A new campaign finance report filed by Rep. George Santos (R-NY) raises new questions about how -- and when -- he loaned his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The report filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission claims his campaign refunded more donations than it received in the first three months of this year, and it claims his campaign spent no money at all during that period -- and fails to answer crucial questions about his personal loans, reported The Daily Beast.
"In 2020, Santos reported earning $55,000, and held no assets. But he still loaned his campaign more than $80,000," reported The Beast's Roger Sollenberger.
However, Santos had more than $11 million in assets the next year and was making $750,000 annually, which he claims came from starting a brokerage company of his own instead of working for as a broker for others, but campaign finance and legal experts doubt his explanations for the loans.
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“These kinds of calculations and debt discrepancies are going to be a big red flag for the FEC’s reports and analysis division,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance law expert at watchdog Documented. “I’d expect them to ask Santos why these reports don’t make any sense.”
Fischer described the filings as an "indecipherable mess," and another campaign finance watchdog said the series of after-the-fact revisions to those loan reports were “as big a red flag as we could see.”
“If you take this at face value, that means Santos artificially inflated the amount of money in his campaign for months, then actually fulfilled that loan months and months later," said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "So the dates and amounts of funding for his campaign were previously untrue, across several reports.”