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Congressman George Santos Charged with Fraud, Money Laundering and More

7 points by capableweb 3y ago

capableweb 3y ago
> A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging George Anthony Devolder Santos, better known as “George Santos,” a United States Congressman representing the Third District of New York, with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
- jruohonen 3y ago
  Well, I guess these things were probably kind of his intention all along, the "great" conman as he was. But I do wonder how he managed to fool so many voters?
  - jfengel 3y ago
    He was the only Republican who ran in 2020 among the COVID shutdowns. He lost, but it made him the default in 2022. The district has always been pretty right-wing. It sent a very strong right-winger in Pete King for 20 years. The incumbent Democrat left to run for governor, so he was running against a relative unknown. His win was a bit of a surprise, but not an enormous one. Basically, he "fooled" everybody in that nobody was really paying all that much attention. A fair number of people in both parties were suspicious, but Democrats claiming he was shady just sounds like partisanship, and Republicans weren't going to call attention to it. (The time for that would have been in the primaries, and nobody else really wanted to contest that district.) In the end, the vast majority of voters went along party lines, and it being a midterm election, an enormous number just stayed home. The district has almost 800,000 people in it. If the House of Representatives was ever supposed to involve a personal relationship with constituents, that time has long since passed. So the kind of vetting you might expect has been replaced by mass media, where even innocuous candidates are swamped with negative campaigning, and so voters tend to ignore it.
    - jruohonen 3y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. The issues with vetting of nominees was also one of the factors Levitsky and Ziblatt identified in: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306746/how-democracies-die-by-ziblatt-steven-levitsky-and-daniel/9780241381359 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306746/how-democracies-die-b... These are also global issues; because parties are doing poor job and media is lacking behind, people often elect candidates with harsh criminal records, known links to extremist organizations, or funding from foreign countries, etc.

7 points by capableweb 3y ago

> A 13-count indictment was unsealed today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging George Anthony Devolder Santos, better known as “George Santos,” a United States Congressman representing the Third District of New York, with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

jruohonen 3y ago
Well, I guess these things were probably kind of his intention all along, the "great" conman as he was. But I do wonder how he managed to fool so many voters?
- jfengel 3y ago
  He was the only Republican who ran in 2020 among the COVID shutdowns. He lost, but it made him the default in 2022. The district has always been pretty right-wing. It sent a very strong right-winger in Pete King for 20 years. The incumbent Democrat left to run for governor, so he was running against a relative unknown. His win was a bit of a surprise, but not an enormous one. Basically, he "fooled" everybody in that nobody was really paying all that much attention. A fair number of people in both parties were suspicious, but Democrats claiming he was shady just sounds like partisanship, and Republicans weren't going to call attention to it. (The time for that would have been in the primaries, and nobody else really wanted to contest that district.) In the end, the vast majority of voters went along party lines, and it being a midterm election, an enormous number just stayed home. The district has almost 800,000 people in it. If the House of Representatives was ever supposed to involve a personal relationship with constituents, that time has long since passed. So the kind of vetting you might expect has been replaced by mass media, where even innocuous candidates are swamped with negative campaigning, and so voters tend to ignore it.
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. The issues with vetting of nominees was also one of the factors Levitsky and Ziblatt identified in: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306746/how-democracies-die-by-ziblatt-steven-levitsky-and-daniel/9780241381359 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306746/how-democracies-die-b... These are also global issues; because parties are doing poor job and media is lacking behind, people often elect candidates with harsh criminal records, known links to extremist organizations, or funding from foreign countries, etc.