Former LI Rep. George Santos expected to plead guilty Monday, source says

Former Long Island Rep. George Santos is expected to plead guilty on Monday in federal court to multiple counts in the superseding indictment against him, according to a source with knowledge of the proceeding.

The hearing will be the cap of his short, ignominious political career.

Santos, a Republican who represented parts of Nassau County and Queens in the House of Representatives for 11 months before he was expelled from office, was charged by federal prosecutors with identity theft, making unauthorized charges on donors’ credit cards and lying to the Federal Election Commission about raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign, among other counts.

He pleaded not guilty last October to 23 counts in all, which included wire fraud, theft of public funds and lying to Congress.

The former congressman, his lawyers and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District did not respond to requests for comment. No details on the terms of the expected plea deal were available.

Previously, he had professed his innocence and vowed to fight the charges.

A sudden political emergence

Santos swiftly emerged on the political scene when he narrowly beat Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the November 2022 election for the 3d Congressional District, which covers Great Neck, Manhasset, Hicksville, parts of Levittown and other north Nassau County towns.

He was sworn in on Jan. 1 last year, but an expose by The New York Times revealing lies about his education, religion and work history cast a shadow over his office. Santos was reported to have lied during his campaign about being Jewish, winning a volleyball scholarship for college and running a pet rescue charity.

He brushed off the report, saying that he would tell his own story, but over the next year his story began to unravel.

Last November, a House ethics investigation found he had used campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, such as Botox treatments and hotel stays. The first attempt by fellow representatives to expel him from the House failed, prompting Santos to say, “If you come at me, you best not miss.”

But a second attempt, on Dec. 1, to oust him did not miss, and he lost his seat.

He is only the sixth member of Congress to be expelled and the first to be removed without a criminal conviction.

Federal prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert to allow his past lies as evidence that Santos falsely claimed to have graduated from Baruch College and New York University and to have worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Opening arguments in the case were set to begin Sept. 16 and expected to last three weeks.

On Friday, court records showed a change in the trial schedule when the judge granted a request by prosecutors and the defense for an in-person hearing Monday at 3 p.m. in Central Islip. Other deadlines in the case were postponed until after Monday's hearing.

Prosecutors also have said Santos fraudulently received unemployment benefits authorized during the COVID-19 pandemic, lied on his congressional financial disclosure forms, filed fraudulent fundraising reports to get support for his congressional campaign and stole thousands of dollars from his campaign contributors by charging their credit cards without authorization.

Prosecutors also want to admit statements made by alleged Santos co-conspirator Nancy Marks, a Shirley campaign manager for Santos who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to defraud.

Marks, in pleading guilty in October, admitted that she filed reports with both the FEC and the Republican National Committee that included the names of false donors to artificially inflate the amount of funds Santos raised to meet benchmarks necessary to receive financial assistance from the national committee. When sentenced, Marks faces up to 5 years in prison as well as restitution and a fine.

Ex-fundraiser Samuel Miele also pleaded guilty in the Santos case. Miele, during his plea in November, told Seybert that he had impersonated a top aide to a high-ranking congressional leader — identified as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — while soliciting a financial contribution to the Santos campaign from a donor in August 2021.

Frustration in Nassau

Nassau County voters said the whole episode, down to the pleading on Monday, left them frustrated with the system and deeply unhappy about the political process.

“We think it’s too little, too late,” Jody Kass Finkel, of Concerned Citizens of NY-03, a group she started to push for Santos to be removed from office. “We don’t want him to plea. We think that the people of District 3 deserve a full accounting of what happened. We want him to be judged by a jury of his peers."

Kass Finkel said Santos left voters in Nassau County deeply distrustful.

“We’ve never had an impostor lie his way into Congress,” she said. “Our district was a joke. It made a mockery of our electoral system and it weakened our faith in the way we pick our elected officials.”

Nassau County Republican Party leader Joseph Cairo did not respond to a request for comment.

Jay Jacobs, chairman of the state Democratic Committee, said he was loath to criticize Santos. “I never like to hit a guy when he’s down,” he said.

As far as problems with the way elected officials are picked, Jacobs said that “there’s always room for improvement and there’s always room for reassessment.”

After Santos was expelled, Democrat Tom Suozzi defeated Republican-backed Mazi Melesa Pilip in a special election Feb. 13 to represent the 3rd District. By doing so, Suozzi reclaimed the House seat that he had held for three terms before stepping down to launch an unsuccessful campaign in the Democratic primary against Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022.

Santos, who is free on a $500,000 unsecured bond, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, if convicted.

With Lorena Mongelli