George Santos Pleads Guilty

Former Congressman faces prison for fraud

George Santos, the former New York Congressman and serial liar who was expelled from the House of Representatives, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn. He had been scheduled to go to trial on September 9.

George Santos in the House of Representatives (credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

Shortly after he was first elected to Congress in 2022, reports began to emerge that Santos had repeatedly lied during his campaign about his personal and professional background. He lied about where he went to school, where he had worked, and his ethnic heritage and personal history.

Those lies — or what Santos termed “embellishing his resume” — led to a political scandal for the new Congressman but were not criminal, as I explained in this post at the time:

As I also noted in that post, although Santos’s lies on his resume were not criminal, other emerging allegations of fraud related to his campaign and personal finances did have criminal implications. Santos was indicted based on those allegations in May 2023, and last fall prosecutors returned a superseding indictment charging Santos with twenty-three felony counts for four different fraud schemes. If you’d like a review of the allegations and charges in the indictment, I broke it down here:

I noted in that post that Santos did not have any apparent viable defenses and that his best option would be to negotiate the best plea deal that he can. Borrowing a line from the leader of his party, Santos dismissed the indictment as a “witch hunt” and insisted he would be vindicated at trial.

But yesterday Santos agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The wire fraud charge is based on his falsification of campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Working with his campaign treasurer, he listed fake donations from friends and family members and a personal loan to his campaign that he never made, in order to qualify for substantial additional funding from the National Republican Congressional Committee. The identity theft charge is based on Santos using credit card information from donors to his campaign to make unauthorized charges and then using the money for various personal expenses, including designer clothes and Botox injections.

Although the remaining charges against Santos will be dismissed, he was required to admit to the facts underlying them as part of the plea agreement. They included additional charges of campaign finance fraud, unemployment insurance fraud, and false statements to the House of Representatives. (For more details, see my October 2023 post above.)

Santos’s campaign treasurer, Lisa Marks, earlier pleaded guilty to helping him falsify the FEC reports and had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. A former staffer, Samuel Miele, has also pleaded guilty to soliciting donations for Santos by impersonating a senior aide to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They are both still awaiting sentencing.

Santos will be sentenced on February 7. The identity theft charge carries a two year mandatory minimum sentence, and the (non-binding) sentencing guidelines call for six to eight years in prison. He has agreed not to appeal any sentence below eight years. He also must pay about $374,000 in restitution and $205,000 in forfeiture.