Another US watchdog files FEC complaint against Santos
The troubles keep piling up for serial prevaricator George Santos, the freshman representative whose alleged misuse of campaign funds now has another government accountability group asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate.
Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog organization, filed a complaint with the FEC on Friday, alleging the New York Republican’s campaign misused funds for personal expenses, accepted excessive contributions and filed disclosure forms late.
“With each passing day, Congressmen Santos’s rap sheet of potential crimes and outlandish lies continues to grow. The FEC has an obligation to hold him accountable — Speaker McCarthy and his MAGA majority certainly won’t, especially after gutting the Congressional Ethics Office,” Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig said in a statement.
On Monday, the Campaign Legal Center filed its own FEC complaint also accusing the Santos campaign of paying personal expenses, focusing on its suspicious disclosures showing disbursements of $199.99, a cent below the threshold for providing receipts.
Santos has faced intense scrutiny since December, when The New York Times reported that he lied about nearly every aspect of his life. (Previous questioning of Santos’ make-believe biography by local news outlets before the general election failed to attract much attention.)
Confronted with the claims that he had lied about graduating from Baruch College, playing volleyball there, working on Wall Street, owning multiple rental properties, earning a high six-figure income, having Jewish ancestors who survived the Holocaust, running an animal welfare charity and having employees who died in the Pulse nightclub shooting, Santos has admitted to “résumé embellishment” while refusing to accept any formal repercussions.
The Accountable.US complaint alleges that the Santos campaign improperly accepted $113,390 in contributions from 36 individuals that exceeded the $2,900 per election limit. It also alleges that Santos used campaign funds for personal use, including rent and travel expenses to Florida unrelated to the election.
In addition to the FEC complaints, Santos’ legion of lies has already led other watchdogs to lodge complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics, Democrats to ask the House Ethics Committee to investigate and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York to reportedly launch an investigation.
Santos remained defiant on Thursday as the demands for his defenestration grew, describing it as the product of the media’s biased scrutiny of Republicans.