George Santos—Is That Really His Name?

[GreyhoundFan]

This is so odd:

[Becky]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is so odd:

WTH is he talking about?? If he is so concerned about women, maybe he should be addressing the fact that women's bodily autonomy is under attack in every Republican state in the country.  

[Xan]

It's the usual "I'm a Republican so I say the opposite of what I believe.  I also accuse the other side of exactly what we ourselves are doing".  They'd really like to take away our right to vote -- along with controlling our bodies.  If they say they're working for us, they might trick some of the more gullible voters.  The rest of us know that it means they're working against us.

[thoughtful]

I think the "we're really the ones protecting women" crap from the right comes from anti-trans bigotry.

[Xan]

1 hour ago, thoughtful said:

I think the "we're really the ones protecting women" crap from the right comes from anti-trans bigotry.

Thanks.  That slipped by me.  I guess since the Republicans are such great supporters of women's sports (/s), they need to be on the attack against trans individuals to protect women.  

Hillary was right.  They really are deplorables.

[47of74]

More legal trouble for the guy pretending to be George Santos
 

Quote

The ex-treasurer for U.S. Rep. George Santos pleaded guilty Thursday to a fraud conspiracy charge and implicated the indicted New York Republican in a scheme to embellish his campaign finance reports with a fake loan and fake donors.

Nancy Marks, who was a close aide to Santos during his two congressional bids, entered the plea at a federal courthouse on Long Island, where she was a longtime political operative and bookkeeper for multiple candidates.

Speaking to the judge, Marks said that among other things, she and Santos had submitted bogus campaign finance reports falsely saying he had loaned his campaign $500,000 even though in reality he didn’t have that kind of money and the loan didn’t exist. She said the purpose of the fake loan was to make it look like he was richer than he really was, which might attract other donors including a Republican committee.

Reading from a prepared statement, Marks also said she had provided the Federal Elections Commission with a fake list of people who had supposedly given money to the campaign.

 

[47of74]

Is it too much to hope this fucker goes away for a while now?

Quote

Embattled New York Rep. George Santos was indicted on new federal charges on Tuesday in a superseding indictment — including conspiracy, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud — just days after his former campaign treasurer pleaded guilty and admitted to much of the conduct, according to court documents.

Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York newly alleged that Santos and Nancy Marks, his former campaign treasurer, submitted false financial reports to the Federal Election Commission that inflated the campaign's fundraising numbers in an effort to qualify for certain perks, benefits, and support from Republican Party leaders. 

The 10 new charges included in the superseding indictment unsealed Tuesday also include fresh allegations that Santos used individuals' personal credit card information to make unauthorized charges in support of his political campaign. The victims, according to the charges, were previous donors to the campaign who had submitted their personal information when contributing funds to Santos. 

In one instance, the court documents unsealed Tuesday reveal Santos allegedly racked up $15,800 in charges on a contributor's credit card, a sum far higher than federal campaign laws permit. That donor "did not know of or authorize charges exceeding such limits," prosecutors said. 

 

[fraurosena]

 

[47of74]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 

What we really need are the moments showing the

1. Jury verdict finding that fornicate stick guilty are read
2. Him receiving a nice, long prison sentence.
3. And video of George being escorted into the big house.

Edited October 11, 2023 by 47of74

[GreyhoundFan]

It seems he’s under a wee bit of stress. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Not yet"...What the Damn Hell?

 

[fundiewatch]

Santos has been stress eating. 

[onekidanddone]

On 10/13/2023 at 5:26 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

"Not yet"...What the Damn Hell?

 

Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to hand him a baby?

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[Flossie]

On 10/25/2023 at 10:02 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Such a smug, punchable face.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Embattled Rep. George Santos pleads not guilty to latest federal charges"

Quote

Freshman Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who is facing a renewed effort by his New York Republican colleagues to expel him from office, pleaded not guilty Friday to 23 federal charges, including fraud, money laundering, falsifying records and aggravated identity theft.

