It’s alright, Ma, I’m only pleading. In a surprise proceeding, the campaign treasurer for Rep. George Santos (R-NY) pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The treasurer, Long Island political operative Nancy Marks, claimed that as part of her schemes with Santos, they fabricated a $500,000 loan, which Santos did not and financially could not have made, according to Marks’ charging information. They cooked up the fake loan—along with fake donations from Santos family members—in part to deceive future donors into thinking the campaign was worthy of major contributions, and to deceive a national political party into granting them access to a special program for candidates who met a fundraising threshold. That party’s description in the court filing matches the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Marks entered her plea in the same New York court where Santos himself had pleaded not guilty to 13 federal criminal counts just five months prior. Santos was charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds, as well as making false statements to Congress on his personal financial disclosures.
The plea comes eight months after Marks resigned from the Santos campaign amid a whirlpool of allegations, including a series of outlandish and self-propelling reporting irregularities, such as a statistically staggering run of expenditures of precisely $199.99—one penny below the amount at which committees are required to maintain receipts.
Marks’ Jan. 25 resignation prompted days of unintelligible chaos within the Santos operation, including the addition of a new treasurer against that treasurer’s wishes, and the subsequent appointment of a person who in all likelihood is entirely fictional, according to a campaign finance complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Marks has a long history as a GOP operative and fiduciary in Long Island political circles, including work on former Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign. (Zeldin was also scrutinized for $199.99 expenses.)
So far, Santos hasn’t faced charges related directly to his campaign raising or spending, or his fake loan.
Fellow statesman. Another New York political figure is now facing one of the accusations against Santos—donors who can’t remember giving to his campaign. That would be Democratic NYC mayor Eric Adams, who according to recent reporting has drawn the attention of law enforcement and government watchdogs after multiple donors claimed they couldn’t recall making those gifts. However, one of those accusers has retracted her claim after the reported law enforcement involvement, saying that she checked her bank statements and—lo and behold—the $2,000 donation was there.
Earlier this year, Mother Jones reported that they could not track down a significant portion of maxed-out donors to Santos’ failed 2020 bid, concluding that “many don’t seem to exist.”
Trump up, DeSantis down. The two leading GOP presidential contenders are once again announcing their fundraising totals ahead of the official filings. But as with prior advance statements, caveat emptor.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pulled in $15 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, his campaign said on Wednesday. But the campaign doesn’t appear to have tamed its spending problem—and possibly not its excessive donation reallocation problem—because it only has $5 million available for the primary.
Shortly after that announcement, Trump’s operation—a joint fundraising committee that splits money between his campaign and “Save America” leadership PAC—claimed to have raised $35.5 million over the same period, with $36 million designated for the primary, The New York Times reported. (This week, the Trump campaign blamed his own joint fundraising committee for accepting and forwarding excessive donations, even though they share the same treasurer.)
However…
The still unknown details of Trump’s split are important. Save America isn’t allowed to spend any of its money on Trump’s re-election efforts, and Trump has continually tapped that group for the ever-expanding legal costs facing him and allies he wants to keep close. Those fees have likely increased substantially over the summer, as one indictment turned to two, then three, then four. Now Trump faces massive catastrophic future losses to his business empire, as a New York judge last week—just ahead of the filing deadline—ordered the dissolution of his companies in the state due to pervasive fraud.
Bottom line, as Pay Dirt has reported, these advance announcements are always spin jobs designed to emphasize the positive and obscure drawbacks in the filings themselves. And sometimes the reports aren’t accurate, such as the staggeringly erroneous reporting in July that Trump’s legal costs topped $40 million, when the true amount was half that number.
Still, in terms of existential threats, money is a larger risk to DeSantis than Trump, who is on aggregate polling about 20 points higher than all primary challengers combined, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Risch men west of Richmond. In two recent notices to the campaign for Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the FEC flagged reported interest income from the Bank of Idaho, without disclosing that it held that account, as regulations require. Last month, the FEC fined Risch $4,325 for failing to appropriately reconcile a number of excessive campaign donations. That finding was the result of an audit of the committee, and it’s unclear whether auditors knew of the undisclosed campaign account. If they did, and had previously communicated that fact to the campaign, it could compound any consequences resulting from these notices; if they didn’t, that could lead to bigger troubles.
Trial of the century. That will almost certainly be the moniker applied to Trump’s legal contests when (if?) they get to court. But the campaign finance trial of the century is currently playing out right now, as former crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried faces the music in federal court.
But there’s a wrinkle. The Washington Post reported on Monday that prosecutors plan to present SBF’s allegedly criminal donation scheme—involving more than $100 million in straw donations and stolen funds contributed to both parties—as key evidence to land their fraud charges. But there will be no actual campaign finance charges. Prosecutors previously dropped that charge because it wasn’t part of their extradition arrangement with the Bahamas, and are instead presenting the scheme as evidence of criminal intent.
SBF allegedly made more than $100 million in political contributions taken from funds stolen from FTX customers, a large chunk of it first passing through two other executives—a criminal straw donor scheme. Prosecutors will tell jurors that SBF was using those political donations “as a flywheel for his multibillion-dollar fraud, siphoning customer money to maximize his Washington influence,” the Post reported, hoping for favorable federal treatment that would allow his fraudulent enterprise to expand.
Yass, king. A new report from the Philadelphia Inquirer has revealed that much of the $8.3 million raised by the eight major-party judicial candidates for the state’s supreme, superior, and commonwealth courts came from one conservative billionaire.
That would be Jeff Yass, cofounder of investment firm Susquehanna International Group and Pennsylvania’s wealthiest citizen. Yass was the fourth largest contributor overall at the federal level for the 2022 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and a key underwriter for conservative political advocacy group Club for Growth. That group is the top recipient of his federal largesse this year, with two donations for a total $15 million through June 30. His third-largest gift, $3 million, went to a super PAC backing Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
Yass’ influence in Pennsylvania judicial races can be chalked up to the state’s loose regulations, which allow individuals to make political contributions in unlimited amounts. So, of course, do federal super PACs—and Yass has accounted for almost all of the $1.2 million raised by a group called “Win Pennsylvania.”
