Rep. George Santos pleads not guilty to fraud charges, trial set for September 2024

Rep. George Santos pleaded not guilty Friday to the costs contained in a superseding indictment that accused him of stealing folks’s identities, making fees on his donors’ credit playing cards with out their authorization and mendacity to federal election officers.

Trial was once set for Sept. 9, 2024, and is predicted to final 3 weeks.

The 23-count superseding indictment filed previous this month fees the New York congressman with “two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of access device fraud,” the United States Attorney’s Office within the Eastern District of New York stated in a liberate.

Santos is retaining his attorney, Joe Murray, in spite of a possible battle of passion involving others related to the case.

The new fees adopted the indictment this month of Santos’ former marketing campaign finance leader Nancy Marks. Prosecutors allege they enlisted 10 members of the family with out their wisdom to donate to the marketing campaign to make it appear to be Santos was once getting sufficient improve to qualify for celebration price range.

According to the costs, Santos allegedly stated he lent his marketing campaign $500,000 when he handiest had $8,000 readily available.

There was once no alternate in bail prerequisites at Friday’s listening to. The subsequent standing convention is set for Dec. 12.

In May, Santos was once indicted by way of federal prosecutors on 13 legal counts, together with seven counts of twine fraud, 3 counts of cash laundering, one depend of robbery of public price range and two counts of creating materially false statements to the House of Representatives. He pleaded not guilty to the ones fees.