WASHINGTON – Rep. George Santos raised nearly $150,000 in campaign funds in the second quarter of this year — most of it from out-of-state donors — and used $85,000 of it to pay himself back for a campaign loan, according to campaign finance reports filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) reported in his filing for the Devolder Santos for Congress Committee that he still owes himself $530,000 in campaign loans from his victory over Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the November general election in the Third Congressional District.
In a separate filing, Santos reported that his Devolder Santos Victory Committee raised $16,600.
A Republican challenger to Santos, military veteran Kellen Curry, raised $210,725 from his campaign committee and a political action committee run by a defense contractor, according to a filing Friday with the FEC.
None of the seven Democrats who have filed to challenge Santos in the race had submitted a campaign finance report on Friday ahead of the Saturday deadline for filing second-quarter reports.
The money Santos raised came less than two weeks after federal prosecutors filed a 13-count indictment against him, alleging he ripped off political donors while running for Congress, fraudulently received unemployment benefits authorized under COVID-19 and lied on his congressional financial disclosure forms. Santos pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A majority of the named donors to the Devolder Santos for Congress Committee made their contributions through the Republican internet donation platform WinRed, the filing showed.
Most of the donations were for the maximum of $3,300 per election, the filing reported, and began arriving on May 20, the day Santos hired Jason Boles, the campaign treasurer for Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to be his campaign treasurer.
Brett Kappel, an attorney at Harmon Curran, a Washington, D.C., law firm, said the U.S….
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