Campaign-Money Questions
Santos previously claimed that a $500,000 loan he made to his campaign had come from his personal funds, which raised a lot of questions on condition that it wasn’t clear how he would have had that type of money sitting around. (In actual fact, as The Latest York Times reported last month, Santos was evicted by two different landlords and appeared, at one time, to be unable to pay just $2,250 in rent.)
But a recent campaign finance filing, per the Every day Beast, tells a unique story. The filing still says that the half one million dollars got here “from the candidate,” however the previously ticked box indicating “personal funds of the candidate” is checked not. One other recent filing shows that a $125,000 “loan from the candidate” also was not created from personal funds. And if you happen to’re finding yourself much more confused than you were 30 seconds ago, you’re not alone. “Now we have quite a few seasoned lawyers within the office and in our community, and everyone seems to be just about collectively scratching their heads,” Robert Maguire, the research director for the watchdog group Residents for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NBC News of the filings. Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of presidency watchdog Documented, told the Every day Beast: “I don’t know what they think they’re doing. Santos’s campaign might need unchecked the ‘personal funds of candidate’ box, but it surely remains to be reporting that the $500,000 got here from Santos himself. If the ‘loan from candidate’ didn’t actually come from the candidate, then Santos should come clean and disclose where the cash really got here from. Santos can’t uncheck a box and make his legal problems go away.”
And go away they haven’t! Last month federal prosecutors in Brooklyn reportedly launched an investigation into the congressman, which was said to incorporate a probe of his funds. He can be under investigation by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, the Latest York State attorney general’s office has individually said it’s “looking into quite a few issues” concerning Santos.
Other Campaign-Money Questions
It was already known that Santos’s campaign shadily recorded greater than three dozen expenses all costing $199.99, an amount conveniently only one cent below the edge at which campaigns must keep receipts. But just how shady was it? Well, a recent report from Politico puts it in stark terms for anyone considering that perhaps this whole thing was really only a funny coincidence:
“This was a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar operation,” Adav Noti, a former FEC lawyer and senior vp on the Campaign Legal Center, which has filed a grievance against the Latest York congressman, told the outlet. “We don’t know where the cash got here from. We don’t know where the cash went to.”
In related news, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose Speakership has been one humiliation after one other, said on Tuesday that Santos can be faraway from Congress if the House Ethics Committee determines he broke the law. Until then, nonetheless, he’ll be backing the guy. “You understand why I’m standing by him? Because his constituents voted for him,” McCarthy said, leaving out the part about his constituents having voted for a completely different person.
