11 May 23
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The limelight has a funny way of guiding prosecutors.
For Santos to be indicted the same day that a jury in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll is a fitting symmetry. Both men engaged in ceaseless chicanery for years before entering politics, and both found immediate and unexpected success in their first runs for office. But both men are now also wrestling with the realization that although you can get away with a lot in private life, the political spotlight can sometimes light the way for litigants and prosecutors.
The New York Republican representative turned himself in this morning to be booked and arraigned on 14 counts, including wire fraud, theft of public money, and false statements to the House. Prosecutors allege several schemes, all of which are laughably corrupt if true and none of which is particularly sophisticated or stealthy. They say that Santos solicited money from donors that he claimed was intended to support his campaign through a super PAC, but in fact he spent “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”
The indictment also claims that Santos applied for unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, the COVID-stimulus bill signed into law by Trump in March 2020, taking in almost $25,000 even though he had a $120,000 per annum salary at the time. (This week, the House is voting on a bill that Santos co-sponsored to recover fraudulent COVID unemployment benefits. I am not making this up.) And they allege that Santos lied about his salary and compensation in mandatory disclosures for his House campaigns. If convicted, Santos would face a maximum sentence of decades in prison. Santos has previously denied any wrongdoing but has not yet commented since the indictment.
For anyone who has followed Santos’s career with even cursory attention, little of this will come as a surprise. When news of the indictment leaked yesterday, the prevailing question was not how this could have happened but rather which of his many reported scandals was the one that had produced charges (or produced charges first). His entire life story seems to have been a series of grifts and cons, beginning with passing bad checks in his native Brazil, continuing through allegations that he stole funds intended for a homeless veteran’s dog and orchestrated an ATM scam in Seattle, and right up to the plainly fishy financial filings for his runs for office.
Santos got away with his misdeeds, more or less, until he won election to the House. Since he seems ideologically pliable, it’s a good bet that he ran because he sought attention and status, but becoming a high-profile politician brings attention from people he didn’t want. As a candidate, you might be able to sneak past opposition researchers in a given House district, but his new high profile attracted the scrutiny of journalists and, more ominously, the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
In this way, his story resembles a shorter, smaller-time imitation of Trump’s. In his life as a real-estate developer, entertainer, and self-promoter, Trump was often ensnared in scandals, but he was able to escape serious scrutiny and personal criminal consequences for them. Trump’s methods were not quite so brazen, though they were sometimes pretty blunt: inflating and deflating the value of assets in different filings, for example, or simply inventing square footage for buildings. For decades, he got away with this, but entering politics brought attention he didn’t want. He faces 34 felony counts in Manhattan, all connected to alleged financial crimes, and the New York attorney general is trying to shutter the Trump Organization altogether. (He is also the apparent subject of other criminal probes by the Department of Justice and the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney.)
Santos and Trump each resemble another quintessential New York story: the Mel Brooks classic The Producers, in which two men try to stage a flop musical to turn a quick buck, but are undone when they actually succeed. Trump seemed to mount his presidential run largely as a branding exercise, and he seemed taken aback when he won. Santos, meanwhile, might well have pocketed the donor cash and lived on it quite nicely until he came up with another scheme, if only a Republican wave in New York hadn’t carried him to victory.
Santos is neither the first nor the last person to watch Trump’s quick rise and think, If he can do that, so can I. But although you can imitate Trump, you can’t imitate Trump all the way. Santos has quickly landed himself in far more serious criminal jeopardy than the former president has. Of course, legal troubles have in some ways only fortified Trump’s position, at least among Republican primary voters; since his indictment last month, he has risen in presidential polls. Santos may not be so lucky. He has neither the popular backing nor the sway of Trump, and many Republicans, especially in New York, already have it out for him. But Speaker Kevin McCarthy, negotiating a narrow margin in the House, has said he will not call for Santos’s resignation unless he’s convicted, which could take months. Trying to ride out the scandal would be brazen, but Santos has shown he is nothing if not brazen.
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