Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

11 of the most scathing allegations in the House ethics report about Santos
By Mariana Alfaro and Maegan Vazquez
November 16, 2023 at 7:34 p.m. EST

House investigators found “substantial evidence” that Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) knowingly violated ethics guidelines, House rules and criminal laws, according to a report released by the House Ethics Committee on Thursday.

After the report was released, Santos — who has for months faced demands to resign from several of his House colleagues — announced that he would not seek reelection next year.

The 56-page report details a sweeping array of alleged misconduct. According to investigators, Santos allegedly stole money from his campaign, deceived donors, reported fictitious loans and engaged in fraudulent business dealings. The congressman, the report alleges, spent hefty sums on personal enrichment, including visits to spas and casinos, shopping trips to high-end stores, and payments to a subscription site that contains adult content.

The report frequently cites Santos’s dealings with his former treasurer Nancy Marks — who last month pleaded guilty to filing false reports with the Federal Election Commission. Earlier this week, an aide to Santos pleaded guilty to a federal charge of fraud in connection with a scheme that included impersonating the then-chief of staff for former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to attract donors to Santos’s campaign.

Santos faces nearly two dozen federal charges, including allegations of defrauding his donors, using their money for his personal benefit and stealing the identities of family members and using donors’ credit cards to spend thousands of dollars. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The House Ethics report details evidence to support a lengthy list of allegations. Here’s some of what investigators found:

Santos boasted about family wealth. In reality, investigators say he was frequently broke.

Santos’s personal finances, the report found, were “drastically different from what he disclosed” on his financial statements, and “even more irreconcilable with the narrative he broadcast to his constituents, campaign supporters, and staff.”

While Santos would boast about “significant wealth” and claimed to have access to a trust managed by a family firm, the report alleges that Santos was “frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits.”

In a particularly scathing section, investigators noted that Santos, throughout both of his campaigns, claimed he had a background in finance and wealth management. “That background was largely fictional,” the report states. Had Santos filed accurate financial statements, the investigators wrote, “his constituents may have had cause to question whether he was actually ‘good at’ money management and growth, or balancing costs and budgets — or, indeed, whether he had any experience in finance at all.”

At one point, the report says Santos texted a staffer that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was proposing changes that would end up “taxing people like me to death.”

He was referring to the Biden administration’s proposal to tax “unrealized gains taxable income” — meaning, taxes that would primarily impact the ultrawealthy.

Campaign funds are alleged to have been used for Botox and shopping at luxury stores.

The report accuses Santos of having repeatedly funneled money through his campaign, a PAC and LLCs under his purview toward paying for personal expenses.

The committee identified expenditures at spas and cosmetic clinics that “could not be verified as having a campaign nexus.” On two occasions, the expenses were noted as “Botox” in spreadsheets that Marks gave the committee.

Other funds, sent by contributors intending to bolster his political candidacy, appear to have been used to “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.”

Santos allegedly lied to donors about his 2020 campaign loans — and then failed to pay a staffer for months.

Investigators found that, during his unsuccessful 2020 campaign for a House seat from New York, Santos reported “fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign — and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported ‘repayments’ of those fictitious loans.”

Santos benefited politically and financially from the fake loans, the report alleges, which helped him inflate his 2020 campaign’s final cash-on-hand totals, which he then reported to the FEC. In his July 2020 FEC quarterly filing, Santos reported having $73,355.64 on hand. In reality, he only had $13,761.88. Per the report, Santos made only one of six of his reported loans.

“The reality was that the campaign did not have the funds to pay outstanding debts,” the report states. These debts included staffers’ paychecks — per the report, at least one of them went eight months without being paid for his work.

The Santos campaign also reported “repayments” for five of the six personal loans — four of which investigators say were never made. While Santos denied to investigators that he was aware of these fictitious loans — he blamed Marks for the bad bookkeeping — according to the report, evidence shows that he texted Marks about at least one of the fictitious loans. In total, the report says Santos was “reimbursed” for $29,200 in loans that he never made.

Santos’s campaign staff saw him as a “fabulist” and urged him to seek treatment.

Per the report, Santos “sustained all of this through constant lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.” But members of his own staff viewed him as a “fabulist,” whose “penchant for telling lies was so concerning that he was encouraged to seek treatment.”

