Disgraced former Rep. George Santos expected to accept plea deal on 23 federal charges

Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) Photo: Video screenshot

Gay former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is expected to plead guilty Monday to some of 23 federal counts of campaign finance fraud in a New York court. Santos initially pleaded “not guilty” to all charges, calling them a “baseless” “witch hunt.” Details of his expected plea agreement have not been released, so it’s unclear whether the judge will accept the deal or whether it will help him avoid the maximum 20 years in prison he otherwise could face.

Santos is expected to attend a pretrial conference Monday before U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in the Eastern District of New York. The charges against Santos include wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering, theft of government funds and making materially false statements to both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. House of Representatives.

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David Schwartz, a New York criminal defense attorney, told CBS News about the deal: “One thing is for sure: He’s going to get a much lighter sentence if he pleads guilty now, takes responsibility and shows remorse, than if he went to trial.”

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Former Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told the aforementioned news outlet, “It’s certainly not in the public’s interest to go through that whole charade. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner he’s gone the better.”

Jodi Kass Finkel, who led the group Concerned Citizens of NY-03 (Santos’ former congressional district) in its bid to oust Santos from the House, told CBS: “He should not settle.” In a statement released Sunday, the group said: “(The public) demands a full trial to reveal the extent of Mr. Santos’ crimes against NY-03. The public deserves to know how a travesty of this magnitude could have occurred at the highest levels of government.”

Last October, he pleaded not guilty to 10 more federal charges, including stealing donors’ identities and fraudulently charging tens of thousands of dollars to his own donors’ credit cards. He also falsified a $500,000 loan to his own campaign. He also filed false campaign finance reports that claimed contributions from real people who hadn’t given permission. He also embezzled money from his company and conspired with his former campaign treasurer to falsify donation amounts to meet fundraising goals.

Santos’ trial was originally scheduled for September 9, 2024. He began to feel increasing pressure to settle after his 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 could attract other donors,” she said, according to the Associated Press. She also said she gave the Federal Elections Commission a fake list of donors, with the names of real people who had neither donated nor given his campaign permission to use their names.

Pressure for a plea deal only intensified after November 16, 2023. That day, the House Ethics Committee released a report accusing Santos of illegally spending campaign funds on luxury goods, OnlyFans subscriptions, and Botox cosmetic treatments. Immediately afterward, the House voted to expel Santos by a vote of 311-114.

After his expulsion, Santos began making money by creating personalized videos on the Cameo platform. Santos alleged that his largely fake campaign biography — which he had previously admitted to fabricating out of “stupidity” and “insecurity” — was actually forged by an unnamed “former campaign staffer.”

Santos has provided no evidence for his previous biographical claims that his grandparents survived the Holocaust, that he attended Horace Mann Preparatory School, that his mother died in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

Santos was part of the drag scene in Rio in the late 2000s (despite initially claiming he had never been a drag queen). Santos also denied an accusation of check fraud in Brazil, but later formally confessed. Some have wondered if he married his ex-wife so she could become a U.S. citizen.

After entering Congress, Santos co-sponsored a bill to roll back LGBTQ+ civil rights and a bill to ban LGBTQ+ books from schools. He has also made public statements against transgender people and the so-called “radical rainbow mafia.” He has also said that LGBTQ+ families “create problem people.”

Santos said in March of last year that he would leave the Republican Party to run for re-election to Congress as an independent in New York’s 1st District. However, he dropped that plan in April of last year, saying he did not want to take votes from incumbent Republican Rep. Nick LaLota and “wanted to be responsible for turning the House over to the Dems.”

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