Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Geoge Santos, the CONman CONservative who CONNED his way into CONgress before he was expelled last year amid indictments on a then-growing number of federal fraud charges, is now expected to plead guilty to fraud charges in order to avoid a trial he doesn’t believe he can win due to how well-known he is. (I mean, it probably doesn’t help that he’s well-known for lying about his education, work history, charities he started and his race and ethnicity in order to take up space in the U.S. House.)
From the New York Times:
Mr. Santos arrived at federal court in Central Islip, N.Y., ahead of a 3 p.m. hearing where he is expected to enter a guilty plea and give a statement acknowledging the crimes he has agreed to plead to, according to two lawyers and two other people with knowledge of the case.
Pleading guilty would allow Mr. Santos to avoid a trial on nearly two dozen charges — including wire fraud, money laundering and stealing public funds — for which he was facing as many as 22 years in prison.
Santos was charged with a total of 23 federal counts of fraud-related activity, including charges he initially pleaded not guilty to such as allegations that he stole money from donors and lied to the government to cover it up. Santos’ trial was set to begin in a few weeks, but, on Friday, prosecutors asked presiding Judge Joanna Seybert to schedule a new pretrial meeting for Monday.
More from the Times:
Prosecutors painted Mr. Santos’s campaign as so desperate for cash that it turned to lying, cheating and stealing to finance its operations. But they also assert a pattern of self-dealing, which saw Mr. Santos repeatedly using his campaign account as a personal piggy bank.
Prosecutors said Mr. Santos used stolen credit card information from one donor to take $11,000 for his personal use. He convinced other donors to give money to what he said was a super PAC supporting his campaign. Instead, he used some of the money to buy designer clothing and pay his personal credit card bills.
On top of all that, Santos’ former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, previously admitted that she helped the Bernie Madoff of politics falsify a $500,000 loan to his campaign that never existed so he could qualify for financial and operational support from the Republican Party. Marks pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in October and is now facing between three and four years in prison.