Part of what makes the story of George Santos so fascinating — whatever that story may really be — is that while we’ve had plenty of known liars working in various high-ranking government jobs (see: Donald Trump), few of them have ever admitted to being a total fibber. Santos is different. In addition to lying his way into office, he has also freely admitted to many of these lies. But when it comes to the legalities of what he has actually done wrong, and what sort of punishment that requires, we’re a bit in the dark about it all. But if a former Santos staffer is right, the freshly sworn-in congressman — who lied about being a volleyball savant, of all things — could be leaving the Capitol in handcuffs.
As Mediaite reports, two former Santos employees — one of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — don’t see a bright future ahead for their former boss. Unless you’re talking about the bright orange of a prison-issued uniform. The two individuals spoke with Talking Points Memo, one of whom said that it didn’t take long for them to become suspicious that all was not right with Santos’ campaign. “I got nervous and I got defensive that things were not on the up and up. I felt like things were not right,” they said.
Most troubling, said the former staffer, was just how messy the wannabe congressman’s bookkeeping was. “I thought that the lack of a financial disclosure, the messiness of the books, and the reporting were not great,” the former aide said.
As Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky wrote for Talking Points Memo:
The irregularities didn’t go unnoticed by regulators. During the last election cycle, the FEC sent the Santos campaign over 20 letters notifying it of issues with its campaign filings. These included 14 letters about “apparent excessive contributions” from donors and eight citing insufficient information about loans made to the campaign. The FEC also raised multiple red flags about totals of spending and cash on hand that did not add up between the various reports. These notifications instructed the campaign to amend filings if a mistake had been made.
According to the ex-staffers, however, Santos didn’t do much to clean up the mess. It’s for that reason that one of the staffers only sees this story ending one way: with Santos in handcuffs.
“Lying on your resume is one thing,” said the former staffer. “But I think George is going to be perp walked out of a building because of this financial mess.”
(Via Mediaite)