Murky 'straw donor scheme' set up by billionaire kept George Santos afloat: report

New details about Rep. George Santos' (R-NY) allegedly criminal campaign finance operations are emerging. The Daily Beast is reporting that obscure footnotes in the House Committee on Ethics' recent report on Santos show a complex rabbit hole that eventually leads to a billionaire Florida lawyer.

Key among the committee's findings is an alleged pass-through scheme involving Santos' company, the Devolder Organization. When examining one of the footnotes and two appendix items in the fine print of the report, the Beast discovered that the Devolder Organization's large donations to Santos' Congressional campaign account ultimately came from Miami, Florida-based attorney John Ruiz, the founder of a Medicare litigation firm. With a net worth of $1.5 billion, Ruiz is ranked number 1,905 on Forbes' 2023 billionaires' list. Ruiz used a shell company, A-RU Holdings, to make a $250,000 payment to Devolder.

The Beast alleges that Ruiz funneled donations through his wife, Mayra, and his son, Alex, by first using the Devolder Organization's bank account as a backchannel. The Beast examined campaign finance documents and Devolder Organization banking information and found that for the bulk of last year, Santos' company had essentially no money up until his Congressional campaign kicked into high gear. In fact, the company had less than $50 on hand between June and October.

"According to the underlying documents in the appendixes, both Santos and his company, the Devolder Organization, had very little cash on hand throughout 2022—with totals of -$7.77 and -$10.82, respectively, in bank accounts at the start of September," the Beast wrote. "Those accounts then suddenly saw hundreds of thousands of dollars flood in, followed almost immediately by hundreds of thousands of dollars transferred to the Santos campaign—hallmarks of pass-through contributions."

"After Santos won his election, his campaign then transferred $20,000 to his private company. The transfer came when the company’s balance was in the negatives, the day after it bounced a $75 check." the Beast's report continued. "But while bank statements show that the campaign transferred the money to the Devolder Organization, the campaign never disclosed that payment in its FEC statements, along with another $10,000 that same month."

On Thursday, the investigative subcommittee (ISC) of the ethics committee published its 56-page assessment detailing the allegations of Santos' unethical and potentially criminal acts pertaining to his 2022 campaign. Among the details included in the report was an alleged contract between Devolder and A-RU Holdings, in which Santos' company agreed to provide $255,000,000 in investments over a 12-month period. However, no further payments were made to the Devolder account, and the current status of the contract remains unknown.

Rep. Michael Guest (R-Mississippi), who chairs the ethics committee, filed a motion to expel Santos from Congress on Friday. The House is expected to vote on the motion after it returns from the Thanksgiving recess. Expulsion requires a two-thirds vote in the House, meaning dozens of Republicans will have to vote with Democrats to remove one of their own.