(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . ICYMI: International Man of Mystery George Santos and the Phantom Donors [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-28 They checked into major donors to his 2020 bid for a House seat — the one he didn’t win. Noah Lanard and David Corn had some interesting findings — or rather what they didn’t find was interesting. In September 2020, George Santos’ congressional campaign reported that Victoria and Jonathan Regor had each contributed $2,800—the maximum amount—to his first bid for a House seat. Their listed address was 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson Township, New Jersey. A search of various databases reveals no one in the United States named Victoria or Jonathan Regor. Moreover, there is nobody by any name living at 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson. That address doesn’t exist. There is a New Mexico Street in Jackson, but the numbers end in the 20s, according to Google Maps and a resident of the street. They found more examples like this: donors whose existence couldn’t be verified, non-existent addresses or addresses the named donors had no connection to (if they even existed), and so on. It’s not a good thing. Under federal campaign finance law, it is illegal to donate money using a false name or the name of someone else. “It’s called a contribution in the name of another,” says Saurav Ghosh, the director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “It’s something that is explicitly prohibited under federal law.” These questionable donations, which account for more than $30,000 of the $338,000 the Santos campaign raised from individual donors in 2020, have not been previously cited in media reports. Mother Jones identified them by contacting (or trying to contact) dozens of the most generous donors to Santos’ 2020 campaign, which he ended up losing by 12 points. Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place has picked up on the Mother Jones report, and adds this tidbit — as in we don’t even know if Santos is his real name. Federal law makes it illegal to donate to a federal political campaign under a false name. But then, we don’t even know what the congressman’s real name is. Lawrence O’Donnell the other night noted that Santos (if that is his name) did not show up at a White House event for new members of Congress to which he was invited. Perhaps, O’Donnell speculated, because one must furnish the Secret Service with a birthdate and Social Security number so they can run a background check before letting you onto the White House grounds [timestamp 1:57]. The Secret Service is particular that way. There are continuing questions about the finances of his more recent 2022 campaign as well, the one he won under extremely false pretenses. (“Follow the money” will never not be good advice.) Santos claims no responsibility for the filings which are supposed to be done by a campaign treasurer — and there are questions about who wants to admit to being his treasurer. From Mother Jones: Brett Kappel, a campaign finance attorney with the law firm Harmon Curran, explains that it is a campaign treasurer’s duty to examine contributions for evidence of illegality. “If the treasurer determines that a contribution was made illegally in the name of another person,” Kappel says, “the treasurer is supposed to refund the contribution within thirty days.” Nancy Marks, a veteran Republican campaign operative, served as Santos’ treasurer in 2020 and 2022. On Wednesday, Santos’ campaign committees filed paperwork with the FEC stating that Thomas Datwyler was replacing Marks. (Marks did not respond to requests for comment.) But as Mother Jones reported, Datwyler’s attorney said that Datwyler had told Santos’ team that he did not want the job. For now, Santos appears to be effectively without a treasurer. On Friday, Datwyler sent a letter to the FEC requesting the commission refer the matter to the “appropriate law enforcement agency to determine whether a crime has occurred.” Also that day, the Justice Department asked the FEC to hold off on any enforcement action against Santos, according to the Washington Post—a sign the feds are proceeding with their investigation of Santos. Will Santos be facing charges any time soon? It appears it would be almost too easy to gather evidence of a crime or two. But as long as the actual identity of Santos remains… unsettled… indicting him could be complicated. Meanwhile House Speaker in Name Only Kevin McCarthy has no trouble kicking Democrats off committees for allegedly lying or being allegedly compromised — but he’s willing to give Santos the benefit of the doubt, and has assigned him to sit on the House Small Business Committee and House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Given how much of Santos’s background is a mystery, one wonders how much longer IOKIYAR can hold up before it falls below the Schwarzchild radius and disappears into a black hole. The Santos case also suggests that a hard look at campaign filings in general would be worth a deep dive to find out how many more phantom donors are out there. It’s difficult to believe Santos developed this scam all by himself. There’s too much dark money out there, some of it from Russia and other bad actors… [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/28/2149814/-ICYMI-International-Man-of-Mystery-George-Santos-and-the-Phantom-Donors Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/