U.S. federal prosecutors have filed charges against New York Republican Congressman George Santos, CNN reports , citing sources.
Santos is expected to appear in federal court for the Eastern District of New York on May 10. What exactly he is accused of, the sources do not know. The FBI and U.S. Justice Department prosecutors in New York and Washington are known to be investigating false data in Santos' campaign finance documents.
Santos' lawyer, as well as representatives of the Brooklyn federal prosecutor's office in New York, the US Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment.
CNN notes that the filing of charges cannot prevent Santos from serving as a congressman. But if the article imputed to Santos assumes more than two years in prison, he will be banned from voting in the House of Representatives.
The Santos scandal began in December 2022. On December 19, after his election victory but before he was due to take office in January 2023, The New York Times reported that he had misrepresented many aspects of his life and career, including his education and experience. For example, Santos claimed that he worked at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, but this information was not confirmed by the company itself. After that, Santos said that he worked for a firm that was in partnership with this bank.
The NYT also reported that Santos has unresolved allegations of check fraud in Brazil.
On December 21, The Forward and Jewish Insider reported that Santos lied about his family's alleged Jewish background. His claims that his maternal grandparents were Jewish Holocaust refugees fleeing Soviet Ukraine and German-occupied Belgium turned out to be false. It turned out that his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil.
In July 2021, Santos tweeted that the 9/11 attack claimed the life of his mother. However, there is no evidence that his mother was at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
As Santos' strange scandal flared up, more people from his past revealed details of his life – for example, a drag queen from Brazil, Eula Roshar, said she was friends with Santos in 2005, when he performed as a drag queen in the Rio de Janeiro. Another former acquaintance of his revealed that Santos aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro and that he regularly competed in beauty pageants. Santos initially denied this, but then admitted that it was true.
On December 22, Santos tweeted, "I want to tell my story and it will be told next week." On the same day, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the opening of an investigation into Santos. The US Republican Jewish Coalition accused Santos of impersonating a Jew.