What a piece of work is George Santos. How ignoble in his reason, how infinite in his capacity for crookedness and deception. Shakespeare would have loved this guy. He’s like the character Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, who wants to play all the parts. Santos believes he IS all the parts. He is Latino, Black, and since he flashed the white power symbol, we guess now he’s white, too.
If there is another Congressman in our history who was sworn in in the wee hours of a Saturday night and who finds himself being reported the following Monday to the Federal Elections Commission, his first day on the job, for fraud, I don’t know about it.
The latest revelation in the Santos saga is that he had one of his campaign staffers pretend to be one of Kevin McCarthy’s staffers, in order to get donor money. If this is not the lowest rung on the ladder you’ve visited in many a year in politics, please enlighten me.
NEWS: Federal complaint filed Monday says Rep. George Santos hid sources of funds he lent his campaign;
Says Santos’ salary soaring from $55,000 in 2020 to $750,000 in 2022 suggests he was a funnel for others’ money. https://t.co/532SRCT3G2 via @Newsday @TomBruneDC
— Yancey Roy (@YanceyRoy) January 9, 2023
A member of George Santos’ political team had a plan to raise money for the Republican congressman’s campaign: Impersonate the chief of staff of now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Wealthy donors received calls and emails from a man who said he was Dan Meyer, McCarthy’s chief of staff, during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, according to people familiar with the matter. His name was actually Sam Miele, and he worked for Santos raising money for his campaign, according to one GOP donor who contributed to Santos’ campaign. This financier and some others in this story declined to be named in order to speak freely about private discussions. […]
Some of the tactics deployed by campaign fundraisers have raised eyebrows among ethics and legal experts. Brendan Fischer, a deputy executive director of the watchdog Documented, and Robert Maguire, a research director at campaign ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, each told CNBC that the impersonation of McCarthy’s chief of staff could have broken the law.
“A person who misrepresented themselves as speaking on behalf of a candidate in order to raise money may have committed a criminal violation, and any other person who knowingly and willfully participated in the plan could also face criminal charges,” Fischer said in an email.
The Washington Times reported last month that one of Santos’ staffers was impersonating Meyer, but didn’t identify who it was. McCarthy’s team first learned about a Santos staffer impersonating the speaker’s chief of staff in August 2021, the Times wrote.The publication said the staffer would call donors pretending to be Meyer and send follow-up emails from a fake address.
Neither Santos nor anyone mentioned in this story has been charged with a crime. Santos’ lawyer would not say when asked whether Santos knew Miele pretended to be McCarthy’s chief of staff.
No, and I wouldn’t expect him to. How many Scaramuccis do you think Santos will last in Congress? Again, you have to admit, for the fertilizer to hit the fan like this on the first day of a freshman congress member’s term does not bode well for career success. But then again, the GOP keeps lowering the bar. Pretty soon, not only will no one care if Trump shoots somebody on 5th Avenue, the GOP will make it legal to do so.
We can only hope that Brazilian officials will soon request his extradition to face felony stealing charges that he fled the country to escape. I think extradition would be an easy call to answer in his case, as his own donors no also feel betrayed in every way
Santos has one thing and only one thing in his favor. It’s a virtual certainty that the GOP wouldn’t seat his seat turn into one held by a Democrat. That’s it. That would have been the case, for a while at least even with a larger GOP majority but with it so razor thin and the issues they’ve already got they can’t afford to give up a single seat. And now the GOP has real leverage over him to be a good little Congress BOY and do WTF he’s told by whomever hold the Speaker’s Gavel. Sadly, Santo isn’t going anywhere. Except one day to jail perhaps but that will be a long time coming.
At least four separate investigations were underway before this one; one each at the county, state, federal and international levels. He isn’t a big fish in political circles so no agency should have any qualms about bringing charges. His only use to McCarthy was his vote for Speaker. Now that’s out of the way, McCarthy won’t risk the ire of his biggest donors to keep Rep-known-as-George around.
Check list for being a good member of the GOP caucus:
Lie with ease
Be good at grifting
Know how to gaslight
Project your lies, lawbreaking and sexual proclivities onto the other party
Know all the hand signals of the white supremacists
Have a history of stuff you don’t want anyone to know about
Know how to kiss orange ass
The republicans have kept lowering the bar so much, it’s now at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.