Statement regarding new federal charges against Congressman George Santos

WASHINGTON, DC – Following a 23-count superseding indictment against Congressman George Santos of New York, Shanna Ports, Senior Legal Counsel for Campaign Finance at Campaign Legal Center, issued the following statement:   

“Voters have a right to know how the candidates competing for their vote are raising and spending money.  

As the new federal charges against Congressman George Santos make clear, his congressional campaign engaged in deceitful practices that denied voters in New York’s 3rd congressional district the information they needed in order to cast a fully informed vote. The Department of Justice must continue to use the legal tools at its disposal to keep the public informed of Representative Santos’s campaign’s misdeeds and ultimately ensure our electoral system is robust, transparent, and functional.”
 

On January 9, 2023, Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that recently elected Rep. George Santos, his 2022 campaign committee, Devolder-Santos for Congress, and treasurer Nancy Marks violated federal campaign finance laws. The following day, CLC referred the complaint to the Department of Justice.   

CLC’s complaint alleged, among other things, that Santos’s campaign falsely reported $705,000 in “personal loans” from Santos, and the information underlying Marks’s guilty plea appears to support that allegation: Prosecutors in Marks’s case have reportedly indicated that Marks and Santos conspired to fabricate $500,000 in loans made to the campaign in order to meet fundraising benchmarks. The superseding indictment against Rep. Santos includes new charges related to the loans.