George Santos and his associates are scrambling to find someone to blame following a bombshell Federal Election Commission filing that admits $500,000 of his $700,000 "personal loan" to his own campaign was not actually his money, reported Roger Sollenberger for The Daily Beast on Thursday.
"Chaos followed a blitz of amended Federal Election Commission filings on Tuesday, which among other things included changes in the source of what the campaign had previously listed as loans taken out of Santos’ 'personal funds,'" said the report. "And as federal investigators reportedly probe the Santos campaign’s books, the revelations could carry profound implications for Santos’ 'self-funded' campaign political run."
"I don't amend anything, I don't touch any of my FEC stuff, right?" Santos reportedly said to CNN's Manu Raju when pressed. “So don’t be disingenuous and report that I did because you know that every campaign hires fiduciaries.”
However, as the report noted, it's not even clear who amended the filing in the first place.
"Later that day ... the campaign appeared to change the 'fiduciaries' that it had hired. And yet, that change was in turn contradicted by the new treasurer, who apparently never agreed to the new job," wrote Sollenberger. "That kerfuffle took place after the FEC posted new statements of organization filed by Santos’ five federal political committees, including his campaign, claiming their treasurer, Nancy Marks, had handed the books over to another accountant popular among Republican officials, Thomas Datwyler. But Datwyler’s attorney, Derek Ross, told The Daily Beast those filings were inaccurate, saying Datwyler had rejected the Santos campaign’s offer earlier this week."
Santos has been battling a wave of scandals as it has emerged he lied about almost every aspect of his personal background on the campaign trail, fabricating where he went to school and worked, inventing a fictional pet charity, lying about being descended from Holocaust refugees and his mother dying of a 9/11 illness, and even scamming a disabled veteran out of crowdfunds for his dying service dog.
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