- GOP Congressman George Santos pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 13 counts of campaign-related fraud.
- His 20-page indictment reads like a comic farce, defense lawyers tell Insider.
- It paints Santos as “buffoonish,” “delusional” and “the definition of a dumb criminal,” they said.
The campaign-fraud indictment against New York Congressman George Santos is a damned funny read, legal experts told Insider on Wednesday.
Its 20 pages present a “slam dunk” case, and paint Santos as “buffoonish,” “delusional,” and “The definition of a dumb criminal,” they said.
“He provided a trail that — I want to say FBI bloodhounds, but FBI cocker spaniels could follow,” longtime Manhattan defense attorney Ron Kuby said.
“That’s not limited to his repeated $199.99 campaign expenditures,” Kuby told Insider, referring to Santos’ history of reporting dozens of campaign transactions as just below the $200 threshold requiring the saving of receipts.
The congressman from Long Island pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to federal charges alleging he tricked supporters into sending him tens of thousands of dollars in contributions he then spent on designer clothes and credit card payments.
The well-documented serial liar is accused of stealing supporters’ money, lying to Congress, and illegally taking unemployment benefits for a year during the pandemic despite having a six-figure job at an investment firm.
The congressman surrendered to authorities in Melville on Long Island Wednesday, before being transported to a federal courthouse in Central Islip. He was released on a $500,000 bond after entering his plea.
Santos’ repeated, ongoing lies dragged him into the spotlight — now they could land him behind bars, experts noted.
“There’s his claims of self-funding his campaign that were utterly unsupported by any visible means of support,” Kuby said.
“Then there’s his consistent, and persistent, lying about everything that attracted attention in the first place,” he added, calling Santos “both dumb and buffoonish.”
Santos has been accused of making up a wide-range of stories: that his mother died in 9/11, that he was a Broadway producer, and that he had ties to the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Kurby said that the smartest fraudsters work hard to live under the radar, which Santos has certainly not done.
“They don’t run for Congress and they certainly don’t do it based on a series of demonstrably provable falsehoods,” he said.
Smart criminals don’t get caught, Kuby added, calling Santos, “the definition of a dumb criminal.”
Mark Bederow, a defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor, is also laughing over the indictment.
“He appears to be a one man crime wave and nothing more than really a petty, unsophisticated crook — as alleged,” Bederow told Insider.
“Every facet of what he was doing for the last several years appears to be involved in lying, stealing, and dissembling, which is consistent with everything that’s been reported about his personal life on top of all of this,” Bederow said.
“And you read it” he said of the indictment, which charges Santos with a baker’s dozen counts that include wire fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds. “And I mean he just comes off as a cartoon.”
The scheme, Bederow added, is “totally sloppy, and he comes off as just a delusional, lying dope.”
It’s bad enough to lie to the press, but when those lies extend to federal documents, the Department of Justice may come knocking — and that’s what happened here.
Santos “told a lot of lies on federal documents,” another longtime Manhattan defense attorney, Arthur Aidala, said, describing the indictment allegations in a nut shell.
“He definitely put thought, time, effort, energy into it,” Aidala said of the scheme, after paging through the indictment.
“Obviously it wasn’t that clever because he got caught,” he added. “There was a paper trail that was easy to follow.”
Still, Santos gets some credit for thoroughness, Aidala said, in “really thumbing his nose at all the laws regarding how to finance a congressional campaign — really just blatantly breaking the laws.”
“This isn’t a case about the margins,” he said. “This is a case about the essence of how you raise money to work for Congress.”
Source: I N S I D E R
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