Republican Congressman-elect George Santos, of New York, is not only facing widespread condemnation and humiliation, but he could also face criminal charges for filing “false financial disclosure documents” according to a former top GOP House aide.
After being exposed as a compulsive liar, Santos admitted to fabricating major aspects of his background, including his education, work history and religious faith. But his troubles could just be starting.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday, political analyst Brendan Buck, who served as an aide to former GOP House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, numbered a series of challenges the newly elected representative could face over his lies.
“I wouldn’t actually be so sure he’s going to make it two years,” Buck said.
“You guys talked about a lot of the more outlandish things on his bio, there’s one thing I think I’m really focused on, [and] that’s his financial disclosure. You have to file that when you run for office,” he explained. “He ran before, he ran two years ago and apparently filed that he had no accounts or assets worth more than $5,000. This time around, it was apparently worth around $11 million or $12 million. Where did that happen? Where did that come from?”
Buck added: “Filing a false financial disclosure is actually a crime. The ethics committee is absolutely going to look at this, I think law enforcement may look at this.”
“The other thing is, he apparently loaned his committee $700,000 from himself. Where did he get $700,000? There’s a lot of really interesting questions that we haven’t gotten to the bottom of. Of course, ethics is going to look at this. I doubt he gets expelled from the House, we haven’t expelled — only two people, I think, since the Civil War, but that’s certainly on the table. Usually people are kind of talked into resigning, they realize that the writing’s on the wall, it’s not going to work out well for them, but I think all of these things are on the table for him. This is a wild situation.”
Watch the segment below:
