CNN's
Brynn Gingras
is live outside
the courthouse on Long Island.
Brant, what are you hearing
Yeah, we're just hearing, John,
that George Santos is in custody
and this indictment has been unsealed.
I want to give you some quick details
as we're going through the paperwork
He is charged on a 13 count indictment.
According to those court
documents, the charges
include 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.
Again, we're just getting this indictment
that has just been unsealed.
We're hearing that
Santos is inside the federal court
courthouse here behind me,
and he has been arrested
on these charges.
And, of course, we're learning
that he will see a judge later today,
very likely on these charges.
But we are still going
through that paperwork
to get the details of these counts.
Again, though, 13 count indictment
just unsealed,
including a wire fraud, money
laundering, a theft of public funds
and two counts
of making materially false statements
to the House. Of Representatives.
All right. Brynn Gingras for
us outside the courthouse.
Brant, thank you very much.
We'll let you dig through
this indictment more as more details
become public.
Thank you very much.
Indicted now once and now it is unsealed
and now he is in custody.
Wire fraud, L.A.
money laundering, theft of public funds
What do you make of that?
So we have not seen
the actual indictment yet.
But based on that description from Brant,
let's sort of run through generally
what these statutes are.
Wire fraud is a very broadly use statute
that basically says
to steal anything
from anybody by lying to them.
The wire part just means
you did it over the Internet
or the phone,
something that's always going to apply
to me.
So this is going to apply
to some sort of fraud
whereby George Santos
presumably took money
from somebody else by lying to them.
Then we have money laundering.
Now that means taking the proceeds,
the money that you stole and hiding it
somehow trying to conceal it
from investigators.
Then we have theft of public funds.
Now, that's interesting.
That means
not only did he steal money
from some private individual,
but it would have to be
some sort of public money,
some sort of federal
or state governmental money
so I'm interested to see
what that is about.
And then finally,
making materially false statements
to the House of Representatives.
This is what we were talking about,
I think, before, Sara,
that you have to make certain campaign
related disclosures
to the House,
of course, lying to the House,
whether during verbal testimony
or in documents that you file.
That, too, is a federal crime.
So I would just
sort of looking at this up
and that money laundering,
you can get up to 20 years.
I mean,
these charges are very serious
and hold a lot of time potentially,
if he's convicted.
They are very serious.
Most of these charges
are going to carry 20 year maximums.
Now, we have to be careful
whenever we talk about these maximums
because it's very rare.
Putting aside
your murder type cases,
it's very rare
that anyone gets the maximum
or anything near it.
But ultimately,
this looks to me
like it's not all based on one thing.
This isn't all about one transaction
or one fraud.
That's not based on his resume.
No, not absolutely not
just lies off of his resume that we've
that we were first introduced
to George Santos. Right.
None of this has to do with him
claiming what
his background is, his heritage, is
his family, is his his resume.
Right. Now, prosecutors
ultimately might try to introduce
that at a trial
to support some of these other charges.
But no, this
this looks like, again,
based on the charges,
a sort of well, it's atypical
because it involves a member of Congress,
but in some respects a standard
fraud and false statements case.
Stand by for a minute.
We have our justice correspondent,
Evan Perez, with us.
Somewhere, I will look and find him.
Evan, there you are.
Evan, look, it strikes me, by the way.
Also,
there are financial crimes here alleged,
which generally means paper, trail
records, cases
that are tough for a defendant.
Talk to me about the breadth of the
charges here.
Well, John, look, I mean,
the fact is that this
this is a congressman
who has only been in office
for four or five months.
And there has been
just a stunning number
of allegations of frauds and lies
that he's been facing
and under scrutiny for.
And it's clear.
And this is something that we heard
repeatedly during the investigation.
The you know,
the FBI and prosecutors
knew that there was going to be plenty
to work with here.
They knew that there was
there was a lot of paperwork.
Every one of these things
that he filed with a government
agency was potentially a crime.
And the fact that it took this long,
I think some members of Congress
yesterday were remarking that
I'm surprised it took this long.
Well,
part of the reason was that they kept
finding new things to investigate.
And again, what you see here in
this indictment
is just the basics
that what the Justice Department,
what the FBI really, you know,
is their bread and butter,
which is to look at,
you know,
some of the financial statements
that he's made,
some of the things that he did
to raise money
according to the indictment,
which were fraudulent.
And so those are the things
that, as you pointed
out, are very difficult for a defendant
to defend themselves against
because either you file the paperwork
and it was false or you didn't.
And we know you filed it
because we have it.
So that's part of the problem here.
For the congressman.
