Federal prosecutors have officially filed criminal charges against
freshman Republican Representative George Santos.
Now, these are charges brought forward by the department of justice.
And while we don't know what the exact charges are,
we do know that he will appear in court this week.
According to CNN's reporting on this, the exact nature of the charges couldn't
immediately be learned, but the FBI and the Justice Department public integrity
prosecutors in New York and Washington have been examining allegations of false
statements in Santos's campaign finance filings and other claims.
And so, as I mentioned, he is very likely to appear in court this week.
In fact, as early as tomorrow, Santos is expected to appear as soon as Wednesday at
federal court in New York's eastern district,
where the charges have been filed under seal, which is why we don't know what
the exact charges are at this moment, but we will learn pretty soon, I imagine.
Now, this comes after Santos has been under investigation
in multiple jurisdictions and by the House Ethics Committee.
In fact, the Federal Election Commission was also investigating George Santos,
but the DOJ reached out to the government agency and let them know,
hey, we got this.
We're getting involved now, and we're gonna take over this investigation now.
And I do think that this is very likely gonna have to do with some
potential financial crimes, whether it's campaign finance or
literally stealing money through charitable efforts that he started.
So, for instance, there are allegations that he broke campaign finance laws.
There are allegations that he violated federal conflict of interest laws.
There have also been some accusations regarding his charitable organization.
He had allegedly raised money for an Iraq War veteran's dog,
and apparently that money never went to the veteran.
That's what the accusation is.
So there's a lot going on here.
There's also the accusation that he was the mastermind behind
a credit card fraud scheme.
There's a lot to get into, but we'll see how this all plays out.
And I'm glad that the Department of Justice is doing its job and going after
this guy who very clearly loves to lie to people, but also potentially scam people.
>> Okay, so lying as a politician is not a crime.
>> It's the most protective thing in the world.
>> Yeah, by the way, legally, constitutionally, and through the law.
Anna's right, it is the most protective thing.
The politicians are allowed to lie in Congress, they're allowed to lie on air.
They're allowed to lie in their ads, they're allowed to lie nonstop.
And they do.
If you were gonna arrest politicians for lying,
you'd have to arrest at least 500 out of the 535 people in Congress.
And so now the mainstream media won't tell you that they say those are beloved,
honorable politicians.
There's only a couple of them who lie, like George Santos and Donald Trump.
No, that's not remotely true, both Republicans and Democrats lie, and
they lie in a massive way, okay?
That's not the issue here.
So the issue is you still are not allowed to break laws.
And so what are the laws that are potential here, again,
that we don't have the leak for?
We know that the case is coming,
but they do not have the information on what the charges are.
But we can easily speculate as Anna began to do there.
So, first of all, when you run a scam charity, that's fraud.
If you did that and you're not part of the establishment of the lease or
anything like that, you're definitely going to jail, okay?
So Santos is in Congress now, but they've really kind of shunned him so
he doesn't have a big power base.
So he's left a little bit exposed, so
they could pursue fraud charges against him in a criminal fashion.
Now, remember, Donald Trump has already admitted to fraud and
paid a giant civil settlement.
He did that on a couple of fronts, he ran a fake charity and a fake university.
And he had to admit that they were both fake, and
that he was basically just using it to steal people's money, and
he paid giant settlements for it, but he didn't go to jail.
Why? Because he was definitely part of
the elites in the establishment.
Even though he claims to be against the establishment,
the fact that he was powerful protected him from going to jail.
Santos does not have that kind of protection, so
if he's convicted of a criminal fraud, probably he will go to jail, okay?
So that's point number one.
Point number two is campaign finance laws are real and necessary.
Because look, we nearly legalize bribery because you could give literally over $100
million in campaign contributions, and they could funnel a lot of that money to
their own properties, to their own businesses as Donald Trump did.
But you still can't just break those laws and take bribes or
take ill-gotten money and put it into your own campaign,
depending on the efficiency of ill-gotten, etc, right?
There are some laws, and you need those laws so that they don't do out and
out bribery and go, forget the 100 million in campaign contributions.
Here's $100 million in your pocket.
Okay, so I would hope that Republicans who love the slogan drain the swamp
would agree with us that that kind of corruption is unacceptable, right?
So they must enforce those laws.
Again, there's always a Donald Trump exception because Republicans who
generally hate corruption, the Republican voters, which I give them credit for
when it comes to Donald Trump, they go,
no, he's allowed to break campaign finance laws.
It's no big deal that he did that with Stormy Daniels, etc.
But Santos does not get the exception, so he could be in significant trouble.
>> In fact, in the past, there have been lawmakers,
people who have been elected into office who broke campaign finance laws,
were prosecuted and went to prison for it, right?
I mean, I'm trying to remember specific examples, but it has happened,
it's not unprecedented.
And these are politicians who were considered far more, I guess,
credible, far more powerful than George Santos is at this very moment.
Yeah, there was a guy named James Traficant who broke a number of laws, I
forget exactly if it was campaign finance, or fraud, or a combination thereof.
He went to prison, he ran from prison, there's Duke Cunningham,
a Republican from California did massive fraud.
Mark this as of my favorite stories.
On his way to the press conference to cry that he found Jesus and regrets it, he
took a laundry bag full of cash and threw it out of his car onto his wife's lawn.
And then apparently on the drive from the laundry bag to the press conference,
he found Jesus.
Okay, so there's been crooks in Congress for a long, long time.
George Santos comes from a rich tradition, okay?
And my point about having his feet in both camps, he's credible these
days in the establishment's mind because he's a congressman.
But the rest of Congress rejects him and
the rest of the establishment rejects him, so he's not quite credible.
So there might be a compromise because this is all about power, guys.
It isn't about the truth, right?
The compromise might be, okay, now you can't run again and
you're driven out of Congress, but you did run a nice scam and
you did get one foot inside the establishment.
So it's not like we're gonna put you in prison like a regular person.
So that might be the compromise here, [LAUGH] but
we're a long way away from there.
>> So we'll see how this plays out.
Kevin McCarthy was asked to comment about the criminal charges, and
apparently he said that they will look into the charges before determining if
he thinks Santos should be removed from Congress.
Quote, I'll look at the charges, the California Republicans said.
>> Okay, one last thing.
The giant hypocrisy of the media, John McCain is one of the most famous people to
be involved in campaign finance violations.
He was part of a giant scam and he got caught, okay?
And it was nearly ended his career, he was part of five congresspeople
who were caught in that scam where he was gonna take money.
That's why he later pretended to be a champion of getting money out of politics,
because he actually was the guy who was involved in a scam to get money for
his votes.
Did he get the George Santos treatment from the media?
>> He did not.
Even though he has probably the most famous case,
why didn't he get that treatment?
Because he loves wars, he loves tax cuts for the rich,
he loves giving everything away to the powerful or he did.
And that's why to this day, if you speak ill of John McCain anywhere,
the Main Street forget the right-winger remember, he's a Republican.
The mainstream media will turn around and just rip your head off.
How dare you?
John McCain is holy.
So understand the hypocrisy are here as they pile on George Santos, but
leave all their corrupt buddies alone.