In response to allegations in a superseding indictment that accused him of identity theft, charging his donors’ credit cards without permission, and lying to federal election officials, Representative George Santos entered a not-guilty plea on Friday.
The trial is scheduled to begin on September 9, 2024, and should last for three weeks.
The New York congressman is accused of “two counts of wire fraud, two counts of submitting materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of tampering records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud,” according to a release from the United States Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, which is based on a 23-count superseding indictment filed earlier this month.
Notwithstanding a possible conflict of interest involving other parties connected to the case, Santos is sticking with Joe Murray as his attorney.
The new accusations come after Nancy Marks, Santos’s former head of campaign finance, was indicted this month. The prosecution claims that in order to provide the impression that Santos was receiving enough support to be eligible for party cash, they secretly recruited ten family members to contribute to the campaign.
Santos allegedly claimed to have given his campaign a $500,000 loan while in reality he only had $8,000 on hand, according to the allegations.
The bail requirements were unchanged during the Friday hearing. December 12 is the date of the upcoming status meeting.
Federal prosecutors in May filed an indictment against Santos on 13 criminal offenses, which included two counts of substantially false representations made to the House of Representatives, three counts of money laundering, one case of stealing public funds, and seven counts of wire fraud. To those accusations, he entered a not-guilty plea.