George Santos' shady consulting firm tried to plunder GOP candidate's campaign war chest: NYT

When Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was running for Congress, he hooked up a fellow Republican candidate running against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) with a consulting firm he had established — and immediately set about trying to plunder her campaign's bank account, reportedThe New York Times on Wednesday.

This comes as Santos stares down federal fraud indictments and pressure from members of his own party to step down.

Tina Forte, a businesswoman from New York who has ties to the QAnon movement and has been accused of taking part in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, lost decisively last year running against Ocasio-Cortez — but not before Santos tried to squeeze her campaign for cash, The Times reported. The scheme involved Red Strategies USA, a company Santos set up.

"Mr. Santos encouraged her to run against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ... according to Ms. Forte’s former campaign manager, Jen Remauro," reported Grace Ashford. "Mr. Santos told Ms. Forte that he knew of a great political consulting firm, Ms. Remauro recalled, and steered her to Red Strategies — failing to note that he was an owner of the company, as reported by The Daily Beast."

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According to Remauro, Santos acted like he was just an intermediary during their meeting, never mentioning he owned the company.

Remauro soon grew suspicious of how Santos' company was operating, said the report.

"Under the terms of the company’s agreement with Ms. Forte, Red Strategies was entitled to keep 80 percent of whatever it raised on her behalf, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Times. But Red Strategies obscured its earnings through inflated expenditures to other vendors," said the report. Then, Remauro noticed that campaign filings said WinRed, the platform through which most Republican candidates process donations, was charging them over $40,000 a quarter, more than half of what they were raising, in "credit card fees," even though WinRed's actual fee is supposed to be just 4 percent; after she questioned Red Strategies, the filings were amended to show most of the "credit card fees" were actually being paid directly to them.

This pattern of irregularities also occurred in Santos' own campaign; he raised about $800,000 through WinRed but reported paying $200,000 in fees, or roughly six times what it should have cost.

Reporting last year uncovered that Santos fabricated most of his credentials and life story on the campaign trail last year, pretending to have attended schools and worked at companies he did not, and even inventing a fictional Jewish heritage complete with a fake Jewish last name. Reporters have also uncovered serious campaign finance irregularities, from impossible expenditures on parking to donors who don't exist, and he has even been accused of trying to rip off a cancer fundraiser for a disabled veteran's service dog.

In May, federal prosecutors indicted Santos on 13 federal charges including wire fraud, unemployment fraud, money laundering, and false statements to Congress, alleging a series of elaborate schemes to con Republican donors and the government out of money. Santos denies any wrongdoing; some of his fellow New York Republicans have called for his resignation, but House GOP leadership, faced with an extremely narrow majority, have punted the issue of expelling him.