‘I Think George Is Going to Be Perp Walked’: Former Santos Staffer Predicts Legal Doom for Ex-Boss

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

An ex-campaign staffer for Rep. George Santos (R-NY) predicted his former employer will ultimately face legal repercussions regarding his finances.

Santos, a freshman congressman, was found to have lied about many aspects of his life, including his ancestry and where he worked.

While those are not typically legal matters, perhaps the biggest question is how Santos became flush with millions of dollars after he reported having no assets and a $55,000 salary on a disclosure form during his 2020 run for Congress.

That bid was unsuccessful, but by 2022, Santos was well-off enough to loan his campaign $705,000. The origin of the money remains a mystery.

He has so far resisted calls to resign from Congress.

In a comprehensive piece published by Talking Points Memo on Wednesday, a former Santos staffer spoke about the campaign.

“I got nervous and I got defensive that things were not on the up and up. I felt like things were not right,” the source told TPM while being granted anonymity.

The staffer said the finances of the Santos campaign were sloppy.

“I thought that the lack of a financial disclosure, the messiness of the books, and the reporting were not great,” the former aide said.

The TPM report notes there were problems with Santos’ filings with the Federal Election Commission:

Federal campaigns are required to identify any donor who gives above $200 in a given calendar year. Donors are not permitted to give more than $2,900 to a single candidate in a given election. Yet some of the original versions of Santos’ reports included pages of contributions attributed simply to “anonymous.” Certain donors were listed as having given more than the $5,800 permitted for both a primary and general election.

TPM states the FEC sent more than 20 letters to the Santos campaign to flag the issues. The publication further says the campaign claimed to have spent exactly $199.99 seven separate times at a restaurant on Long Island, as well as “more than $13,000 at the restaurant on 28 separate occasions.”

“Lying on your resume is one thing,” the former staffer said. “But I think George is going to be perp walked out of a building because of this financial mess.”