Jorge Santos will plead guilty next week to fraud

Former Rep. Jorge Santos (R.N.Y.) has agreed to plead guilty after being charged in five criminal schemes that triggered his humiliating downfall, according to a person familiar with the matter, a dramatic shift for the former congressman who has insisted on his innocence.

The plea deal allows Santos to avoid trial on 23 criminal charges next month.

Santos will plead guilty to several of those counts, the source said. U.S. District Judge Jonah Sebert, who is overseeing the case, must accept the deal.

Santos did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

Seibert set an in-person hearing for Monday afternoon after the parties requested one A brief letter Friday for no apparent reason. The judge also accepted the request for some delay in the case.

Federal prosecutors charged the former congressman with five felony counts: misleading campaign donors, charging their credit cards without authorization, falsely inflating campaign finance reports, fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits and lying on his financial disclosures.

Santos was originally indicted on 13 counts in May 2023, and 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 chargesheet that included minor changes.

Jury selection for his trial was scheduled to begin Sept. 9 in Long Island.

The guilty plea adds to a whirlwind more than two years for Santos, who flipped a competitive New York seat red in 2022 and was hailed as the first openly gay Republican to hold a House seat expelled from Congress. A few months later, the ethics committee issued a scathing report with evidence that he defrauded donors, stole funds from his campaign and used those funds for personal use — much of it overlapping with his criminal case.

The controversy surrounding Santos began after he was elected in 2022 — before he took office — when the New York Times published a bombshell report that the Empire State Republican Party had fabricated his biography and biography. The story deepened after his criminal charges and reached a boiling point when the Ethics Committee released its report.

In December, two weeks after the Ethics Committee released its report, New York House Republicans forced a vote to oust Santos. Room. He became the sixth member to be expelled from the House, an act not seen in 20 years.

Representative. Tom Suozzi (DN.Y.) won a special election to fill Santos’ seat in February, flipping the Long Island district blue and further shrinking the GOP’s slim majority in the chamber.

Prosecutors planned to emphasize Santos’ fabricated resume at his trial, calling the lies “inextricably intertwined with evidence of the alleged crimes.” According to court filings, potential witnesses include Santos’ friends, family and former employees.

Santos’ plea comes after two of his former aides similarly pleaded guilty last year.

His one-time campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty last October. Samuel Miele, a former fundraiser for Santos, later admitted to impersonating a top House aide while working for the New York Republican Party and charging donors’ credit cards without authorization.