Santos charged by feds with same crimes Trump is under investigation for

Page one of Santos indictment

Under the category, yes indeed there seems to be a God, Republican Congressman George Santos of New York was charged this morning with thirteen federal crimes, including wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying on official forms to Congress.  Santos, previously a serial liar, is now an alleged serial criminal.

The charges against Santos for theft of public funds relate to his applying for unemployment benefits at a time when he was earning $120,000 per year from a Florida company that was later accused by the SEC of being a “classic ponzi scheme.”

The charges of making false statements to Congress relate to Santos lying on his official financial disclosure statements required by the House of Representatives. 

It’s the charges of political fund-raising fraud and wire fraud that are particularly pertinent and interesting.  Santos is charged with five counts of violating a federal law forbidding raising funds for one purpose and then spending the funds for another.  Steve Bannon and his co-conspirators in the Build the Wall scam were charged with violating the same law.  Bannon and two others raised money they promised would be used to privately build part of Trump’s wall on the Mexican border, and then they used some of that money for personal expenses, including luxury travel, buying cars, and other purposes.

In Santos’ case, he solicited contributors for donations he said would be used in his campaign for the House, and then he turned around and used the money “to make personal purchases (including of designer clothing), to withdraw cash, to discharge personal debts, and to transfer money to his associates,” according to the Department of Justice indictment.

Santos is charged with three counts of wire fraud for using electronic money transfers to move the campaign donations from a campaign Super PAC account through two other bank accounts owned by Santos himself.  This is also called money laundering.

In June of last year, the Jan. 6 Committee charged that Donald Trump had done much the same thing after he lost the 2020 election by setting up a Super PAC he said was intended to fund efforts to file lawsuits alleging voting fraud.  Trump raised about $250 million for this purpose, but none of the money he raised was spent on voting fraud lawsuits.  In fact, no fund was ever established for filing voting fraud lawsuits.  Instead, the millions were moved into Trump’s main money-raising fund, the Save America PAC, and used to fund his presidential campaign for 2024, and for other purposes.  Some of the money was used before Trump announced his campaign for president to fund his lawsuits involving his mishandling of top-secret documents found by the FBI in a search of Mar a Lago.

It’s complicated.  The New York Times recently reported that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has been investigating Trump’s post 2020 fund raising for fraud.  The allegation is that Trump and others involved in raising funds that were said to be intended for voting fraud lawsuits in fact knew that no voting fraud had been committed during the 2020 election.  Trump had commissioned two formal studies of the election that were supposed to look for voting fraud.  Both studies found no voting fraud and reported this fact to Trump and his fund raisers.  So, if money was being raised on the basis that there had been voting fraud when Trump and others knew there had been no such fraud, that might amount to violations of criminal fraud statutes.

There are also possible violations of wire fraud statutes similar to the crimes Santos has been charged with. Ken Gross, former associate general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, told NPR last year that violations of campaign finance laws are difficult to prove.  “You would need some facts as to the scheming, if you will, behind this fundraising effort,” Gross told NPR. “Intent is going to come into play ... prosecutors are going to need some aggravating factors before they pursue it.”

Which is exactly what Special Prosecutor Smith is doing right now with at least one of his two grand juries sitting in Washington, according to the New York Times.  “In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity,” the Times reported at the end of April.  “Prosecutors have been heavily focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fund-raising, such as who was approving email solicitations that were blasted out to lists of possible small donors and what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims.  The Justice Department, with its ability to bring criminal charges, has been able to prompt more extensive cooperation from a number of witnesses.”

More recent reports of grand jury activity have focused on subpoenas issued to people who worked for the Republican National Committee and the Save America PAC who were involved in a joint fund-raising committee that was associated with the money solicited after Trump lost the election of 2020.  Prosecutors are said to be looking into violations not only of campaign finance laws, but of wire fraud laws as well. 

In the Santos charges, intent is key to proving wire fraud and campaign fraud violations.  Did Santos know at the time the money was solicited from donors that it was not going to be used to fund his campaign by purchasing ad time on television, but rather for his own personal expenses?  In Trump’s case, intent is apparently the focus of the Special Prosecutor’s investigation.  Did the individuals raising money for Trump after he lost the election know that the funds would not be used for lawsuits involving voting fraud?  Did they know that there was no voting fraud to begin with? 

The Times reported that two of the people who investigated voting fraud (and found none) for Trump’s campaign have been interviewed by the grand jury.  The grand jury has been asking witnesses whether Trump was briefed on the findings of the two firms that failed to find voting fraud in the 2020 election.  One of the people interviewed by the grand jury refused to comment for the Times.  The other admitted that he had found no evidence of voting fraud that would be sufficient to overturn the election but refused to talk to the Times about his testimony before the grand jury.

Santos used the money he raised for personal expenses, a purpose other than the one for which he told donors the money would be used. But whether the money raised by Trump went into his personal bank accounts is not the point.  Trump told donors the money they contributed would be spent on lawsuits to overturn the results of the election, when in fact, the money went into his super PAC, where it was not used for that purpose.  All you have to do to violate wire fraud statutes is lie about what you do with the money you raise using emails or other interstate communications. 

George Santos has announced his support for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.  If Santos donated any money to Trump’s campaign, you can bet Trump’s people are examining where that money came from and writing checks to give it back.  It's never a good sign when you’re being investigated for violating the same laws one of the greatest fraudsters in the history of American politics has been indicted for.