Here's what we know about the campaign finance issues surrounding freshman GOP Rep. George Santos.
You can often judge people by their associates.
Santos' major backers include a migrant smuggler, an unlikely Trump donor, the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch and a convicted felon.
A controversial donor, who along with his apparent domestic partner gave a combined $34,500 to Santos, is Andrew Intrater, the CEO of a company which once had ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch Intrater is the CEO of Sparrow Capital — an investment firm formerly known as Columbus Nova. Prior to the imposition of sanctions on the oligarch in 2018, it was listed in regulatory filings as an affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group, an aluminum, energy and telecom conglomerate.
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Intrater is a prolific donor to Republican candidates and causes — he paid $250,000 to attend former President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017.
So there’s an indirect tie to Putin. That gives Santos something else in common with Trump.
Aren’t foreign nationals prohibited from making campaign donations?
Rocco Oppedisano's family was visibly involved with Santos's campaign. Reportedly an Italian national, the 54-year-old, donated $500 to a victory committee benefiting Santos' campaign in September according to FEC records. That donation to the son of Brazilian immigrants who campaigned as tough on immigration, drew attention after the Daily Beast reported that Oppedisano had pleaded guilty to smuggling undocumented migrants into the U.S. in 2019. A further review of Oppedisano's court records show his criminal record also includes convictions for grand larceny, DWIs, and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.
It seems that Oppedisano was smuggling migrants to Ron DeSantis’s Florida.
When Oppedisano was arrested on his 63-foot Sunseeker yacht, the INXS FINALLY, in December 2019 off the coast of Miami, the Coast Guard found he was smuggling over a dozen undocumented migrants from the Bahamas to Florida. They also said they found over $200,000 in U.S. and Bahamian currency hidden behind a panel in a closet on board.
Yes, anti-immigrant Republicans are smuggling migrants into the US for cash. So what else is new?
But wait, there’s more!
In his May 2020 campaign disclosure filings, he claimed to have no assets and a $55,000 salary from a previous employer. However, in disclosures filed just weeks before election day for his latest campaign, Santos claimed to have earned $750,000 in annual salary for the period between January 2021 and December 2022, as well as millions in dividends from his company, Devolder Organization LLC.
As they said in the film All the President’s Men, “follow the money”.