In May, Santos was charged in a 13-count federal indictment by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York, who later added an additional 10 charges in a superseding indictment in October. Prosecutors have accused Santos of numerous financial crimes, including taking unemployment benefits in 2020 while he was employed and running for Congress, making unauthorized charges to the credit cards of his political donors, and lying on federal forms about his campaign finances.

On Friday, Santos appeared in the federal courthouse in Central Islip, Long Island, and pleaded not guilty to all the charges, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office, Danielle Haas. The judge overseeing the case, Joanna Seybert, set a trial date for early September 2024, about two months before the general election.

Santos, who did not return a text message seeking comment Friday, has said he plans to serve his full term in office and seek reelection next year. His lawyer, Joseph Murray, declined to comment.

Earlier this week, five Republicans from New York introduced a privileged resolution to expel Santos; the matter is expected to be voted upon next week.

Shortly after Santos won an open seat in a swing district that President Biden carried in 2020, the New York Times revealed numerous falsehoods in Santos’s biography, including the businesses where he claimed to have worked and colleges from which he said he graduated.

Santos admitted to embellishing his résumé but continued to make additional claims about his background that could not be verified or were outright disproved. Officials at the prestigious high school he claimed to have attended briefly, Horace Mann, said they never heard of him, and the Forward, a Jewish news outlet, cast doubt on his claims of being a descendant of Holocaust survivors.

That later claim led New York Republicans to call for Santos to resign, which he rebuffed. In May, House Democrats sought to expel Santos but Republicans, who hold a narrow majority, referred the matter to the House Ethics committee. Last month, amid the latest charges against Santos, his Republican colleagues from New York said they would push a resolution to expel him.

One Republican looking to expel Santos, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), said he raised the issue with the newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). “He said do what you think is right and do what’s right for your district,” D’Esposito said of his meeting with Johnson.

When asked Thursday on Fox about the resolution to expel Santos, Johnson said, “George Santos is due due process."

“If we’re going to expel people from Congress just because they’re charged with a crime, or accused, that’s a problem," he added.

Santos, for his part, says he is seeking reelection. His campaign refunded more money than it raised in the last filing period last month. On Thursday, he sent mixed messages on X, writing, “Everything has an end life.” Hours later, he wrote to offer “clarification.” No, he is not resigning and, “I’m entitled to due process and not a predetermined outcome as some are seeking.”

Speaking on the social media platform Spaces on Thursday night, Santos conflated his effort to prove his innocence in federal court with his colleagues’ effort to expel him from Congress.

“If this motion passes, I think it’s a clear indication that this country has now gone down the drain,” Santos said.

He added: “Everybody is innocent until proven guilty. It is the government’s burden to prove you guilty. Unfortunately some of my colleagues want to be judge, jury and executioner and deny me the right to due process.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Second effort to expel George Santos from House fails"

Quote

A motion to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from the House failed Wednesday evening, with New York Republicans taking the helm in an attempt to remove him over his public false statements and ongoing federal criminal case.

Twenty-four House Republicans and 155 Democrats voted to expel Santos, while 182 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted against ousting him from Congress; 15 Democrats and four Republicans voted present.

The Republicans who voted for expulsion largely consisted of GOP lawmakers in swing districts, such as the New Yorkers who forced the vote and Reps. Thomas H. Kean Jr. (N.J.) and John James (Mich.). The Democrats who opposed expulsion came from all over the map, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), who had just minutes earlier narrowly avoided her own punishment of censure over her opposition to the Israel-Gaza war. Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, voted present, as did members of the Ethics Committee who are overseeing the Santos investigation.

On Wednesday night, Santos posted on X, formally known as Twitter, that the failed vote “was a victory for due process not me.”

“This was never about me, and I’ll never let it become about me,” Santos wrote, also including a meme of him in the House chamber with a superimposed crown on his head.

