The campaign of scandal-plagued Republican Rep. George Santos will lose its ability to lift donations or make payments if it fails to appoint a treasurer, the Federal Election Commission warned.
The FEC told Santos on Tuesday that it “has received no information regarding a latest treasurer” because the former person in that role, Nancy Marks, resigned last month.
related investing news
“It’s required that for any committee to conduct any business, they should have an energetic treasurer,” the FEC said in a letter to the Latest York lawmaker and his campaign committee.
“Failure to appoint a treasurer will lead to the lack of the committee to simply accept contributions and make disbursements,” the agency said. It added that campaigns are required to appoint a latest treasurer inside 10 days of the previous treasurer’s resignation.
A lawyer for Santos didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Marks resigned as Santos’ treasurer on Jan. 25, jumping ship within the midst of the freshman congressman’s struggle to maintain his head above a tidal wave of scrutiny surrounding his lies on the campaign trail and his funds.
That very same day, the campaign filed an amended form listing Thomas Datwyler as its latest treasurer. But Datwyler, through a lawyer, quickly denied that he had taken the job.
The FEC asked Santos’ campaign for clarification, warning that “knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a federal government agency” would result in criminal charges.
In a year-end report filed Jan. 31, the Santos campaign listed as its treasurer an individual named Andrew Olson.
No other information has been provided about Olson; his name doesn’t appear as treasurer on another committee reports which were filed with the FEC. Olson has not yet filed a form that’s required for him to turn into treasurer.
CNBC has thus far been unable to make contact with Olson. Currently, the FEC lists Santos as his campaign’s own treasurer.
“The way in which they filed it, Olson shouldn’t be officially the treasurer,” said Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, in a recent phone interview with CNBC.
Ghosh said the “sloppiness” of the Santos campaign’s year-end report suggests an absence of experience on the a part of Olson, if he did indeed prepare it.
As an illustration, one individual made a $10,000 contribution to the campaign, which far exceeds the legal limit. “That is an obvious one,” Ghosh said, and something that an experienced treasurer would have caught.
Santos has been bludgeoned with criticism and bipartisan calls to resign since shortly after winning his election to Congress, when a bombshell Latest York Times report questioned key details of his biography and the source of the cash he used to assist fund his campaign.
Santos later admitted lying about parts of his background, but he has denied committing any crimes and vowed to serve out his full two-year term within the House.
He has spent his first months in Congress weaving through throngs of reporters while mostly avoiding their questions on a big selection of damning allegations against him.
Santos is facing investigations on the local, state, federal and international level. The Department of Justice has reportedly asked the FEC to carry off on any enforcement actions against Santos while they conduct a criminal investigation into his campaign funds.
The FEC’s latest notice adds to the pile of questions surrounding Santos’ campaign conduct — including whether he plans to seek reelection.
Last week, the agency told Santos that his campaign committee’s recent activity requires him to either declare himself a candidate for the 2024 election or disavow the campaign’s moves, in keeping with a letter obtained by CNN.
In a defiant tweet Tuesday, Santos asserted he’s “not leaving, I’m not hiding and I’m NOT backing down.”
