Connect with us

Congress

FEC questions George Santos campaign funds

Embattled New York congressman made up biography

Published

on

George Santos (Screenshot from CBS New York)

The Federal Election Commission sent a letter this week to New York Congressman George Santos’ fundraising committee requesting clarification on certain donors.

In the letter the commission flagged contributions accepted by Santos’ political committee, which received three $25,000 contributions from Matthew Bruderman, Jeff Vacirca and Todd O’Connell and an additional $1,000 from Bruderman.

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, contributions are subject to limits. In 2021 the FEC announced updated contribution limits that were effective for federal elections in 2021-2022.

During the two-year midterms election cycle the limit for contributions by individuals to federal candidates for president, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives is $2,900 per election. Because the primary and general count as separate elections, individuals may give $5,800 per candidate per cycle.

“If any contribution you received exceeds the limits, you may have to refund the excessive amount,” Sarah Vivian, a senior campaign finance and reviewing analyst at the FEC said in an emailed statement.

CNN noted that letter informed Santos that the information listed for three of his listed donors — “Best Efforts/Best Efforts,” “NYCBS/MD” and “NYCBS/Self Employed” — is “not acceptable” and that his campaign “must provide the missing information.” If the campaign cannot provide the information, the FEC said it must provide evidence, in detail, of its best efforts to obtain the information.

Last week, CNN reported on records that Santos’ campaign filed with the FEC, which showed dozens of expenses just below the commission’s threshold to keep receipts.

Those expenditures “definitely stood out to me,” campaign finance expert Paul S. Ryan, the deputy executive director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation told the news network.

“My view is a bunch of expenditures right below legal requirement for the committee to keep receipts is evidence that he knew what he was doing,” Ryan said. “If in fact he did misuse campaign funds, this was a blatant effort to evade detection.”

Reacting to the CNN reporting Santos’ lawyer, Joe Murray, said the “suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”

This latest episode in the saga of the congressman adds to the ongoing probes by media outlets and investigation by federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Anne Donnelly, the Republican district attorney for Nassau County, and the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James had previously announced investigations into Santos based on the recent revelations over his lies, misrepresentations, and questionable finances from multiple media outlets in New York looking into his background.

The 34-year-old Santos had admitted that he deceived voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District regarding his work history and education. His arrival in Washington to take up his congressional seat and be sworn in as part of the incoming 118th Congress has been met with calls for him to set aside including New York’s other openly gay congressman, Democrat Ritchie Torres, to urge the House Ethics Committee to probe the Republican’s fundraising on the campaign trail, saying the “complete fabrication” of his background could signal other issues. 

“George Santos admits his life story is a complete fabrication. His pitiful confession should not distract us from concerns about possible criminality and corruption. The Ethics Committee MUST investigate how he made his money. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Torres said. 

Upon learning of the recent FEC letter, in an email to the Washington Blade, Torres said:

“George Santos is a habitual liar who knowingly misrepresented every facet of his personal and professional life in order to reach elected office.

It is a disgrace that he is even allowed to step foot on the House floor, participate in the votes for speaker, and possibly be sworn in as a new member of Congress. I hope the FEC inquiry, along with the other pending investigations surrounding Mr. Santos, are just the beginning of the massive but necessary untangling of his web of deception. Perhaps then we will all learn what the people of New York deserve — and what he seems to know nothing about — the truth.”

Torres also took aim at Santos sitting next to anti-LGBTQ Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene in a sarcastic tweet eviscerating Santos for his false claim that his grandparents had escaped the Holocaust and that he had Jewish heritage which he later backed off.

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos told the New York Post. “I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

Greene had suggested in a Facebook post in 2021 that wildfires in California were not natural. She claimed that the blazes had been started by California utility company PG&E, in conjunction with a prominent European Jewish banking family using a space laser.

