Charges Against George Santos Are WAY Worse Than Expected
85,243 views May 11, 2023
Farron Balanced
Money laundering, embezzlement, wire fraud, lying to Congress and on federal disclosure forms: These are just a handful of the crimes that Republican Representative George Santos committed, according to the unsealed indictment that was released on Wednesday. These crimes all together come with a prison sentence of up to 20 years, making this no small matter for Santos. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.
*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos. Yesterday morning, the 13 count indictment against Republican representative George Santos was unsealed. And oh man, was it so much worse than what any of us could have imagined. Embezzlement, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, lying to Congress, money laundering, and those are just a few of the many things that George Santos has now been indicted for. And if convicted on all charges, it comes with a maximum prison sentence of up to 20 years. So what did he do? Let's get right into it. As Vice News reports, prosecutors accused Santos of embezzling campaign contributions to buy pricey designer clothes and using the money to give handouts to his friends. He also received $24,000 worth of unemployment during the pandemic, even though he had a job and was pulling down a salary. The indictment alleges. And then you have a lawyer and legal analyst, Tristan Snell on Twitter, who laid it out a little more bluntly. He created a phony 5 0 1 that could supposedly take unlimited soft money donations for independent expenditures. Then he took that money and spent it on himself for luxury designer clothing, credit card payments, et cetera. He fraudulently applied for and received unemployment benefits in 2020 during the lockdowns, even though he was employed at the time, defrauding the government of another $25,000. Then he lied on campaign finance forms requiring him to list out his income. He claimed he had been making $750,000 a year from his diviv organization Shell company, when he had actually only made 25,000 in income and 25,000 from the fraudulently obtained unemployment benefits. That's just a snapshot. Okay? This, this is not the full list of everything that this man has been alleged to have done. And of course, because he's only been indicted, not convicted, this is all alleged, right? We, we don't wanna get in trouble by saying he did these things. It's all alleged that he did them, but let's assume for a moment that he did do them. Okay? Right? I mean, let's operate under that assumption. I'm not saying he did, but let's pretend for a minute that he did. Most of this information is not information that was already available. That's what's so mind blowing about all of this, right? We knew about his lies that he told his constituents that he told the media, but none of that is prosecutable. Of course, these other things, this is beyond the scope of what any of us could have imagined, right? We knew the stories had come out where investigative reporters had found that he had, uh, you know, basically listed donors who according to the reports, they couldn't find records of these people existing. There were family member donors who later said, I didn't give him Any of this money. That stuff's not even there. Or if it is, it's a smaller part of one of the broader charges. Let's also not forget the fact that he is implicated in a massive credit card skimming scheme that is still under investigation in Seattle. They never closed that investigation, pardon me? So, uh, there's still a chance he could be indicted for that as well. So, bad things coming for George Santos in the near future. These are federal charges, not state charges. Um, again, pardon me, but, uh, because of that, because they're federal, not state, we do not necessarily have a timeline on when a, uh, trial will commence in the state of New York. Prosecutors are legally required to be ready to bring their case within six months, but because these are federal charges, we don't know. We simply do not know. I mean, a trial could happen by the end of the summer. A trial could happen at this point next year, A trial could be a year and a half, two years into the future. We don't know. So that's probably the biggest question mark out there at this point. But again, I cannot stress enough. These charges against George Santos are far more serious than anyone could have predicted. And it's likely that this man is going to spend at least a few years in the near future behind bars.
