George Santos, the Republican expelled from the US Congress by his colleagues, pleaded guilty on Monday to two serious crimes before a judge in the State of New York. After the agreement reached with the prosecution, the politician avoids a trial lasting several weeks in a process in which he was charged with a total of 23 charges, of which he had initially pleaded not guilty. In the end, Santos, 36, admitted the crimes of aggravated identity theft and electronic fraud, committed in relation to the 2022 campaign in which he was elected after falsifying his CV.
The trial was scheduled for early September. Although the plea clears him of most of the charges against him, including embezzlement and money laundering, he is expected to serve a prison sentence of several years. Sentencing will not be handed down until February 7 next year. Santos has agreed to repay $370,000 in funds he had misappropriated.
“I betrayed the trust of my constituents and supporters. I deeply regret my conduct,” the Republican said, his voice shaking as he entered his plea in a Long Island courtroom during a hearing on Monday, according to the Associated Press. The plea is the epilogue to the short career of the disgraced politician, whose scandals erupted before he was even sworn into office.
Santos was initially charged in May 2023 with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to the House of Representatives after the Republican congressman’s fabricated lies about his record were uncovered. Last October, he was charged with 10 additional counts, including wire fraud, materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission and aggravated identity theft.
According to the investigation carried out by Congress, Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, such as purchases at luxury stores and adult content websites like OnlyFans, and then had the campaign team present false or incomplete justifications. The former congressman fabricated a large part of his academic and professional resume and the discovery of his lies put him in the eye of the storm.
With 311 votes in favor of his removal, 114 against and 2 abstentions, Santos became last December the sixth member of the House of Representatives expelled by his colleagues. The Constitution expressly grants each chamber of Congress the power to “punish its members for disorderly conduct and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member,” something that until Santos’ case had been put into practice with 15 senators and 5 representatives, most of them for supporting secession and the Confederation in the civil war. In the case of the House, since that war there had been two expulsions for high-profile cases of corruption, but after a sentence had been handed down.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
Santos was once considered a rising political star after winning the suburban district that encompasses the wealthy North Shore of Long Island and a chunk of the traditionally Democratic New York borough of Queens in 2022. After Santos was ousted, Democrats regained the seat in a special election last February.
Follow all the international information atFacebook andXor inour weekly newsletter.
