George Santos set up a shady recount fund in a fit of 'jealousy': report

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) raised suspiciously high totals for a recount of a congressional race he lost by more than 12 points.

Santos seized onto the recount fever that gripped the Republican Party after the 2020 election and set up the fundraising committee “Devolder Santos for Congress Recount” (DSCR) immediately after Election Day that raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever actually conducting the tabulation, reported The Daily Beast.

“Recounts are one of the most unregulated areas of campaign finance," said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal reform at government watchdog Campaign Legal Center. "They’ve been around for decades, and I think some of the institutional views of recount funds in general reflect the thought that they’re going to have an impact on elections. However, recount accounts aren’t treated the same way as general election funds — which deal with money raised and spent to influence voters — because essentially recount money is only supposed to be related to post-election recounts or legal fees related to challenging election results.”

Santos held a 4,000-vote lead on Election Day due to the "red mirage" of GOP voters who showed up to cast ballots in person, but once absentee ballots were counted the following week he wound up losing by more than 46,000 votes to Democrat Tom Suozzi.

READ MORE: 8 'secret' legal fights between Trump and Jack Smith documented by CNN report

DSCR raised more than $265,000 between Nov. 4 and Dec. 18, while Donald Trump and his allies were also pulling in tons of recount cash based on false claims of election fraud, and reported more than $260,000 in expenses, some of which election experts say appear suspicious, and the group still has more than $5,000 in the bank.

By comparison, Santos' actual campaign raised only about $358,000 for the 2020 election, which doesn't even include $81,250 he claims to have loaned from his own "personal funds."

“George Santos’ lies and corruption know no bounds. He set up a sham recount fund — for a recount that never happened. Then, he illegally used that money to offset costs for his 2022 campaign,” said the watchdog group End Citizens United, which filed a complaint Jan. 31 against Santos. “It’s yet another blatant violation of the law, which is why we’re asking the FEC to begin an investigation and also hand all relevant material to the DOJ for their investigation.”

The complaint calls attention to several payments to a group of election observers, and points out that there never was a recount to observe, and highlights another $4,000 in "housing" expenses that appear suspicious.

“What is clear from his recount fund activities is that it reinforces the need for federal regulation for these funds,” Ghosh said. “If he was paying for absentee ballot counts, that’s not what recount funds are supposedly for, because that’s election related. But you also have other expenses which may not be related to elections at all. It’s all too unregulated.”

Santos continued raising money for his recount committee for a full month after he conceded, and FEC records show the last donation came on Dec. 18, 2020, and DSCR paid a $139,000 "fundraising commission" to The Donor Bureau, a widely used GOP outfit that specializes in small-dollar fundraising by renting out donor lists.

A recount worker told The Daily Beast that Santos was jealous of the money that Republican candidate John Cummings raised in his long-shot race against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2020, and he wanted a piece of the action.

“That was the first big explosion of money coming through outside network people, and George wanted in,” that person said. “George didn’t understand why John was raising so much more money, and he was always trying to get at email lists from John, and then later George got Tina Forte to run for that seat and assumed he could control information on fundraising from the AOC district, whether it was from direct mail or email lists.”