Charges peel back the layers of Santos
Rep. George Santos dodges a gauntlet of news media questions outside federal court in Central Islip Wednesday. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
Pieces of this human puzzle known as Rep. George Anthony Devolder Santos are just now falling into place with his indictment six months after a “red wave” swept him into elected office.
The immediate benefit of these new criminal allegations is public knowledge. We learned more Wednesday about just who represents Queens and Nassau County in the Third Congressional District.
Criminal or not, the facts as documented aren’t pretty.
The 13 counts encompassing wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements to Congress describe what you might call a white-collar smash-and-grab thief.
One instance emerges as salient.
During the pandemic, the government beefed up the unemployment fund for jobless Americans. Santos applied and got $24,000 in benefits for the period March 2020 to April 2021. But he wasn’t eligible, the indictment said — because he was making $120,000 annually as a regional director of a Florida-based investment firm.
The punchline of this particular rip-off is rich. Santos is co-sponsor of a House Republican bill that calls for recovering fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment benefits. Now he gets a unique chance to see both sides of an issue.
During his winning campaign last year against Democrat Robert Zimmerman, Santos had a political consultant solicit funds from two donors under the guise of helping elect him, the indictment said.
The funding appeal was the white-collar smash of it; the grab came, feds say, when $50,000 from those donors was transferred to Santos’ personal bank accounts and used for debts and expenses, such as designer clothing.
Perhaps there’s no more sensible cover for a young grifter who once allegedly stole checks from his mother’s purse in Brazil than to present himself as a respectable financial professional. So it now seems fit that his fake resume included a nonexistent education at Baruch College and nonexistent career experience at Goldman Sachs.
Santos also allegedly lied on disclosure forms to the House — and to the public — about his salary and dividends from the still-mysterious Devolder Organization LLC, a Florida-based entity “of which he was sole beneficial owner,” prosecutors said.
Outside court, as he dodged a gauntlet of news media questions, Santos called it all a “witch hunt” and, having pleaded not guilty, vowed to fight the charges. That indicates he plans to go forward taking the approach of Donald Trump and others — deny all and speak self-righteously.
There’s no sign that this case took sophisticated sleuthing. Relevant records would show Santos was paid for a job; others would show unemployment payments were sent. And all along the congressman’s financial disclosure forms to the House have raised questions of irregularity.
But mysteries still lurk in the framework of Santos’ finances.
The 13-count indictment does not delve deeply into his involvement within the last three years in Harbor City Capital Corporation. That Florida-based company allegedly orchestrated a Ponzi scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission shut it down in 2021. Before that Santos, representing the firm, pitched potential investors over expensive dinners in Queens, according to published reports.
It’s unclear whether Harbor City will have a nexus with this case beyond Santos’ mere involvement with it.
One question lying ahead is whether Santos — who projects such pride in his own cleverness — will be forced out of the job. Right now, his days in Congress look numbered. But if he somehow survives politically, it will be just one strange story in a period of government that’s rife with them.
n COLUMNIST DAN JANISON’S opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