Members of Santos’s campaign prepared a 141-page “Vulnerability Report” on him, which they showed him on December 2021, according to the ethics report. It noted, among other things, that there was “no evidence” to support his claims that he graduated from New York University with an MBA, or that he graduated from Baruch College with a bachelor of economics and finance. The report also raised questions over his finances.

“As a result of the report, Representative Santos was encouraged by his campaign staff to drop out of the race and, when he refused, three staffers quit his campaign altogether,” investigators wrote.

In 2022, Santos allegedly faked campaign loans again, this time for even larger sums.

In June 2021 and March 2022, Santos reported having loaned his second campaign $80,000 and $500,000 respectively. According to the investigation, “Santos did not have sufficient funds in his bank accounts to loan his campaign those amounts.” He, once again, inflated the numbers in his filings to the FEC.

Marks pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to defraud the government and admitted that she had a role in misreporting the $500,000 loan. As a result, House investigators concluded that Santos actively took part in the scheme.

The campaign is alleged to have made unidentified transfers and deposits — including one for $20,000, part of which was used to shop at Ferragamo.

Per the report, Santos’s campaign made a transfer of $20,000 to the congressman’s Devolder Organization. According to investigators, in the week the transfer was made, the money was used to make about $6,000 worth of purchases at the luxury store Ferragamo. Another $800 was withdrawn at a casino ATM, and $1,000 was withdrawn from an ATM near Santos’s apartment. Some of the money was used to pay for the congressman’s rent, according to the report.

Investigators say thousands also were transferred from the campaign to RISE — a state PAC that Santos managed alongside his sister, Tiffany, and Marks. In early 2022, the campaign transferred about $44,000 to the PAC. This money was not reported to the FEC.

Santos’s campaign falsified information related to campaign contributors’ names.

Marks’s plea agreement included testimony about a conspiracy between her and Santos to falsify information about donors. In agreement with Santos, Marks said she “filed a list of false donors with the FEC on the year-end 2021 report knowing it was not true, and the donors, who are the real people, didn’t give [her] permission to use their names.” Per Marks, this was done to “obtain money for his campaign by artificially inflating his funds to meet thresholds set by a national political committee.”

Santos allegedly spent large sums of the misreported campaign money on pricey travel and meals.

Per the report, Santos’s campaign “incurred significant travel expenses for flights, hotels, Ubers, and meals.”

Witnesses affiliated with the campaign gave investigators “conflicting” testimony regarding the congressman’s out-of-district travel, with some saying there were only two trips taken out of state during the campaign, and another saying Santos traveled “once per month.” A staffer said they often worried about “the look of the campaign spending all this money on … all these dinners and travel outside of the district.” Another staffer said Santos “was definitely a high roller.” Per the report, Santos spent nearly $4,000 in campaign funds at resorts and spas in July 2022, despite not having any campaign-related events listed on his schedule near any of the places where he was staying.

Also that month, Santos spent more than $3,000 at an Airbnb, which he reported to the FEC as a “hotel stay.” Investigators, upon reviewing his campaign calendar, found that those days had been written off as Santos being “off at [the] Hampton’s for the weekend.”

In December 2021, investigators say Santos placed taxi and Las Vegas hotel charges on his campaign credit card — at the time, Santos had told his campaign staff that he was on his honeymoon and would not hold campaign events.

Santos repeatedly ignored his campaign staffers’ warnings that something was wrong with the bookkeeping.

Per the report, Santos said he wasn’t aware of issues with his campaign’s FEC reporting until it was too late. But multiple witnesses told investigators that they voiced concerns about Marks’s bookkeeping directly to him. “But we didn’t receive a satisfactory answer,” a former staffer told investigators. “It was just, well, I’ll have to check with Nancy, get clarification on that.”

Santos told investigators he does not own any property.

Although Santos in a financial disclosure in 2022 reported four assets — including an apartment in Rio de Janeiro valued between $500,001 and $1,000,000 — he told the committee through his counsel that he “does not and has never owned real property.”

Santos, the report states, “commonly claimed to own property, not just in Brazil but also in New York and Florida. During his 2022 campaign, Representative Santos claimed to own 13 rental properties and discussed how the pandemic-era eviction moratorium affected him as a landlord.”

Santos is accused of failing to report some income in his taxes.

