Santos to FEC: My $500,000 personal loan to my campaign wasn’t actually from my personal funds
U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) revealed on Tuesday that the mysterious half-million dollars he had reported to the Federal Election Commission as a personal loan of his personal funds to his political campaign wasn’t actually from his personal funds.
The Daily Beast reports that Tuesday afternoon, “Santos’ political operation filed a flurry of amended campaign finance reports, telling the feds, among other things, that a $500,000 loan he gave to his campaign didn’t, in fact, come from his personal funds as he’d previously claimed.”
The question many have been asking remains the same: where did that money come from?
It remains unanswered.
And it’s not just the $500,000.
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“Another amended filing on Tuesday disclosed that a $125,000 ‘loan from the candidate’ in late October also did not come from his ‘personal funds,’ but like the $500,000 question, did not say where the money came from, when the loan was due, or what entity, if any, backed the money.”
One expert appeared stunned.
“Santos’ campaign might have unchecked the ‘personal funds of candidate’ box, but it is still reporting that the $500,000 came from Santos himself,” Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of government watchdog Documented and a campaign finance expert, told The Daily Beast. “If the ‘loan from candidate’ didn’t actually come from the candidate, then Santos should come clean and disclose where the money really came from. Santos can’t uncheck a box and make his legal problems go away.”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s Robert Maguire provides the visual proof.
\u201cOh....double whoa. \n\nLet's play a little game. This $500k is the largest loan George Santos supposedly gave to his campaign. Notice a difference between the new one (LEFT) and the original (RIGHT)?\n\n(Hint: look at the checkbox marked "personal funds of the candidate)\u201d— Robert Maguire (@Robert Maguire) 1674597470