George Santos' campaign funding has mysterious sources; Citizens United is to blame

Maybe there’s only one cockroach.

Maybe George Santos is the only rat in the House, scurrying away from sunlight and reporters back to his residential den, wherever that may be. Maybe after we squish that one pest, there won’t be any more. But that line of magical thinking is probably unrealistic.

In a flash, we have seen Santos go from embellishing his resume, to serial liar, to connections with Russian cash. If true, might there be others in Congress with allegiance to foreign benefactors? If there is one, there are likely to be more. And if there are more, it would sure explain a few things.

When all becomes known, it is likely the origin of this story will be traced back to 2010, when the Supreme Court narrowly sided with a conservative activist group called Citizens United that felt infringed upon by campaign finance laws that had served the nation for a century’s worth of elections.

The court ruled that limitations on campaign spending by “independent” corporations and “outside groups” ran counter on rights to free speech. This guaranteed corporations and groups more freedoms than are afforded to you and I.

So long as these groups weren’t in direct cahoots with a candidate, the court didn’t see the harm in allowing political advocates more of a voice.

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So a system that was already awash in cash was inundated, thanks to the creation of super PACS that were able to raise unlimited funds, so long as it wasn’t spent in “coordination” with a particular candidate (wink, wink).

But the biggest problem isn’t the amount of money, it’s that these super PACS effectively allow the laundering of political contributions. There’s a big difference between $1 million given to a campaign by a wide range of grass-roots voters and $1 million given in a lump sum by a clan of Nazi sympathizers. Under Citizens United, there is no way to tell to whom a candidate might be beholden.

Which brings us back to George Santos. Mother Jones magazine tried to track down those listed on Santos’ election filings as having given the maximum-allowed individual donation to his campaign. Of the very few live people they were able to find, the prevailing reaction was more or less, “George who?”

But mostly, the addresses listed for the alleged contributors simply did not exist, and the names of the contributors were a fiction. (Running out of imagination, Santos in one instance apparently picked the name of a Brazilian soccer player.)

But some donors do exist, including, according to The Washington Post, “Andrew Intrater and his wife (who) each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him. … Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.”

Like everyone else, Intrater has run away from Santos, saying he’s just a poor innocent who was duped as well. Maybe that’s true, but as an old political science professor used to say in times like this, “I wouldn’t bet the house and lot.”

Further, Santos’ river of deceit makes you wonder what and who else he might be hiding. Santos, the New York Times reports, was a petty criminal in Brazil and a deadbeat New York ne’er do well who twice got himself evicted for failure to pay his rent. Then all of a sudden, he had the means to loan his campaign $700,000, and miraculously earned up to $11.5 million in income generated from a brand new company he formed in 2021. I wouldn’t bet the house and lot on that, either.

So the operative question is, who is bankrolling George Santos? And if the answer to that turns out to be someone or some nation that does not have America’s best interests at heart, the question becomes, are there others in Congress who are similarly beholden?

Political parties all the time do stuff that’s not in the best interest of the country on the basis that it’s good for the party — Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, for example. But there are members of Congress who don't appear to care for the country or party, either one.

Instead, they seem pre-programed to vote against things that Democrats and Republicans alike cherish, including Medicare, Social Security, the U.S. economy and the full faith and credit of the American Treasury.

In this light, Santos’ “concession” of turning down committee assignments makes all the sense in the world. Whoever is behind him doesn’t need his sage input on congressional committees; they just need his vote on the floor.

So who is paying to tear America down? One day, I suspect we’ll know.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: The danger of super PACS being illustrated in George Santos case