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Into the Never-ending "George Santos" Rabbithole

Raptorpat

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matrixman124
matrixman124

BREAKING NEWS: Mystery newcomer Seorge Gantos is running for President of the United States as an Independent 

Raptorpat
Raptorpat

Say it ain't so! https://twitter.com/AP/status/1656289415403061248?s=20

DragonSinger
DragonSinger

Just gonna leave this here:  

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Seight Monster Mutant

Seight

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8 hours ago, Raptorpat said:

Robert Garcia filed a motion to expel George Santos from Congress, I don't know the procedural details but McCarty has to act apparently and he's gonna route it into the Ethics Committee rather than a floor vote.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/16/house-gop-santos-expulsion-00097216

Can't even bring myself to do the "surely the Ethics Committee will do the right thing here" joke.

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Raptorpat Monster Mutant

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George Santos’ father and aunt backed his bail bond, court papers show, by POLITICO’s Erica Orden: It’s unclear why Santos went to such lengths to protect the disclosure of his father and aunt as having secured his bond.

His lawyer had previously said that Santos had been the target of attacks that are "extremely angry, anti-gay, anti-Republican and all around anti-social," and argued that his sureties, if publicly named, would be vulnerable to similar behavior.

 

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3 hours ago, katt_goddess said:

No no no, Santos is actually totally the President now from that vote and therefore has super immunity for the duration of his Presidential term of 4 Alpha Centauri A years [ 320 Earth years ].

Whoa 

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A campaign associate of Representative George Santos who impersonated Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s former chief of staff was charged with wire fraud and identity theft in a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.

The aide, Samuel Miele, was arraigned Wednesday morning in Brooklyn federal court and released on $150,000 bond. He has pleaded not guilty.

He was accused by federal prosecutors of sending “fraudulent fund-raising” emails to more than a dozen potential contributors to an unnamed candidate.

In those messages, he claimed to be a “high-ranking aide to a member of the House with leadership responsibilities,” the indictment said. When Mr. Miele successfully solicited campaign contributions, he received a 15 percent commission, according to the indictment.

The indictment, which was filed on Tuesday, does not name Mr. Santos, a first-term Republican representing parts of Long Island and Queens. Nor does it provide more details about the House aide Mr. Miele is said to have impersonated or the member with whom he is associated.

But The New York Times and other news outlets have previously reported that Mr. Miele impersonated Mr. McCarthy’s chief of staff in a bid to solicit funds for Mr. Santos’s campaign. Mr. McCarthy later confirmed those reports and said that Mr. Miele was fired after Mr. Santos learned of his actions.

Mr. Miele was charged with four counts of wire fraud in connection with specific emails he sent between August and October 2021. He was also charged with aggravated identity theft.

The case against Mr. Miele was filed by the same prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York who are prosecuting Mr. Santos in a separate case involving wire fraud. In a letter filed on Wednesday, prosecutors advised the court that the cases should be considered related.

Mr. Santos has been charged with 13 counts of money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds and false statements following an investigation into his finances. He has pleaded not guilty.

A lawyer for Mr. Santos did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to the indictment, Mr. Miele wrote an email to Mr. Santos in which he admitted “faking my identity to a big donor,” but added that he was “high risk, high reward in everything I do.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/nyregion/sam-miele-charged-george-santos.html

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Raptorpat Monster Mutant

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Santos hit with a superseding indictment

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CENTRAL ISLIP, NY – A 23-count superseding indictment was filed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, charging George Anthony Devolder Santos, better known as “George Santos,” the United States Representative for the Third District of New York, with one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud, in addition to the 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 United States House of Representatives that were charged in the original indictment.  Santos is due back in federal court in Central Islip on October 27, 2023.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/congressman-george-santos-charged-conspiracy-wire-fraud-false-statements-0

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from Politico this morning:

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Even as Rep. George Santos’ fellow New York GOP freshmen push to expel him tonight (in a likely doomed vote), tentacles of the Santos scandals are grabbing at the other representatives’ legs.

Remember the accountant who said Santos wrongly listed him as treasurer back in January? The Daily Beast reported last week that he actually did the work for Santos’ campaign for four months but hid that potentially embarrassing fact by listing the name of his buddy from high school on official paperwork.

And the lawyer for campaign treasurer Thomas Datwyler just rescinded his January statements that claimed Datwyler had been played by Santos, the Daily Beast reported, saying that actually, it looks like Datwyler had played the Federal Election Commission. And the public.

Datwyler isn’t some fringe character desperate for a paycheck.

He’s also the campaign treasurer for Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick LaLota, two Long Island Republican first-year members who’ve been eager to distance themselves from Santos.

Datwyler is the treasurer for New York Majority Makers too, a joint fundraising committee for all the non-Santos swing seat freshmen: Reps. D'Esposito, LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams, Playbook has learned.

LaLota’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, and neither did Datwyler. D’Esposito campaign spokesperson Matthew Capp declined to comment on their treasurer’s alleged pattern of lying to the FEC.

Capp confirmed that the campaign has not severed its relationship with Datwyler after the Daily Beast’s reporting, however. And said that D’Esposito did not recommend or refer his treasurer to Santos. By the time Datwyler started working for Santos around Jan. 25, D’Esposito had already publicly rejected Santos and called on him to resign.

D’Esposito, LaLota and the rest of them sharing an ex-campaign treasurer with Santos hasn’t been previously reported. But it’s just another example of the reason why D’Esposito introduced the privileged resolution to expel Santos: The dark cloud of their 23-count-indicted colleague is casting a shadow over the rest of the New York GOP.

