First appeared in NewsBreak
By Aron Solomon
George Santos, a Republican Representative from New York, was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds, and lying on financial disclosure reports.
The charges followed months of investigation by the office of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), which has been conducting one of the inquiries into Mr. Santos’s financial and campaign activities.
According to the indictment, Santos engaged in multiple fraudulent schemes, including a fraudulent political contribution solicitation scheme, a fraudulent unemployment benefits scheme, and making false statements to the U.S. House of Representatives in financial disclosure reports.
Santos allegedly defrauded prospective political supporters by operating a limited liability company through which he allegedly told donors that there were “no limits” on how much contributions could be, and at least one person then made contributions to his campaign that exceeded the limit set by campaign finance laws.
This week, the case took a very interesting twist, when several leading news organizations, including AP and The New York Times, asked a federal magistrate judge to unseal the names of the “donors” who put up Santos’s $500,000 bail.
On Monday, Santos, through his lawyers, claimed that he would rather forsake his pre-trial release and report to prison than reveal the names of said donors.
Today, on Tuesday afternoon, the plot dramatically thickened, with New York Magistrate Judge Anne Y. Shields agreeing to unseal records showing the identities of the people who helped Santos make $500,000 bond in his criminal fraud case.
Tp make things even more interesting, Shields ordered the records sealed through Friday to give Santos time to appeal in EDNY. Absent a successful appeal (logically, whether Santos chooses to release himself from the bond and report to prison) these names will be released.
As David Gelman, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer noted:
“It clearly had no impact upon the Magistrate Judge for the recipient of this bond to state that they would rather go to jail ahead of trial rather than allow the suretors to face the public attention of having their names revealed.”
In all seriousness, the argument that the Santos team is putting forward here is one of safety. If the names of the people who gifted Santos with this unsecured $500,000 appearance bond are revealed, they could be in danger, given the remarkably charged political climate in which we live.
But the counter-argument is “So what?” Perhaps people who would consider gifting people such as Rep. George Santos with $500,000 should think at least twice before doing so.
No matter how the rest of the week plays out, this is yet another example of how dirty politics appears in 2023. We can all be excused if we ask ourselves out loud how far we have fallen from the public good that politics was at least supposed to encompass.
About Aron Solomon
A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon, JD, is the Chief Legal Analyst for Esquire Digital and the Editor-in-Chief for Today’s Esquire. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. Aron has been featured in Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, TechCrunch, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Fortune, Venture Beat, The Independent, Fortune China, Yahoo!, ABA Journal, Law.com, The Boston Globe, YouTube, NewsBreak, and many other leading publications.