According to the report, in 2021, Santos filed a late tax return reporting a negative $70,481 in total income — claiming he had suffered more than $90,000 in business losses and received $20,304 in unemployment compensation. While he claimed the losses were primarily because of payments made to a company owned by one of his campaign consultants, in reality, those payments were made in 2022, not 2021. Investigators say Santos also failed to disclose his unemployment income and income from Harbor City Capital, a now-defunct Florida-based investment firm that the SEC has described as a “fraud.” Santos also is accused of failing to report in his taxes unearned income from other assets, including more than $20,000 in stock transactions. Despite claiming in his taxes that he had a negative salary in 2021, in credit card applications, Santos claimed to have an income of $9,000 per month.

Intentionally failing to report income in a tax return can result in criminal charges.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... s-charges/

[ti-amie]

He's not going to be the VP candidate for the GQP? He's got the credentials.

/s

Seriously does he still have a passport for either the US or Brazil?

[ti-amie]

Kailee
@skykiss@sfba.social
Donald Trump and His Personal Attorney Rudy Giuliani Worked With #Russian Intelligence Agents to Try to #Steal the 2020 U.S. #Presidential #Election.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) charged parliament member Oleksandr Dubinsky with treason, working with Russian FSB/KGB agents of commie russia, indicting him alongside Andriy Derkach and former prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk, who have both fled the country. The three were part of a Kremlin-backed effort to feed Giuliani russian disinformation in an attempt to harm President Joe Biden.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/14/t ... s-sources/

Additionally, the U.S. intelligence community released a report on Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections. According to the declassified DNI report released on March 16, 2021, there was evidence of broad efforts by Russia to shape the election’s outcome.

The report detailed a massive disinformation push that successfully targeted, and was openly embraced, by Trump’s allies. The Russian government meddled in the 2020 election with an influence campaign “denigrating” President Joe Biden and “supporting” Donald Trump.

The chief U.S. intelligence office concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw sweeping efforts aimed at “denigrating” President Joe Biden’s candidacy ahead of the 2020 election.

The report also mentioned that Russian proxies met with and provided materials to Trump-administration-linked U.S. figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_

[ti-amie]

Warped Front Pages
Researchers examine the self-serving fiction of ‘objective’ political news

NOVEMBER 20, 2023
By DAVID M. ROTHSCHILD, ELLIOT PICKENS, GIDEON HELTZER, JENNY WANG, AND DUNCAN J. WATTS

Seven years ago, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, media analysts rushed to explain Donald Trump’s victory. Misinformation was to blame, the theory went, fueled by Russian agents and carried on social networks. But as researchers, we wondered if fascination and fear over “fake news” had led people to underestimate the influence of traditional journalism outlets. After all, mainstream news organizations remain an important part of the media ecosystem—they’re widely read and watched; they help set the agenda, including on social networks. We decided to look at what had been featured on the printed front page of the New York Times in the three months leading up to Election Day. Of a hundred and fifty articles that discussed the campaign, only a handful mentioned policy; the vast majority covered horse race politics or personal scandals. Most strikingly, the Times ran ten front-page stories about Hillary Clinton’s email server. “If voters had wanted to educate themselves on issues,” we concluded, “they would not have learned much from reading the Times.”

We didn’t suggest that the election coverage in the Times was any worse than what appeared in other major outlets, “so much as it was typical of a broader failure of mainstream journalism.” But we did expect, or at least hope, that in the years that followed, the Times would conduct a critical review of its editorial policies. Was an overwhelming focus on the election as a sporting contest the best way to serve readers? Was obsessive attention to Clinton’s email server really justified in light of the innumerable personal, ethical, and ultimately criminal failings of Trump? It seemed that editors had a responsibility to rethink both the volume of attention paid to certain subjects as well as their framing.

After the 2022 midterms, we checked back in, this time examining the printed front page of the Times and the Washington Post from September 1, 2022, through Election Day that November. As before, we figured the front page mattered disproportionately, in part because articles placed there represent selections that publishers believe are most important to readers—and also because, according to Nielsen data we analyzed, 32 percent of Web-browsing sessions around that period starting at the Times homepage did not lead to other sections or articles; people often stick to what they’re shown first. We added the Post this time around for comparison, to get a sense of whether the Times really was anomalous.

