George Santos – live: DoJ ‘conducting criminal probe into Congressman’ as campaign financing comes into spotlight

The Department of Justice has given its clearest sign yet that it has launched a criminal probe into George Santos, according to a new report.

The Washington Post reveals that the DOJ has asked the Federal Election Commission to postpone any enforcement against Mr Santos while they conduct a parallel criminal investigation.

The request also asked for any relevant documents to be handed over to the DOJ, the newspaper reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The 34-year-old congressman was found to have told a litany of lies during his campaign for election, which attracted the attention of the DOJ and FED. And while he has admitted to “embellishing” his resume, he has refused to resign.

While working at the small Florida investment firm Harbor City, Mr Santos claimed to have “a personal relationship with Marcie Frost, the CEO of CalPERS”.

He said that they had had “a lot of good rapport for the past four years”.

CalPERS – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, rejected those claims, telling The Post that no one called George Santos or George Devolder “has any relationship with the pension fund’s CEO”.

“We have been unable to locate any records of any relationship, business or otherwise, with this individual,” a spokesperson told the paper.

While working at the small Florida investment firm Harbor City, Mr Santos claimed to have flipped over a table in the office of Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.

“I actually sat on a chair inside of Blackstone’s office on the day of the signing of a deal … and I flipped backwards, flipping the table on the chief executive … I flipped the table on Schwarzman,” he said during a Zoom meeting, according to The Washington Post.

“I walked out of there feeling like a completely incompetent idiot,” he added.

A spokesperson for Blackstone told The Post that Mr Schwarzman “has no recollection of any such incident or meeting Mr Santos, and we have found no record of Mr Santos having a business relationship with Blackstone”.

Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina blasted embattled fellow GOP Representative George Santos of New York and said he should resign.

The South Carolina Republican spoke to The Independent in an exclusive interview.

“I mean, if you look at the allegations about his campaign finance, there are serious issues there,” she said.

Specifically, federal prosecutors are investigating irregularities regarding financial disclosures and loans, according to NBC News. “Nothing he has ever said has turned out to be true.”

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A Brazilian drag artist who knew George Santos when he lived in the country revealed more about the congressman’s political past in a new interview with Insider.

Eula Rochard explained in her latest interview that Mr Santos had once been a proud supporter of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — the current president of Brazil, who recently returned to office after successfully battling corruption charges he and his supporters argued were politically motivated.

His support for the president, who is best known by the moniker Lula, was centred around the latter’s support for LGBT rights, according to Ms Rochard.

“Lula promised to make laws to help us gays. They were all Lulistas and Anthony was too because he hung out with us,” said Ms Rochard, referring to the congressman by one of the names he used to go by.

“He wasn’t a bad person,” Ms Rochard added of Mr Santos when he lived in Brazil. “He was a regular gay teenager in a country where there were no laws protecting gay people.”

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George Santos is officially a member of Congress following a marathon vote to select the GOP’s Speaker of the House and the swearing-in of the 118th Congress.

But it wasn’t even clear that he would make it this far: Dogged by surely one of the oddest scandals to hit American politics in the last few years, Mr Santos was facing calls for his expulsion and resignation even before he was seated as representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

While the freshman Republican remains adamant that he will serve two years in the House of Representatives, he still faces growing calls for his resignation and the continued threat of investigations reportedly launched by both state and federal authorities.

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Pedro Vilarva, the former boyfriend of Mr Santos, told CNN that “his ego is too big. He’s not gonna resign. If they don’t find out something to get him (to leave) he’s not gonna do it. That’s for sure, knowing the person that he is”.

“What he always looked for was fame and power,” he said. “That’s all he cared about and he got it.”

Mr Vilarva said he only learned of Mr Santos’s marriage to a woman after he had moved out of his home.

“It was like a little shock for me,” he told CNN. “But then he used to say that he was going to get the divorce, he was getting the divorce – and never got the divorce. And then I went to find out that they only got the divorce in (2019).”

George Santos has yet another headache coming his way, thanks to amended filings submitted to the FEC this week.

The embattled New York congressman was already facing calls for his resignation or ouster — from both parties — before his filings with the Federal Election Commission this week. Now, those filings are becoming the source of problem after problem, each with the potential to run afoul of the law.

The latest issue flagged by reporters with ABC News on Thursday stems from filings that several fundraising committees working on behalf of the Santos 2022 campaign made with the agency specifying a change in the individual assigned as treasurer for the committees. Those committees are now listed as having their financial operations overseen by Thomas Datwyler, a longtime specialist in political campaign finances.

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Maryland Democrat called Mr Santos a “compulsive liar” and a “conman” as he blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy for blocking several Democrats from a number of committees.

“By refusing to seat Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar on their committees while seating compulsive liar and conman George Santos and bowing and scraping to compulsive liar and conman Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy has shown America exactly what he believes in: nothing,” Mr Raskin tweeted on Wednesday afternoon.