Toothless regulators and legal loopholes let con men thrive.
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Movie buffs will never forget the scene

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in All the President’s Men. In that dark parking garage, Deep Throat whispers, “Follow the money.” Listening intently, George Santos nods.

Oh, wait. Santos wasn’t there. Nor was he ever a college volleyball star, the recipient of two knee replacements, a brain cancer survivor, or a Wall Street titan. He’s neither Jewish, nor Jew-ish, but perhaps he can explain to his new friend Marjorie Taylor Greene how those Rothschild-funded space lasers work.

We’ve all had a good laugh at New York Rep. George Santos (R), who is currently under investigation

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by at least four different entities in two countries. But we can’t overlook the troubling question behind his lies: where does his money come from?

What little we can gather only makes the question more pressing. He worked for Florida investment firm Harbor City Capital, which the Securities and Exchange Commission accused of being a Ponzi scheme that stole millions of dollars. Did his money come from fleeced investors?

Other clues of potential misconduct abound. He was a candidate in a tight race, yet his leadership PAC contributed thousands of dollars to at least two other politicians, including $25,000 to New York Republican Lee Zeldin’s failed gubernatorial bid. It’s an anomaly that’s highly suggestive that Santos was merely the funnel for another donor behind the scenes.

Santos benefitted from $25,000 spent by RedStone Strategies, which was not registered as a political group. He lent his own campaign $700,000, riches that he claims came from a company he registered, dissolved a year later, and then reinstated. In the latest scandalous revelation

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, his campaign staffers were accused of charging donors’ credit cards for thousands of dollars’ worth of unauthorized donations.

This is shocking enough without considering the other sensational details of how Santos spent his mystery money — on lavish trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, “donor lunches” at Bergdorf Goodman, and even to pay his rent, to name a few. So where were the regulators while Santos raised and then burned through campaign cash?

Well, the Federal Election Commission was writing letters. To be precise, it sent Santos’s team 20 inquiries in the last election cycle about irregularities in its campaign filings, including excessive donor contributions, numbers that didn’t add up, and missing information about loans to the campaign. But aside from the letter writing, there’s no evidence the FEC took action after stumbling on practices that ranged from suspicious to downright illegal.

Unlike the media or the Democrats, the FEC seemed at least to have noticed a big problem — but it was essentially powerless to do anything.

In the deregulated environment created by a toothless FEC and Citizens United, which will mark its 13th anniversary this weekend, con men and fabulists like George Santos can roam freely. If he is prosecuted, as seems likely, it will be because of a train of events set in motion by his lurid fibs, not his fishy campaign finance filings.

Since Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, the Supreme Court has held there’s no risk of corruption from candidates who self-fund their campaigns. Its logic was amplified to absurdity by Citizens United. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited funds because they have independence from candidates, circumstances every bit as fictitious as Santos’s fables. It’s a world suited to someone with no sense of right and wrong, no conscience (what journalist H.L. Mencken once defined as “the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking”).

I grew up in the congressional district where Santos won. It was the town fictionalized as West Egg, home of another fabulist, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby. Until we restore the rule of law in our politics, we will allow “careless people” like Gatsby and Santos to “smash[] up things and creatures and then retreat[] back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”


A Short-Lived Victory for Voting Rights?

Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court court struck down a 2018 voter ID law as racially discriminatory. But the positive impact of the ruling may prove fleeting under the court’s new 5–2 conservative majority, which took hold soon after the decision. “The decision illustrates how state courts can offer voters greater protections than federal courts, but also how even those protections can be fragile,” Robyn Sanders writes. Read more

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How Congress Can Get Things Done

Many commentators are dubious about the possibility of cooperation and progress in the highly divided Congress. Maya Kornberg proposes embracing the role of congressional committees as the key to breaking down partisan barriers and moving government forward. “The committee system has the potential for collaboration — members just need to seize it,” she writes for The Hill. Read more

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Looking Ahead to the 2030 Census

The Census Bureau has already started preparing for the next count by inviting public comments about improving its research and design processes. So far, comments filed by a wide range of groups show broad agreement on solutions that would enhance the accuracy and equity of the count. These include limiting long-standing undercounts of communities of color and adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity. “Community groups are voicing a need for long-overdue reform — both the bureau and Congress should take heed,” Clara Fong and Kelly Percival write. READ MORE

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News

Sean Morales-Doyle on the link between the Capitol attack and anti-voter efforts // ETHNIC MEDIA SERVICES

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Joseph Nunn on the scope of a governor’s authority to address immigration // MIAMI HERALD

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Joanna Zdanys on voting protections in New York // TIMES UNION

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