Lawyer for Former George Santos Treasurer Says He Was Also Duped

When George Santos’ congressional campaign came under federal investigation this year, no one wanted to be his treasurer—to the extent that one person took the unprecedented step of asking for a criminal investigation into how his name appeared on the forms in the first place.

Now, the lawyer who filed that request has taken another unprecedented step by retracting those statements, claiming his own client gave him false information as part of what increasingly appears to be a cover-up of a sham operation to mask the true identity of the person running Santos’ books.

In a series of identical apology letters to the Federal Election Commission on Oct. 26, the lawyer, Derek Ross, rescinded correspondence and “other communications” that he’d submitted in January on behalf of his client, professional Republican political accountant Tom Datwyler. Ross is now telling the FEC that he acted as an unwitting middleman, ferrying false information from his client and inaccurately disavowing Datwyler’s campaign role. The letters cited The Daily Beast’s recent reporting that Datwyler had in reality operated as a shadow treasurer for Santos—despite disavowing that role to the public, to the FEC, and apparently even his own lawyer.

Read more at The Daily Beast.