Former GOP Rep. George Santos pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges today and faces a minimum of two years in prison, with a sentencing hearing set for February. The counts included wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying on House of Representatives disclosure forms.
After telling the court that he accepts full responsibility, the disgraced former lawmaker from New York told reporters outside the courthouse that he “allowed ambition to cloud my judgment.” “Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I’d take, but it’s the right thing to do,” Santo added. “It is my own recognition of the lies I told myself.”
Also today, a judge dismissed Santos’ fraud and copyright infringement lawsuit over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s admitted punking and pranking of Santos via personalized celebrity messaging site Cameo. See details of that case below, and read the dismissal document here.
Santos was elected to the House of Representatives in 2022, and his tenure in the Legislature was fraught with ethics scandals amid myriad truth-stretching. Early on, reports surfaced that he lied about key details on his résumé, and Santos admitted to falsehoods about his background. He stepped down from his committee assignments less than a month after being sworn in.
He initially called the 13-count federal indictment against him in May 2023 “a “witch hunt” and told reporters that “this is the beginning of the ability for me to address and defend myself.” But Santos surrendered to authorities soon afterward. A House ethics commission said in November that he “blatantly stole from his campaign” and “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.” Other alleged violations included donor funds being spent on racy subscription website OnlyFans and Botox treatments.
After refusing calls to resign — some from his own Republican Party — in early December, he became only the sixth representative ever to be expelled from Congress. He then went out with social media guns blazing, saying the next day that he would make ethics complaints against Republican representatives Nicole Malliotakis for alleged questionable stock trading and Mike Lawler for campaign finance violations. He also called out Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez, saying the son of now-convicted Sen. Bob Menendez should be investigated.
Less than three weeks after taking office, he gave a non-denial denial about a viral photo that showed him in drag in Brazil — a story Saturday Night Live used for its cold open that weekend.
Since then, the man who once claimed he was a producer on the ill-fated Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has danced with the showbiz industry. HBO Films optioned the rights to a book about Santos for a movie to be developed by Veep EP Frank Rich — a project the former pol said was “not ever going to happen.” Santos also was interviewed at length for a planned documentary about him.
Several TV hosts have had a field day with Santos — from John Oliver and Andy Cohen to Ziwe and of course Kimmel, who called the ex-lawmaker’s lawsuit filed in February “the most preposterous of all time.” Filed in mid-February in New York, the lawsuit alleged: “At the heart of this dispute lies the deliberate deception and wrongful appropriation of the Plaintiff’s digital content by the Defendants, orchestrated through the platform Cameo.com, where celebrities and public figures are meant to connect with their fans through personalized video messages.”
The suit, which also named Disney and ABC as defendants, sought at least $750,000 in damages.
