has now said he will not back Mr Santos’s proposed re-election bid.

Key Points

• Kevin McCarthy flip flops on George Santos and says he won’t support indicted congressman’s re-election bid
• George Santos voting on employment fraud bill – 24 hours after being arrested for employment fraud
• Inside George Santos’ drag queen days as ‘Kitara Ravache’ - and how his ‘young and fun’ past was exposed
• Expel George Santos? Republican leaders aren’t ready to take that step
• From resume lies to criminal charges: A timeline of George Santos’ many scandals

[12 May 2023 02:00 · Bevan Hurley]

Political positions

Mr Santos has claimed in interviews that he was exactly the kind of candidate that could grow the Republican Party’s reach with younger voters.

He aligned himself strongly with Donald Trump and the Maga wing of the Republican caucus, attending the former president’s indictment on criminal charges in New York last month.

Other than platitudes about wanting to be a “voice for every community in the district”, Mr Santos does not set out any ideological vision on his campaign website or in statements.

In February, he was spotted wearing an AR-15 lapel in Congress after a spate of recent mass shootings.

He described abortion as “barbaric” in a 2022 speech to the Whitestone Republican Club.

He introduced several pieces of legislation in early 2023; including bills to raise the cap on state and local tax deduction and cut federal funding to countries that persecute LGBTQ people.

Mr Santos raised eyebrows in April, when he introduced the Medical Information Nuanced Accountability Judgment Act, which would ban the government from mandating certain vaccines.

The acronym, MINAJ, was thought to relate to Nicki Minaj’s comments in 2021 that her cousin’s friend had become impotent and suffered swollen testicles after taking the Covid-19 vaccine.

[12 May 2023 02:30 · Bevan Hurley]

Arrest and indictment

Late afternoon on Tuesday 9 May, CNN revealed that Mr Santos had been criminally charged by prosecutors in New York’s Eastern District.

Mr Santos is accused of defrauding donors by spending “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

Mr Santos allegedly lied on financial disclosure forms he filed to the House by overstating his income from and failing to disclose income from another, while also lying about his earnings from his company, the Devolder Organization.

Mr Santos fraudulently used campaign donations to buy “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments”, the indictment claimed.

He also stands accused of insurance fraud for applying for Covid employment benefits in New York while still employed in Florida.

He was released on $500,000 bail, and had to surrender his passport, the Associated Press reported.

Following Donald Trump’s playbook, Mr Santos called the charges a “witch hunt” and said he intended to run again for Congress outside court.

Some Republicans have called for Mr Santos to leave Congress immediately. Mr McCarthy has said he will “look” at the charges.

[12 May 2023 03:00 · Gustaf Kilander]

Documentary maker ditched project after Santos wanted cash

[12 May 2023 03:30 · Gustaf Kilander]

‘We’ve seen McCarthy weather scandals, so much worse'

Documentary maker Blake Zeff tweeted on Thursday that Mr Santos appears unconcerned about his mounting scandals.

Mr Zeff said he “spent months talking with George Santos for a potential documentary on him”.

“My team eventually ditched the project when it was clear he wanted lots of” money, he added.

“We’ve seen McCarthy weather scandals, so much worse. We saw Matt Gaetz survive a massive scandal. We’ve seen members survive scandal on the Dem side,” Mr Santos told Mr Zeff during their conversations.

[12 May 2023 04:00 · Gustaf Kilander]

Santos took unemployment in 2020 despite $120,000 salary

[12 May 2023 04:30 · Joe Sommerlad]

Kevin McCarthy flip flops on George Santos and says he won’t support indicted congressman’s re-election bid

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, has said he will not support New York congressman George Santos’s bid for re-election after the freshman lawmaker was accused of committing a series of financial crimes and charged in a 13-count federal indictment.

Mr Santos, 34, was arrested on Long Island on Wednesday after surrendering to the authorities and pleaded not guilty to all charges, after which he was released on a $500,000 bond and took questions from the press. He declared in true Trumpian fashion that he was the victim of a “witch hunt” and insisted that he still intends to stand for re-election in 2024.

