George Santos ‘presently engaged in plea negotiations,’ US attorney says
Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is “presently engaged in plea negotiations,” the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York revealed Monday.
The announcement came one day before Santos is scheduled to appear in court on Long Island for a status conference. And it follows days of speculation regarding whether the New York Republican would take a plea deal after he was expelled from Congress in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.
“The parties are presently engaged in plea negotiations with the goal of resolving this matter without the need for a trial. The parties wish to continue those negotiations over the next thirty days and respectfully submit that the ends of justice served by such an excludable delay outweigh the best interests of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial,” the agenda for Tuesday’s status conference reads.
Santos himself hinted at a potential plea deal over the weekend, telling CBS New York’s “The Point” in an interview that a plea deal with federal prosecutors is “not off the table.”
“Trial is not until September and a plea is not off the table. So there’s obviously conversations taking place, especially after what happened in Congress, and we’ll see,” he said.
Tuesday’s status conference, before Judge Joanna Seybert, is scheduled to take place at 10:30 a.m. in a federal court in Central Islip.
Santos is facing 23 federal criminal charges related to allegations that he misled donors, fraudulently received unemployment benefits, lied on House financial disclosures, inflated his campaign finance reports and charged his donors’ credit cards without authorization.
The then-congressman was first charged with 13 counts in May, then was hit with a superseding indictment in October. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his trial is set to begin in September 2024.
On Monday, however, the government requested that Santos’s trial begin in May or June. But the status conference agenda noted that Santos’s team “opposes the government’s request for an earlier trial date.”
Two individuals who used to be in Santos’s orbit have already taken plea deals in cases believed to be connected to the ex-congressman. Most recently, ex-Santos fundraiser Samuel Miele pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and stipulated to committing access device fraud. The admission of fraudulently charging credit cards appeared to overlap with Santos’s criminal charges pertaining to credit card fraud.
Before Miele, former Santos campaign treasurer Nancy Marks pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors accused Marks of filing campaign finance reports that falsely showed Santos loaning his campaign $500,000 that family members donated. Prosecutors argued that the filings were done to meet thresholds to qualify for financial and logistical support from unnamed national party committees.
The House voted to expel Santos earlier this month in a 311-114-2 vote, making the New York Republican the sixth lawmaker ever to be ousted from the chamber.
Since then, Santos has started selling videos on Cameo.
Zach Schonfeld contributed.
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