We Tried to Call the Top Donors to George Santos' 2020 Campaign. Many Don't Seem To Exist

[icymist]

In September 2020, George Santos’ congressional campaign reported that Victoria and Jonathan Regor had each contributed $2,800—the maximum amount—to his first bid for a House seat. Their listed address was 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

A search of various databases reveals no one in the United States named Victoria or Jonathan Regor. Moreover, there is nobody by any name living at 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson. That address doesn’t exist. There is a New Mexico Street in Jackson, but the numbers end in the 20s, according to Google Maps and a resident of the street.

Santos’ 2020 campaign finance reports also list a donor named Stephen Berger as a $2,500 donor and said he was a retiree who lived on Brandt Road in Brawley, California. But a spokesperson for William Brandt, a prominent rancher and Republican donor, tells Mother Jones that Brandt has lived at that address for at least 20 years and “neither he or his wife (the only other occupant [at the Brandt Road home]) have made any donations to George Santos. He does not know Stephen Berger nor has Stephen Berger ever lived at…Brandt Road.”

[...] His small contribution via WinRed does appear in an FEC filing, and he says that this week he located a record of it on his debit card statement. He adds that he could find no record on his debit or credit card statements of the $2,800 attributed to him in both WinRed and Santos FEC filings. The initial small dollar donation that he made on WinRed accurately listed his employment information. The $2,800 WinRed contribution made months later listed a different place of work for him: an aborted hand sanitizer venture that only he and Santos had worked on together.

Last week, the friend contacted Santos about the $2,800 donation. Santos, he says, warned him about speaking to reporters and asserted that the media was pursuing clicks, not the truth. According to the friend, Santos told him over the phone that any donation he didn’t agree to would be reimbursed.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/we-tried-to-call-the-top-donors-to-george-santos-2020-campaign-many-dont-seem-to-exist/

[tanyev]

1. Santos didn't do all this by himself.

34 years old, his second campaign/first win and he’s already surrounded by a fictitious web of donors and supporters? Who’s really pulling the strings?

[icymist]

2. I agree.

I did like the term 'Long Island fabulist' though.

[dalton99a]

3. +1. His spelling and grammar improved dramatically during the campaign