Mr Santos filed the necessary paperwork to run again with the Federal Election Commission back in March, allowing his campaign team to continue fundraising.

This week’s drama came after months of controversy swirling around Mr Santos, whose midterm victory over Democrat Robert Zimmerman was swiftly overshadowed in December by a New York Times investigation that exposed a prolific track record of lying about his past, or, as Mr Santos preferred to put it, “résumé embellishment”.

The man representing the city’s 3rd Congressional District was accused of lying about everything from his educational background and Wall Street work experience to the fate of his grandparents and mother, his past experience as a drag performer in Brazil, his prowess as a volleyball player and even a bizarre plot involving the invention of a fictional animal charity to channel money away from an Iraq War veteran’s dying dog.

[12 May 2023 05:00 · Bevan Hurley]

The Devolder Organization

Mr Santos set up the Devolder Organization, which he was the sole owner of and claimed he managed $80m in assets for the “capital introduction consulting” firm.

Mr Santos hosted the Talking GOP public-access radio show from January to May 2020.

He would schmooze guests, who were mostly figures from the Queens Republican Party.

On Talking GOP, he said that he was Catholic, and that his maternal grandfather had converted from Judaism to Catholicism before the Holocaust. “I believe we are all Jewish, at the end – because Jesus Christ is Jewish.”

[12 May 2023 06:00 · Bevan Hurley]

Spoke at Stop the Steal rally

Mr Santos spoke at the Stop the Steal rally at the ellipse in Washington DC on the day of the Capitol riots on January 6, claiming his election had been stolen. A roommate would later claim that Mr Santos had worn his stolen $520 Burberry scarf to the rally.

In 2020, while running for Congress, he began working at Florida investment firm Harbor City Capital, which was later accused in a civil lawsuit by the Security and Exchange Commission of running a $17m Ponzi scheme.

The SEC banned the firm from doing business in Alabama, and alleged it was “out to deceive Alabamians and profit off unsuspecting investors by using dazzling marketing tactics to sell unregistered bonds.”

He has publicly denied any involvement in the alleged fraud.

[12 May 2023 07:00 · John Bowden]

George Santos voting on employment fraud bill – 24 hours after being arrested for employment fraud

Rep George Santos returned to the Capitol on Thursday following his arrest a day earlier for unemployment fraud — just in time to vote on a bill dealing with that exact topic.

It was a perfectly scripted moment to cap off a wild two-day media circus around his indicment in New York on 13 criminal counts. He has pleaded not guilty, and vowed to fight the charges in court.

On Thursday, moments after entering the building, the congressman was bombarded by questions about whether it was right for him to vote on such a bill while he himself was under criminal indictment for an alleged violation of that statute.

What’s more, Mr Santos is co-sponsor of the legislation being introduced, which would strengthen America’s fraud laws by extending the statute of limitations for such investigations and providing more incentives for states to investigate and uncover fraud.

“Well, allegations are not proof, right Rachel?” barked the Republican lawmaker at a journalist as he jogged up a flight of stairs away from gathered reporters.

[12 May 2023 08:00 · Bevan Hurley]

Early political career

Mr Santos’ murky and ever-changing biography makes it difficult to parse fact from fiction during his early forays into politics.

In 2018, he began volunteering for the campaign of Republican Vickie Paladino, who was running for state Senate. He reportedly boasted of his ties to Wall Street donors who could contribute but did little actual work.

The next year, he reportedly made his first attempt to get elected to Congress but failed to secure enough signatures to get on the Queens County Republican Committee.

He joined United for Trump, a small New York group of Republican supporters of the then-president, and launched a first bid for Congress in November 2019.

That month he launched his campaign for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020 against Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi.

No other candidates put their names forward. When pressed by reporters about why he lived out of the district, he claimed to reside at an address that turned out to be his treasurer’s.

He lost the general election by about 46,000 votes, but still exceeded Republican expectations for the strongly Democratic district. He refused to concede the election, echoing Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.