Judge declines to dismiss charges against George Santos

A federal judge on Friday declined to dismiss several criminal charges against George Santos, the ex-Republican House member expelled from Congress last year.  

Santos faces 23 counts connected to separate accusations he misled and mistreated campaign donors, lied on financial disclosures and inflated campaign finance reports. The former lawmaker, who has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him, is also accused of fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits. 

He asked U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in various motions to dismiss three of those charges, including two counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of theft of public money, which she combined and “denied in its entirety.” 

Santos’s criminal exposure builds on his historic rise and fall in the House, which began after he admitted to embellishing parts of his background while running for office. Since then, he has been accused of several unlawful schemes intertwined with his campaign. 

Federal prosecutors say Santos stole campaign donors’ identities and used their credit cards to rack up thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges, in addition to cushioning his own personal bank account and his campaign fund.  

Two of Santos’s former staffers have also faced charges and since pleaded guilty.  

His former fundraiser, Samuel Miele, was accused of impersonating a top aide to a member of House leadership while soliciting contributions for Santos’s campaign, and Nancy Marks, his former campaign treasurer, pleaded guilty to conspiring with the then-candidate to commit fraud on his campaign finance reports.  

Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, previously accused Santos of using the electoral process as an “opportunity to defraud the public and our government institutions.” 

Court filings from the prosecution have previously indicated that plea negotiations with Santos were ongoing. The ex-lawmaker has offered conflicting opinions on the matter, suggesting both that accepting a plea deal is “not on the table” and that he’s “not ruling it out.”