Santos, like the other 434 representatives of the House, had been unable to be sworn-in as members of his GOP party have squabbled over making California Congressman Kevin McCarthy the next speaker. Santos backed McCarthy, which is why some political pundits believe explains the GOP leader’s silence on him and his lies and grifting as the California Republican literally needed every vote he can get to become speaker.

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Congress

Top Congressional Democrats reintroduce Equality Act on Trump’s 100th day in office

Legislation would codify federal LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination protections

Published

on

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Democratic members reintroduce the Equality Act, April 29 2025 (Washington Blade photo by Christopher Kane)

In a unified display of support for LGBTQ rights on President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, congressional Democrats, including leadership from the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, reintroduced the Equality Act on Tuesday.

The legislation, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, codifying these protections into federal law in areas from jury service to housing and employment, faces an unlikely path to passage amid Republican control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House.

Speaking at a press conference on the grass across the drive from the Senate steps were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), who is the first out LGBTQ U.S. Senator, U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), who is gay and chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (N.H.), who is gay and is running for the U.S. Senate, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.).

Also in attendance were U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (Del.), who is the first transgender member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.), U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.), and representatives from LGBTQ advocacy groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Advocates 4 Trans Equality.

Responding to a question from the Washington Blade on the decision to reintroduce the bill as Trump marks the hundredth day of his second term, Takano said, “I don’t know that there was a conscious decision,” but “it’s a beautiful day to stand up for equality. And, you know, I think the president is clearly hitting a wall that Americans are saying, many Americans are saying, ‘we didn’t vote for this.'”

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday showed Trump’s approval rating in decline amid signs of major opposition to his agenda.

“Many Americans never voted for this, but many Americans, I mean, it’s a great day to remind them what is in the core of what is the right side of history, a more perfect union. This is the march for a more perfect union. That’s what most Americans believe in. And it’s a great day on this 100th day to remind our administration what the right side of history is.”

Merkley, when asked about the prospect of getting enough Republicans on board with the Equality Act to pass the measure, noted that, “If you can be against discrimination in employment, you can be against discrimination in financial contracts, you can be against discrimination in mortgages, in jury duty, you can be against discrimination in public accommodations and housing, and so we’re going to continue to remind our colleagues that discrimination is wrong.”

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which was sponsored by Merkley, was passed by the Senate in 2013 but languished in the House. The bill was ultimately broadened to become the Equality Act.

“As Speaker Nancy Pelosi has always taught me,” Takano added, “public sentiment is everything. Now is the moment to bring greater understanding and greater momentum, because, really, the Congress is a reflection of the people.”

“While we’re in a different place right this minute” compared to 2019 and 2021 when the Equality Act was passed by the House, Pelosi said she believes “there is an opportunity for corporate America to weigh in” and lobby the Senate to convince members of the need to enshrine federal anti-discrimination protections into law “so that people can fully participate.”

Continue Reading

Congress

Democratic lawmakers travel to El Salvador, demand information about gay Venezuelan asylum seeker

Congressman Robert Garcia led delegation

Published

on

Andry Hernández Romero (photo credit: Immigrant Defenders Law Center)

California Congressman Robert Garcia on Tuesday said the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador has agreed to ask the Salvadoran government about the well-being of a gay asylum seeker from Venezuela who remains incarcerated in the Central American country.

The Trump-Vance administration last month “forcibly removed” Andry Hernández Romero, a stylist who asked for asylum because of persecution he suffered because of his sexual orientation and political beliefs, and other Venezuelans from the U.S. and sent them to El Salvador.

The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.” President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.”

Garcia told the Washington Blade that he and three other lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) — met with U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador William Duncan and embassy staffers in San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital.

“His lawyers haven’t heard from him since he was abducted during his asylum process,” said Garcia.

The gay California Democrat noted the embassy agreed to ask the Salvadoran government to “see how he (Hernández) is doing and to make sure he’s alive.”