Two-thirds of the House would have to vote yes to boot Santos. But that’s unlikely to pass, since the new Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested he’s aligned with the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who didn’t want to eject Santos because he hadn’t been convicted of anything yet.

“We’ve had some Republican offices signal that they’ll support it as well,” Capp from D’Esposito’s office told Playbook. But he couldn’t say if they’d be able to flip the approximately 77 Republican votes it would need to pass. “We don’t have a whip count or anything.” – Jeff Coltin

 

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The embattled Rep. George Santos has lived to embellish and lie another day – no thanks to his fellow first-term New York colleagues who fought hard to convince their colleagues that the lawmaker’s lies and federal indictment were enough to justify ousting him.

Not long after Rep. Anthony D'Esposito introduced a resolution to expel Santos, House lawmakers convened Wednesday night to vote on whether they would kick the Long Island Republican out of Congress following his indictment on corruption charges. But in the end, Santos easily survived with 179 members voting for expulsion and 213 opposing it. More than 30 Democrats even voted against expelling him.

The expulsion vote faced long odds from the onset. Expelling Santos would require a two-thirds majority, meaning every Democrat would have needed to vote in favor of doing so as would dozens of Republicans. With Republicans clinging to only a narrow majority in the House, that was unlikely to happen as Santos’ vote remained key to the party’s agenda. A number of lawmakers have also expressed concerns that removing Santos before a criminal proceeding or a House Ethics Committee report would only set a dangerous precedent. 

Santos’ fellow first-term New York Republicans elected to represent more vulnerable swing seats, however, have eagerly attempted to distance themselves from their colleague. Reps. D'Esposito, Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams have led efforts to expel Santos, all of whom signed a new letter urging their Republican colleagues to vote yes while describing the matter as “not a political one but a moral one.” Rep. Nick Langworthy also joined the five lawmakers in voting for Santos’ expulsion. Every other New York Republican voted against the resolution save for Rep. Andrew Garbarino who didn’t vote.

 

On the House floor ahead of the vote, D'Esposito, LaLota, Lawler, and lone Democrat Dan Goldman took turns slamming Santos’ conduct. 

“Mr. Santos has said expelling him before he is formally charged and found guilty would create a new precedent in this body, one that could have negative consequences for generations,” LaLota said. “I disagree. The consequences and precedents of not expelling him for his lies and fraud has the potential to do far more damage to this institution.”

Santos, who maintains his innocence, urged lawmakers to hold off on expulsion, arguing that he deserves due process.

“I’m about to go on the floor to debate my expulsion. To all whom who’ve asked, I’m fine and calm,” he tweeted Wednesday evening ahead of the vote. “God does not give each of us a burden heavier than we can carry. I’ll defend myself as best I can and stand up for my constitutional rights to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. This is not nearly the end of the road for me. God bless all!”

The race to unseat Santos in 2024 is already well underway.

https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2023/11/george-santos-decisively-not-expelled-congress/391707/

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Embattled US Rep George Santos won't run for reelection after damning ethics report

WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Embattled U.S. Representative George Santos on Thursday said he won't run for reelection shortly after a damning report by his fellow lawmakers referred "additional uncharged and unlawful conduct" by him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Santos, 35, a first-term lawmaker from the New York area, has already pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment accusing him of an array of corruption, including 10 felony counts that prosecutors added in October.

"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," Santos said in a post on social media. "My family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time."

His announcement came shortly after the House of Representatives' Ethics Committee released the report concluding Santos' conduct "is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House."

The panel's Republican chairman, Michael Guest, intends to file a motion on Friday to expel him, according to media reports.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-panel-refers-more-unlawful-conduct-by-santos-justice-dept-statement-2023-11-16/

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According to the report, Santos was given an opportunity to submit to investigators a signed written statement responding to the allegations, but he did not do so. Santos also did not respond to the committee’s requests for documents, to voluntarily testify or to provide a statement under oath. Investigators noted that they believed any testimony from Santos “would have low evidentiary value given his admitted practice of embellishment.”

The long-awaited report lays out the conclusions of the committee’s months-long investigation in scathing language. According to the committee, investigators compiled more than 170,000 pages of documents and testimony from dozens of witnesses, including financial statements, to reach its conclusions.

“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,” the report stated.

It continued: “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. He used his connections to high value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings. And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.”

Some of the more egregious findings were centered on a consulting company called RedStone that was founded by Santos under the guise of being an outside group helping Santos’s election campaign. However, RedStone was not registered with the Federal Election Commission, and documents showed thousands of dollars from RedStone were transferred to one of Santos’s personal checking accounts. The funds were used, among other things, to pay down personal credit card bills, to make a $4,127.80 purchase at luxury brand Hermes, and to make “smaller purchases” at OnlyFans, a subscription site that contains adult content, according to the report.

Investigators also zeroed in several expenditures that were paid for with campaign funds that “could not be verified as having a campaign nexus,” the report stated. Those expenditures included $1,500 and $1,400 charges on Santos’s campaign debit card at different spas, both noted as “Botox” in expense spreadsheets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/16/george-santos-ethics-committee-report/

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17 hours ago, katt_goddess said:

Well, it rated 3 sad crying faces on 'X' so I'd say something between Viper's crooked stick and one of those glow-in-the-dark earthworms found only in the deepest trenches of the ocean where the sun doesn't shine. 

See I didn’t get that the crying emojis were crying over Santos’ pingus. Makes sense

😭😭😭= sad pingus

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