It wasn’t. We found that the Times and the Post shared significant overlap in their domestic politics coverage, offering little insight into policy. Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties. The main point of contrast we found between the two papers was that, while the Post delved more into topics Democrats generally want to discuss—affirmative action, police reform, LGBTQ rights—the Times tended to focus on subjects important to Republicans—China, immigration, and crime.

By the numbers, of four hundred and eight articles on the front page of the Times during the period we analyzed, about half—two hundred nineteen—were about domestic politics. A generous interpretation found that just ten of those stories explained domestic public policy in any detail; only one front-page article in the lead-up to the midterms really leaned into discussion about a policy matter in Congress: Republican efforts to shrink Social Security. Of three hundred and ninety-three front-page articles in the Post, two hundred fifteen were about domestic politics; our research found only four stories that discussed any form of policy. The Post had no front-page stories in the months ahead of the midterms on policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue. Instead, articles speculated about candidates and discussed where voter bases were leaning. (All of the data and analysis supporting this piece can be found here.)

Exit polls indicated that Democrats cared most about abortion and gun policy; crime, inflation, and immigration were top of mind for Republicans. In the Times, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. In the Post, Republican topics were the focus of twenty articles and Democratic topics accounted for fifteen—a much more balanced showing. In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).

Stepping back, if the Times and other major news outlets went through any critical self-reflection after the 2016 election, it doesn’t seem to have affected their coverage. Nor did the leadership of the Times publicly acknowledge any failings. Quite to the contrary, in early 2022, Dean Baquet, the outgoing editor at the time, said in an interview that he didn’t have regrets about the paper’s Clinton-email stories. In the same interview, Baquet acknowledged critiques of his paper’s political coverage but pushed back on them aggressively: “My job is to try to convince my newsroom that they should not be overly influenced by criticism from Twitter,” he said. “If Twitter doesn’t like it, Twitter can jump in the lake.” Baquet—and his successors, and peers at other major outlets—seem to view themselves as exhibiting objective (or pure, independent) judgment. Indeed, A.G. Sulzberger, the chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of the Times, made exactly that argument in a piece for CJR this spring: “I continue to believe that objectivity—or if the word is simply too much of a distraction, open-minded inquiry—remains a value worth striving for,” he wrote, adding that “independence, the word we use inside the Times, better captures the full breadth of this journalistic approach and its promise to the public at large.”

Regardless of what journalists and owners of major papers proclaim, however, news judgments are inherently subjective. Any claims to objectivity are a convenient fiction. On any given day there are many accurate and arguably newsworthy stories that could appear on a front page. (In our study period, the overlap in front-page-story selection at the Times and the Post was only about a third.) Which topics editors choose to emphasize is neither accurate nor inaccurate; they simply reflect subjective opinions. Likewise, the way an article is written also involves a series of choices—which facts are highlighted, whose voices are included, which perspectives are given weight. Words such as “objectivity” and “independence”—even “truth”—make for nice rhetoric but are so easily twisted to suit one’s agenda as to be meaningless. After all, Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson—who, unlike the Times and the Post, don’t operate within the realm of reality—also stake claims to veracity and independence.

What appears in a newspaper is less a reflection of what is happening in the world than what a news organization chooses to tell about what is happening—an indicator of values. Last year, for instance, the Times decided to heavily cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine—understandable, to be sure—but also largely ignored policy implications of the midterm election on the war, as Republicans were threatening to block military aid. Abortion rights were clearly critical to the midterms (with potential impact on laws and judges), whereas crime rates were essentially irrelevant (with no discernible policy hanging in the balance), yet the Times chose to publish twice as many articles on crime (a topic generally favored by Republicans) as on abortion (a topic key to Democrats). The paper also opted to emphasize inflation, rather than job or wage growth, in economic coverage—another choice that catered to Republicans. The Times provided admirably extensive coverage of potential threats to democracy, but in general, midterms coverage didn’t engage much with the dangers posed to the integrity of the election.

The choices made by major publishers are not wrong, per se, for the same reason that one newsroom cannot objectively know how to cover an issue, or how much to cover it: no one can. Still, editorial choices are undeniably choices—and they will weigh heavily on the upcoming presidential race. Outlets can and should maintain a commitment to truth and accuracy. But absent an earnest and transparent assessment of what they choose to emphasize—and what they choose to ignore—their readers will be left misinformed.