“That’s important,” said Garcia. “They’ve agreed to that … we’re hopeful that we get some word, and that will be very comforting to his family and of course to his legal team.”

The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador in 2023. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Embassy of El Salvador’s Facebook page)

Garcia, Frost, Dexter, and Ansari traveled to El Salvador days after House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) denied their request to use committee funds for their trip.

“We went anyways,” said Garcia. “We’re not going to be intimidated by that.”

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on April 14 met with Trump at the White House. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) three days later sat down with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador on March 15.

Abrego was sent to the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. The Trump-Vance administration continues to defy a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ordered it to “facilitate” Abrego’s return to the U.S.

Garcia, Frost, Dexter, and Ansari in a letter they sent a letter to Duncan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday demanded “access to” Hernández, who they note “may be imprisoned at” CECOT. A State Department spokesperson referred the Blade to the Salvadoran government in response to questions about “detainees” in the country.

Garcia said the majority of those in CECOT who the White House deported to El Salvador do not have criminal records.

“They can say what they want, but if they’re not presenting evidence, if a judge isn’t sending people, and these people have their due process, I just don’t understand how we have a country without due process,” he told the Blade. “It’s just the bedrock of our democracy.”

President Donald Trump greets Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House on April 14, 2025. (Public domain photo)

Garcia said he and Frost, Dexter, and Ansari spoke with embassy staff, Salvadoran journalists and human rights activists and “anyone else who would listen” about Hernández. The California Democrat noted he and his colleagues also highlighted Abrego’s case.

“He (Hernández) was accepted for his asylum claim,” said Garcia. “He (Hernández) signed up for the asylum process on an app that we created for this very purpose, and then you get snatched up and taken to a foreign prison. It is unacceptable and inhumane and cruel and so it’s important that we elevate his story and his case.”

The Blade asked Garcia why the Trump-Vance administration is deporting people to El Salvador without due process.

“I honestly believe that he (Trump) is a master of dehumanizing people, and he wants to continue his horrendous campaign to dehumanize migrants and scare the American public and lie to the American public,” said Garcia.

The State Department spokesperson in response to the Blade’s request for comment referenced spokesperson Tammy Bruce’s comments about Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador.

“These Congressional representatives would be better off focused on their own districts,” said the spokesperson. “Instead, they are concerned about non-U.S. citizens.”

Continue Reading

Congress

Goodlander endorses Pappas’s Senate bid

Announcement puts gay congressman on the path to securing his party’s nomination

Published

on

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.) on Thursday announced she will not run to represent her state in the U.S. Senate, endorsing gay U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas’s (D-N.H.) bid for the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, putting him on the path to secure the Democratic nomination.

“We are in the fight of our lifetimes right now, of a moment of real crisis and challenge,” she said. “I feel humbled and grateful to so many people across our state who have encouraged me to take a look at the U.S. Senate, and after a lot of thought and conversations with people I love and people I respect and people who I had never met before, who I work for in this role right now, I’ve decided that I’m running for re election in the House of Representatives.”

When asked by a reporter from the ABC affiliate station in New Hampshire whether she would endorse Pappas, Goodlander said, “Yes. Chris Pappas has been amazing partner to me in this work and for many years. And I really admire him. I have a lot of confidence in him.”

She continued, “He and I come to this work, I think with a similar set of values, we also have really similar family stories. Our families both came to New Hampshire over 100 years ago from the very same part of northern Greece. And the values that he brings to this work are ones that that I really, really admire. So I’m proud to support him, and I’m really excited to be working with him right now because we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Maggie Goodlander has dedicated her career to service, and we can always count on her to stand up to powerful interests and put people first,” Pappas said in a post on X. “I’m so grateful to call her my friend and teammate, and I’m proud to support her re-election and stand with her in the fights ahead.”

Earlier this month, former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, announced he would not enter the Senate race, strengthening the odds that Democrats will retain control of Shaheen’s seat.

Continue Reading
Advertisement World Pride Guide
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular