Beleaguered Rep. George Santos began raising money for his campaign committee again last quarter, using most of the donor money to start paying off a personal loan he made to his campaign last election.
A new fundraising report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday shows the campaign returned $85,000 to the New York Republican at the end of June from a $300,000 loan.
The filing also shows that Santos raised $133,000 from April to June, meaning that more than half of the money raised by his campaign went to pay off that debt.
Santos announced earlier this year that he will run for re-election, despite facing 13 federal charges accusing him of defrauding donors, using campaign money for personal expenses, fraudulently applying for unemployment benefits and deceiving about your income.
Santos has said he is not guilty of the charges against him. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the loan payments.
Santos’ campaign began April with $715,000 in debt, almost entirely from personal loans made in his name, though earlier this year Santos amended his documents to indicate that $500,000 of those personal loans did not actually come from his funds. personal.
Despite only paying back $85,000 on those loans, the Santos campaign now says in the new report that he only has $530,000 in debt. (Should be $630,000 if the other figures are accurate.)
The vast majority of the money raised by Santos’s campaign came from donors who gave the maximum per-person donation allowed by federal law. Most of those donors had no history of federal campaign donations associated with their name and address, according to a search of Federal Election Commission records.
Additionally, Santos grossed just $17,000 in his home state of New York.
The campaign spent little over the course of the second quarter other than paying off the loan to Santos. Not including processing fees for online donations, he spent $1,000 on travel and lodging, and another $374 on “office internet” to a Georgia company specializing in in “Customized Recovery Solutions for Portfolios of Distressed and Delinquent Receivables.”
Paying off loans with campaign contributions is not illegal or uncommon. But it means candidates are collecting money from supporters and using it to pay off their own personal debt, rather than using those donations to further campaign goals.
During the first quarter of 2023, before announcing that he would officially run for re-election, Santos raised just $5,000 on his campaign and spent $8,000.