"If you come for me, you best not miss,” the text on the image said.

The latest push to expel Santos, who is running for reelection, was led by his fellow Republican freshmen from New York. The House members — Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Marcus J. Molinaro, Michael Lawler and Brandon Williams — represent swing districts and face difficult reelection campaigns.

But some House members in both parties had balked at the move, fearing that it could set a precedent for expelling a member who has not been convicted of a crime. Some lawmakers also worried that removing Santos would further normalize the drastic move at a time when the House is also grappling with partisan rancor and declining decorum.

The group that pushed for Santos’s ouster argued that there was enough evidence to expel him. Santos has admitted to “résumé embellishment,” and Nancy Marks, his former campaign treasurer, pleaded guilty to making false statements, obstructing federal campaign regulators and wire fraud in connection to the congressman’s own indictment, which has grown to 23 counts.

Santos pleaded not guilty to those counts, which include fraud, money laundering, falsifying records and aggravated identity theft.

Marks admitted in court that she conspired with Santos to falsely report that they had lent the campaign $500,000 to help Santos, then a candidate, qualify for an assistance program operated by the national Republican Party.

Ahead of the expulsion vote Wednesday, D’Esposito argued on the House floor that the effort was “an opportunity to set [a] new precedent and to remove someone from the House of Representatives that is not properly representing the people of New York’s 3rd Congressional District.”

LaLota, who also spoke on the floor, said that “the consequences and precedents of not expelling him for his lies and fraud has the potential to do far more damage to this institution.”

He also spotlighted the apparent lies Santos told about his Jewish heritage and his mother’s proximity to the twin towers during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. LaLota asserted that Santos made those specific false claims to garner political support “as part of a broader scheme to defraud voters and donors to get him elected to Congress, to further defraud voters and swindle donors out of millions.”

Santos said the rush by his colleagues to expel him before his criminal case concluded was unfair and would deny him his constitutional right to due process.

Speaking on the House floor after his fellow New York Republicans stated their case, Santos remarked, “I must warn my colleagues that voting for expulsion at this point would circumvent the judicial system’s right to due process that I’m entitled to and desanctify the long-held premise that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

“It is unconscionable to think that this body, who is at war with the [Justice Department] over their politically motivated practices, would blindly accept their accusation against a member of another branch of government,” he added.

In late February, the House Ethics Committee created an investigative subcommittee to look into the allegations against Santos. Santos was charged in May by federal prosecutors with 13 counts, including defrauding his donors, using their money for his personal benefit and wrongfully claiming unemployment benefits. Additional counts were brought in a superseding indictment that was made public last month.

In response to that indictment, House Democrats sought to expel Santos.

Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.), who co-sponsored that effort, said on the House floor Wednesday that New York Republicans bringing forward the latest expulsion effort are partly motivated by the political pressures in their competitive reelection races.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was speaker at the time of the first expulsion effort, said in May that the question of whether to expel Santos should wait, since the ethics committee “can look at this very quickly.” On Tuesday, the committee said in a statement that it will “announce its next course of action in this matter on or before Nov. 17, 2023.”

 

 

Of course it failed. The rethuglikans don't want to lose a guaranteed vote when they have such a slim majority.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Jamie Raskin:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Good gravy:

 

[Becky]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Good gravy:

 

He just can't stop digging, can he?

[onekidanddone]

On 11/3/2023 at 4:37 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I love Jamie Raskin:

 

Jamie Raskin is my Congress Critter and I adore him 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I know it's childish, but this picture is making me giggle uncontrollably.

 

[fraurosena]

Dutch media is reporting that Santos will not be seeking re-election after the release of a devastating report by the ethics committee. Off to look for more info...

Here's the Guardian's reporting.

Quote

George Santos will not seek re-election after House details ‘pervasive’ fraud

The New York Republican congressman, fabulist and criminal defendant George Santos said he would not seek re-election next year, after the US House ethics committee issued a report detailing “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” and recommended action against him.

