Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) Photo: Video screenshot
Gay former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has pleaded guilty to two felony federal charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, thus avoiding a public weeks-long trial and possible conviction of the 23 federal charges of campaign finance fraud facing him. He now faces up to eight years in prison, though his sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 7, 2025. He also must pay nearly $374,000 in restitution and roughly $205,000 in criminal forfeiture.
“It’s clear to me now that I allowed ambition to cloud my judgment, leading me to make decisions that were unethical and guilty,” Santos said outside the courthouse after pleading guilty. “Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I’d take, but it is a necessary one because it is the right thing to do. It’s not only a recognition of my misrepresentations to others, but more profoundly, it is my own recognition of the lies I told myself over these past years.”
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Santos entered his plea during a pre-trial conference on Monday in front of U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in the Eastern District of New York. By pleading guilty, Santos admitted to using another person’s identity and credit cards as well as campaign funds for his own personal benefit.
“Our democracy depends upon a fair and transparent election process, and as part of that process, it is imperative that candidates for elective elected office follow the law and that they act with integrity and transparency,” said Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division. “George Santos did none of those things.”
The 23 charges initially facing Santos included wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making materially false statements to both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. House of Representatives. Santos initially pleaded “not guilty” to all charges, calling them a “baseless” “witch hunt.”
Discussing the deal with CBS News, David Schwartz, a New York-based criminal defense attorney, said, “One thing for certain, he will be getting a lot less of a harsh sentence by pleading guilty right now, by accepting responsibility and being remorseful, than he would have if he went to trial.”
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Former Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told the aforementioned news outlet, “Certainly, it’s not in the public’s benefit to go through that whole charade. To me, the sooner he’s gone, the better.”
Jodi Kass Finkel, who led the group Concerned Citizens of NY-03 (Santos’ former congressional district) to oust Santos from the House, told CBS, “He shouldn’t get a plea deal.” In a statement released Sunday, the group said, “[The public] demands a full trial to reveal the extent of Mr. Santos’s crimes against NY-03. Indeed, the public deserves to know how a travesty of this magnitude could have happened at the highest level of government.”
Last October, he pleaded not guilty to another ten federal charges, which included allegations that he stole donors’ identities and fraudulently charged tens of thousands of dollars to his own donors’ credit cards, faking a $500,000 loan to his own campaign, filing false campaign finance reports reflecting fake contributions from real people who didn’t give their permission, embezzling cash from his company, and conspiring with his former campaign treasurer to falsify donation totals to hit fundraising targets, among other offenses.
Santos’ trial was originally scheduled for September 9, 2024. He began feeling increased pressure to take a plea deal after his own former campaign finance chief, Nancy Marks, and fundraiser, Sam Miele, both pleaded guilty to related charges.
Marks said Santos falsified campaign finance reports “to make it look like he had a well-funded campaign, which might attract other donors,” she said, according to the Associated Press. She also said that she gave the Federal Elections Commission a fake list of donors, listing the names of real people who had neither donated nor given his campaign permission to use their names.
Santos has provided no proof to back up his previous biographical claims that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, that he attended the Horace Mann preparatory school, that his mother died in connection to the September 11th terrorist attacks, or that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.
Santos said last March that he would leave the Republican Party to run for congressional re-election as an independent in New York’s 1st District. However, he dropped this plan last April, saying that he didn’t want to pull away votes from Republican incumbent Rep. Nick LaLota and “be responsible for handing the House to Dems.”
