George Santos Arrested, Indicted on 13 Federal Counts, Pleads Not Guilty

This week, Rep. George Santos (R–N.Y.) was indicted on 13 federal counts, including wire fraud and lying to Congress. Today, the Justice Department unsealed the indictment and announced that Santos had been taken into custody in New York. He later pleaded not guilty to all charges.*

“This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations,” said Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a press release. “Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.”

In December 2022, just weeks after Santos won his House seat, The New York Times published an extensive report calling into question nearly every aspect of Santos’s resumé, including his college and professional histories. Later reporting showed that Santos falsely claimed that his mother had died on 9/11 and that he was a descendant of Holocaust survivors.

While telling tall tales on the campaign trail is not a crime, the indictment alleges that Santos was up to much more. Prosecutors say that during his 2022 run for Congress, Santos encouraged supporters to send campaign contributions to a Florida-based company he operated “under the false pretense that the money would be used to support [Santos’] candidacy.” Santos then spent “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

Santos also reportedly enlisted a political consultant, identified in the indictment as Person No. 1, to falsely tell supporters that the company was either a 501(c)(4) or an “independent expenditure committee” like a super PAC, and therefor