Week In a Nutshell, 10/13/23

October 13, 2023

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) speaks with members of the press as he leaves Federal Court. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Here is some of the legal news making the headlines this week:

A federal grand jury indicted New York Representative George Santos on ten new charges.

In May, a grand jury indicted Santos on 13 counts, including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making false statements. The grand jury accused Santos of misusing campaign funds, fraudulently collecting COVID-19 unemployment benefits, and lying about his personal finances on House of Representatives financial disclosure forms.
On Tuesday, Santos was charged with ten additional counts, including one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of identity theft, two counts of making false statements, two counts of falsifying records, and one count of access device fraud. Santos stands accused of, among other things, charging campaign contributors’ credit cards without authorization and filing falsified campaign fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission. The new charges were announced after Santos’s former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pled guilty to conspiring with Santos to commit fraud.
On Wednesday, a group of New York House Republicans, led by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, announced that they will seek to expel Santos from the House. Santos has remained defiant, telling reporters that he will “continue to fight” the charges and “prove [his] innocence.”

Special counsel Robert Hur interviewed President Joe Biden as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

In January, documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and in his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C. Days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to lead the probe.
Since then, Hur has conducted the investigation largely out of the public eye. However, reporting has indicated that Hur met with every Biden aide who might have been involved in handling official documents.
As Preet Bharara and Joyce Vance discussed on this week’s episode of CAFE Insider, this week’s Biden interview could signal that Hur is nearing the end of his investigation. Vance said that Hur appears “ready to write his report and make his recommendations. It feels like it’s the last thing that you would do – sitting down and talking to Joe Biden.”