With everything going on in the world, you might have forgotten that there was a Republican representative in Congress — let’s call him George Santos — who made up approximately 97% of his biography on the campaign trail and, in May, was charged with 13 federal counts, including wire fraud, money laundering, false statements made to the House of Representatives, and stealing public funds. In fact, he’s still very much around, and on Tuesday, he was hit with 10 new criminal counts that are somehow even wilder than the original 13.
In the new indictment, prosecutors allege that the first-term congressman from New York stole donor identities, used their credit cards to make more than $44,000 in charges, and wired some of the money to both his own personal bank account and campaign coffers. In addition, the government has accused Santos of falsely claiming to the Federal Elections Commission that he’d loaned his campaign $500,000, when he hadn’t loaned it anything — and, in fact, had less than $8,000 in the bank.
“As alleged, Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign,” US attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
Not surprisingly, given how Santos has approached previous allegations made against him, he has denied everything, telling reporters, “I will fight this to prove my innocence. So yeah, I’m pretty much denying every last bit of charges.”
Also, it seems he tried to blame everything he’s been accused of on former campaign treasurer Nancy Marks, who pled guilty to charges of conspiracy last week. “I had no control over specifically campaign finances," Santos said. "I’ve made this abundantly clear. I paid somebody, and by the way, according to the news — you guys, some of you people in the news reported —overpaid somebody, who’s put me in, at this point, in an array of trouble.”
Incredibly, Santos confirmed that he is “still running for reelection.” But if it’s up to a group of New York Republicans, this guy will be long gone before any ballots are cast: On Wednesday, GOP representative Anthony D’Esposito announced on X, formerly Twitter, that he’ll be “introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster George Santos,” telling reporters that Santos is a “stain” on Congress and the state of New York.
Fellow Republican Nick LaLota, who is cosponsoring the resolution (along with Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams), described Santos in similar terms, calling him an “immoral” and “untrustworthy” person, adding, “The sooner he’s gone, the better.”
Responding to the move to boot him from Washington, Santos said of his fellow Republicans, “If they want to be judge, jury, and arbitrator of the whole goddamn thing, let them do it. They just want to silence the people of the third congressional district.”
This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
