The Investigative Subcommittee (ISC) report on Rep. George Santos (R-NY) released by the House Ethics Committee Thursday found that the Santos campaign used donations for botox treatments, OnlyFans, and lodging in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
The report states that a Florida LLC called RedStone Strategies, of which Santos’s New York LLC, Devolder Organization, was one of two account managers, transferred $200,000 into Santos’s personal bank accounts in 2022, with some of the funds going to the adult content website OnlyFans, make-up retailer Sephora, Santos’s personal debt, and a $4,100 purchase at Hermes.
The entity was used to solicit donations from two contributors in October 2022, weeks before the midterm election. Someone using a RedStone email presented RedStone to the donors as an independent expenditure committee established “exclusively” to back Santos’s candidacy and “dedicated to helping George Santos win NY-03.”
Santos followed up with a donor described as “Contributor 2,” saying, “I need some help on the outside for next week on TV.”
“Can I have the guys from the outside give you a buzz? Can you help?” . . . “It’s coming down to the wire and these people are on me,” he added.
An account affiliated with Contributor 2 wired $25,000 into RedStone’s bank account on October 21, 2022. Santos’s personal bank account subsequently received a $25,000 transfer from RedStone. Days later, the other contributor, referred to in the report as “Contributor 1,” transferred $25,000 to RedStone that was funneled that day into a different personal bank account belonging to Santos.
The report notes:
After the $50,000 from RedStone was deposited into Representative Santos’ personal accounts, the funds were used to, among other things: pay down personal credit card bills and other debt; make a $4,127.80 purchase at Hermes; and for smaller purchases at Only Fans; Sephora; and for meals and for parking.
The ISC report further noted that some purchases from the Santos campaign “related to spa services and/or cosmetic procedures could not be verified as having a campaign nexus,” including botox treatments.
In 2020, when Santos ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress, his campaign coughed up $1,500 for a “Botox” expense at Miurza Aesthetics via a campaign debit card payment. According to the report, the purchase was not reported to the Federal Election Committee (FEC). Moreover, spreadsheets produced by former Santos campaign treasurer Nancy Marks show another $1,400 expense at Virtual Skin Care that was noted as “Botox.”
Notably, Marks has pled guilty to charges she faces in connection to her time as treasurer for Santos’s campaign.
“The ISC also identified an unreported PayPal payment of $1,029.30 to an esthetician associated with a spa in Rhinebeck, New York,” the report details.
Other purchases also raised “concerns of personal use of campaign funds” in the ISC report, including nearly $2,300 spent at resorts during a two-day trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in July 2022. The sub-committee stated it “did not receive records of any political or campaign events occurring in Atlantic City at that time.”
One ex-staffer told the committee that he or she did not remember “any sort of fundraising or campaign things in Atlantic City” but recounted that Santos and his husband were roulette enthusiasts. His campaign also incurred a $3,332.81 charge on July 7, 2022, for an Airbnb reported officially as a “Hotel stay.”
“Review of the campaign’s calendar on that date indicated that Representative Santos was “off at [the] Hampton’s for the weekend,’” the committee noted.
Santos’s campaign further racked up taxi and hotel expenses in Las Vegas in December 2021, when he had no official campaign events on his calendar and had informed staffers he was honeymooning, according to the ethics report.
What is more, Santos founded a state political action committee (PAC) in New York called RISE in 2020. His sister, Tiffany Santos, assisted in managing the PAC, while Marks served as its Treasurer, and “money flowed back and forth between Representative Santos’ campaign and RISE and was not reported to the FEC,” according to the report.
Money from that account allegedly made its way into Santos’s personal bank account as well, with RedStone serving as an intermediary, the committee found:
On April 1, 2022, Representative Santos sent a text message to one of Ms. Marks’ staffers with access to the account for RISE, Individual 3: “Please do this wire for rise ASAP[.] It’s for ads that we were supposed to pay and I forgot,” and included wire instructions for RedStone he had received from Individual 2 earlier that day. Following this text exchange, $6,000 was transferred from RISE to RedStone, which was then transferred from RedStone to Representative Santos’ personal checking account. Prior to the $6,000 transfer, Representative Santos’ personal checking account had a balance of $136.93.
After this, Santos’s personal account had $5,000 withdrawn, and his credit card debt was paid off, the report alleges. The subcommittee found no evidence these funds were used for ads.
Santos responded to the report in a scorched earth statement, contending he is the victim of a “smear.”
“If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the ‘Ethics committee’, they would have not released this biased report,” Santos wrote in a post on X. “The Committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (My legal bills suggest otherwise).”
“It is a disgusting politicized smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of Justice should all be ashamed of themselves,” he added, later noting he would not seek reelection.
In October, Santos was charged federally in the Eastern District of New York with 23 counts in a superseding indictment, ranging from conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States to counts of wire fraud to counts of making materially false statements to the FEC, and more.
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