“I will 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, calling the report “biased” and “a disgusting politicised smear”.

But after the report detailed his conduct, moves for a new expulsion resolution began.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the committee said.

“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.

“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.”

Santos, 35, was elected last year, as Republicans retook the House in part thanks to a strong performance in New York. But as his résumé unraveled amid increasingly picaresque reports about his life before entering Congress, including questions about his actual name, he admitted “embellishing” his record.

Allegations of criminal behaviour emerged. Santos has now pleaded not guilty to 23 federal criminal charges, including laundering funds and defrauding donors.

He has survived attempts to expel him from the House, including from members of his own party. Most recently, 31 Democrats voted against making him only the sixth member ever expelled, saying he should not be thrown out without being convicted. Three congressmen were expelled in 1861, for supporting the Confederacy in the civil war. Two have been expelled after being criminally convicted, the last in 2002.

Republican leaders, beholden to a narrow majority, had said they would wait for the ethics report.

On Thursday, the New York Democrat Dan Goldman said: “More than 10 months after Congressman [Ritchie] Torres and I filed a complaint … the committee has … concluded that George Santos defrauded his donors, filed false Federal Election Commission reports, and repeatedly broke the law in order to fraudulently win his election last November.”

Promising to “file a motion to expel Santos from Congress once and for all” after the Thanksgiving break, Goldman said Republicans “no longer have any fictional excuse to protect Santos in order to preserve their narrow majority”.

Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who has tried to expel Santos, said Santos should “end this farce and resign immediately. If he refuses, he must be removed from Congress. His conduct is not only unbecoming and embarrassing, it is criminal. He is unfit to serve and should resign today”.

Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker, has said Santos deserves due process. Speaking to Fox News last month, he also said Republicans had “no margin for error”.

But according to the Washington Post, citing an anonymous source, Michael Guest of Mississippi, the Republican committee chair, planned to file a motion to expel Santos on Friday, setting up a possible vote after the Thanksgiving holiday next week.

Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said she “intend[ed] to vote yes on any privileged expulsion resolution … as the work of the committee is now complete, and I am no longer obligated to maintain neutrality”.

Santos said: “If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the ‘ethics committee’, they would have not released this biased report. The committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (my legal bills suggest otherwise).

“It is a disgusting politicised smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of justice should all be ashamed of themselves.”

Somewhat optimistically, he called for a constitutional convention to formalise action against Joe Biden for supposed crimes. More contritely, Santos said he was “humbled yet again and reminded that I am human and I have flaws”.

The report was accompanied by extensive appendices including evidence of apparent malpractice. Santos was shown to have spent donor money on vacations, luxury goods, Botox treatment and the website OnlyFans.

One exhibit showed a suggestion by a staffer to place a microphone under a table bearing donuts for reporters, an offering that made headlines earlier this year.

The committee said Santos had not cooperated, “continues to flout his statutory financial disclosure obligations and has failed to correct countless errors and omissions in his past [financial disclosure] statements, despite being repeatedly reminded … of his requirement to do so.

“The [committee] also found that, despite his attempts to blame others for much of the misconduct, Representative Santos was a knowing and active participant in the wrongdoing. Particularly troubling was Representative Santos’ lack of candour during the investigation itself.”

The committee said it would refer its findings to federal prosecutors. Members of Congress, it said, should take any action “appropriate and necessary … to fulfill the House’s constitutional mandate to police the conduct of its members”.

Outside Congress, Brett Edkins, of the pressure group Stand Up America, said: “This report has one clear conclusion: Santos is wholly unfit to hold office.

“If George Santos had any shame or remorse over deceiving hard-working New Yorkers and his colleagues in Congress, he would resign immediately. Instead, he continues to use every possible lie and excuse to cling to power … since he refuses to step down, House Republicans should grow a backbone and expel him.”

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by fraurosena