Republican US congressman George Santos has been charged by federal prosecutors with fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to the House of Representatives.
The 34-year-old appeared in a court on New York’s Long Island on Wednesday afternoon, where he pleaded not guilty to a 13-count indictment and was released on a $500,000 bond.
He is accused of misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars in political donations and lying about his true income once elected.
“It is a witch hunt, it makes no sense,” Santos told reporters gathered outside the courthouse.
“I’ve been complying throughout this entire process. I’m going to take care of clearing my name”.
Santos was elected in November’s midterm congressional elections. His victory flipped a Long Island district previously held by a Democrat, helping Republicans to regain control of the House. But he has since faced a series of scandals after he was found to have lied about his education, employment history, ethnicity and family background.
Breon Peace, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Santos had “used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied”.
The indictment is a blow to House Republicans who have become increasingly embarrassed by Santos’s presence but cannot afford to lose him given their slim majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
Several Republicans from the moderate New York suburbs have called for him to step down, and others in the region have chimed in. “The sooner he leaves, the sooner we can win the seat with someone who isn’t a liar,” Nicole Malliotakis, a New York City Republican, told Axios this week.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has not gone that far and may only do so if Santos is convicted. Santos, under increasing pressure, stepped down earlier this year from the congressional committees to which he was assigned.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, signalled that Republicans in the lower chamber were not going to move quickly to oust Santos. “There is a legal process, the charges just came out, we just saw some of them this morning. In America, there’s a presumption of innocence, but these are serious charges.”
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, said in a tweet: “The party of George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene cannot be trusted to govern. Not now. Not ever,” lumping in the indicted New York congressman with the pro-Trump firebrand Georgia lawmaker known for embracing conspiracy theories.
Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah who has clashed with Santos in the past, said: “He has demonstrated by his untruthfulness that he should not be in the United States Congress — perhaps should not even be on the public streets.”
In the 20-page indictment unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors alleged Santos used $50,000 in campaign donations from two people, who were told the money would be partly used for campaign advertisements, to buy designer clothing and pay his personal debts as well as funnel funds to his associates.
They also alleged Santos repeatedly filed for unemployment insurance during the Covid-19 pandemic, receiving a total of more than $24,000 despite making $120,000 a year as an employee of a Florida investment fund.
Once elected, Santos vastly overstated his income and his assets to the House, the indictment alleged, making himself out to be a multimillionaire.
If found guilty on all charges, Santos could spend the rest of his life in prison.
