(The Hill) — Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has agreed to plead guilty after being accused of five criminal schemes that sparked his disgraced fall from the House, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, a dramatic shift for the ex-congressman who had insisted he was innocent.
The plea deal enables Santos to avoid trial next month on 23 criminal charges that could’ve carried significant prison time, if convicted.
The source said Santos will plead guilty to multiple of those counts. U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, who oversees the case, will have to accept the deal.
Santos did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Seybert set an in-person hearing for Monday afternoon after the parties requested one in a brief letter Friday that disclosed no rationale. The judge had also granted requests to push back a few deadlines in the case.
Federal prosecutors accused the former congressman of five criminal schemes: misleading campaign donors, charging their credit cards without authorization, falsely inflating campaign finance reports, fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits and lying on his financial disclosures.
Santos was originally indicted in May 2023 on 13 charges, and the 10 other counts were added last October. He appeared in court as recently as Tuesday, when he pleaded not guilty to a new version of his indictment that included minor changes.
Jury selection for his trial was set to begin on Long Island on Sept. 9.
The guilty plea adds to a whirlwind two-plus years for Santos, who flipped a competitive New York seat red in 2022 and was lauded as the first openly gay Republican who is not an incumbent to win a House seat, only to be ousted from Congress months later after the Ethics Committee published a damning report with evidence showing that he deceived donors, stole from his campaign and used the funds for personal use — much of which overlapped with his criminal case.
The controversy surrounding Santos began after he was elected in 2022 — before he was sworn into office — when The New York Times published a bombshell report that the Empire State Republican had fabricated his resume and biography. The saga deepened after his criminal indictments and reached a boiling point when the Ethics Committee released its report.
In December, just over two weeks after the Ethics panel released its report, a group of New York House Republicans forced a vote on expelling Santos, which was successful after a group of Democrats and GOP lawmakers met the two-thirds threshold to oust him from the chamber. He became just the sixth member to ever be ousted from the House, an act that had not been seen in 20 years.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) won a special election to fill Santos’s seat in February, flipping the Long Island district blue and further narrowing the GOP’s slim majority in the chamber.
Prosecutors planned to emphasize Santos’s fabricated resume at his trial, calling the falsehoods “inextricably intertwined with evidence of the charged crimes.” Potential witnesses included Santos’s friends, family and former staff, according to court filings.
Santos’s plea comes after two of his former aides similarly admitted guilt last year.
His onetime campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty last October. Samuel Miele, a former fundraiser for Santos, later admitted to impersonating a House leadership aide and charging donors’ credit cards without authorization while working for the New York Republican.