And we'll see, you know,
whether he decides to go to trial
or whether there's a way for him
to figure out a way to make a deal,
as he did
with Brazilian authorities
just a few weeks ago,
where he admitted to a fraud
there in Brazil from several years ago
in order to avoid
having to go back and face a trial there.
So, again,
this is we're still reading
through the indictment, 20 pages or so
to see what exactly he's accused of here.
But again,
so much
that the FBI had
had to work
with over the last few months.
Evan, stick with us, if you will.
I want to go to Caitlin Poulets as well.
Caitlin is joining us in Washington.
Caitlin, talk to talk to us
a little bit more
about one of the big questions
all along has been
also violations of campaign finance laws.
What what are you picking up on that
right.
Well, this is a really meaty indictment.
I'm still going through it.
But even at the top,
whenever you're looking at it,
the thing that jumps out
is that the federal prosecutors
were able to discover
political contributions
that did not go to George Santos's
political candidacy.
So they say in this indictment
that September and October in 20, 22.
So not that long ago,
he was taking in money
that was supposed to be used
to his candidacy, into a company
but that was a false pretense.
Instead,
it was going to things like luxury
designer clothing and credit
card payments for personal expenses.
He was soliciting it
for personal expenses.
And so that's a pretty
meaty charge on its own.
There are other violations here
related to his political life.
There are campaign finance violations
that are outlined here.
There are also violations
relating to what he was telling
the House
about his own employment,
about the money he had
but even that,
we don't get a lot of more specifics
than the luxury designer clothing
credit card payment
detail here in this indictment.
But it
it really is on its own
just an astonishing thing
that he's taking in money
from political donors.
And it was going to
not that it was going to benefit
Jorge Santos himself,
apparently based on what
we're reading so far.
Caitlin Paul, let's keep reading.
You've got the paper copy right now.
Please dig in more
it fill us in
when you get this new information
early voting
based on what
you just heard from Caitlin
Poe, Lance Watkins.
So that's really interesting.
So the idea here is the fraud
is he said, okay,
people who support me politically
donate to my campaign
and I will use it to buy
yard signs and ads
and win a seat in Congress.
Instead, according to Caitlin's
reading of the indictment,
he basically pocketed that money
and used it
for his own personal expenses,
which you cannot do.
And this is as if he's under scrutiny.
This isn't.
This isn't pre election.
This is after
he was already under under scrutiny.
According to what Caitlin just said.
October, September of 20.
20 to 20. 22 is right.
That just happened.
So that's
you know,
he was up for election and I guess
November of 20, 22.
So it would have absolutely overlapped
with the election itself.
I hesitate to use this term,
but I can't think of one
better on the moment.
This is javy stuff
when you're raising money in a campaign.
The one thing you know
when you
raise money for a campaign is
you can't spend campaign money
on personal stuff.
Yeah. It's remarkably
in some sense unsophisticated.
I mean there's all we've seen politicians
over the years
sort of in more sophisticated ways
launder money.
Maybe that'll come into play here.
But use it in ways
where maybe it's arguable.
Is this a campaign expenses?
It's a personal expense,
but the things that Caitlin just laid out
that are laid out in
the indictment
are seemingly undoubtedly
personal expenses.
So if prosecutors can prove that,
by the way,
prosecutors are going to be very careful
before they bring a charge
against a sitting member of Congress.
So if they can prove that,
then then
that'll make out the wire fraud claims.
And you made the point
that this has happened fairly fast
so that, you know the evidence
they have to have it
in order to go forward
with this obviously,
they've got paperwork
and we will have to see.
We do have something now
coming out from the court.
Brynn Gingras is joining us now live.
She's got an update for us
a statement, I understand, from the DOJ
Yeah, that's right.
Sara, we
learned that the grand jury returned
this indictment yesterday,
and now we have this 13
count indictment, a statement.
I want to read it in full to you.
It's quite long.
It says,
This indictment seeks
to hold Santos accountable
for various alleged
fraudulent schemes
and brazen misrepresentations.
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.
He used political contributions
to line his pockets,
unlawfully applied
for unemployment
benefits that should have gone
to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs
due to the pandemic
and lied to the House of Representatives.
My office
and our law enforcement partners
will continue
to aggressively root out
corruption and self-dealing
from our communities, public institutions
and hold public officials
accountable to the constituents
who elected them.
And of course, he went into office
just in January.
But we know that the investigation
into him
where before that my colleague Mark
Morales, is learning from sources
that Santos actually turned himself
in to the FBI office in Melville New York
and was then taken here
to the federal courthouse.
And that's why we didn't actually see him
drive up and go in.
But he is in custody right now.
We do expect him to go
before a judge on these 13 charges.
It's unclear of that timing
as of now,
but a pretty strong statement there
from the DOJ.