David M. Rothschild, Elliot Pickens, Gideon Heltzer, Jenny Wang, and Duncan J. Watts are the authors of this piece. David Rothschild is the senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Elliot Pickens is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gideon Heltzer is at the Latin School. Jenny Wang is a predoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research. Duncan Watts is the Stevens University Professor and Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.


https://www.cjr.org/analysis/election-p ... -pages.php

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

‘It doesn’t look good’: George Santos expects to be expelled from Congress
On X Spaces Friday night, Republican congressman charted his rise from ‘It girl’ to ‘Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress’


George Santos leaves the Capitol in Washington DC, on 31 January 2023. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Associated Press
Sat 25 Nov 2023 20.23 GMT

Republican George Santos has said he expects to be expelled from Congress following a scathing report by the House ethics committee that found substantial evidence of lawbreaking by the lying New York representative.

In a defiant speech Friday sprinkled with taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional colleagues, Santos insisted he was “not going anywhere”. But he acknowledged that his time as a member of Congress may soon be coming to an end.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”

The comments came one week after the Republican chair of the House ethics committee, Michael Guest, introduced a resolution to expel Santos once the body returns from Thanksgiving break.

While Santos has survived two expulsion votes, many of his colleagues who formerly opposed the effort now say they support it, citing the findings of the committee’s months-long investigation into a wide range of alleged misconduct committed by Santos.

The report found Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, such as purchases at luxury retailers and adult content websites, then caused the campaign to file false or incomplete reports.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” investigators wrote. They noted that he did not cooperate with the report and repeatedly “evaded” straightforward requests for information.

On Friday, Santos said he did not want to address the specifics of the report, which he claimed were “slanderous” and “designed to force me out of my seat”. Any defense of his conduct, he said, could be used against him in the ongoing criminal case brought by federal prosecutors.

Instead, Santos struck a contemplative tone during the three-hour livestream, tracing his trajectory from Republican “It girl” to “the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress”. He lashed out at his congressional colleagues, accusing them of misconduct – such as voting while drunk – that he said was far worse than anything he’d done.

“They all act like they’re in ivory towers with white pointy hats and they’re untouchable,” he said. “Within the ranks of United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of shystie backgrounds.”

His decision not to seek re-election, he said, was not because of external pressure, but due to his frustration with the “sheer arrogance” of his colleagues.

“These people need to understand it’s done when I say it’s done, when I want it to be done, not when they want it to be done,” he added. “That’s kind of where we are there.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -expulsion

[ti-amie]

Owen did you find your violin? Mine seems to be missing as well.

It seems that he's threatening persons unknown with exposure. Let's see what "George Santos" does.

[ashkor87]

Can't help thinking this is all Obama's fault..in 2016, he pushed Biden aside so Hilary could run, probably because he felt guilty for having defeated her in the primary...Biden would have beaten Trump that time, and he wouldn't be too old now! Anyone with any political savvy could have seen that Hilary is just a very poor candidate, and Obama has lots of savvy . Ego, hubris, thinking he can nominate his successor..

[skatingfan]

Biden didn't run in 2016 because his son had just died.

[ashkor87]

Biden didn't run in 2016 because his son had just died.

But it is a reported fact that obama took him to lunch to ask him not to run.

[skatingfan]

Biden didn't run in 2016 because his son had just died.

But it is a reported fact that obama took him to lunch to ask him not to run.

I've seen that, but I believe Biden when he says it was because his family was still in mourning for Beau Biden.

Why Joe Biden didn't run for president in 2016

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/ne ... 014988002/

[ashkor87]

Well it doesn't matter now

[Suliso]

A colleague of mine who's well versed in US politics, but perhaps doesn't follow as much recently is convinced that Biden's goose is cooked. Too old and senile looking.

[Owendonovan]

A colleague of mine who's well versed in US politics, but perhaps doesn't follow as much recently is convinced that Biden's goose is cooked. Too old and senile looking.

I've started the process of trying to gain EU citizenship via Italy through my Italian grandparents. I'm so over the USA, I've had enough and would love to run around to watch the clay season. The more time I spend in Europe the more I see how immature America is. The overprotective parents, painfully inept politicians, lack of personal responsibility, indifference to history, amongst other things. Hip-Hop culture is about the only American culture to pay any attention to.

[Suliso]

If you were to live here you'd see that there are issues here as well. Different to the ones in USA perhaps.