DOJ Investigating George Santos for New Crimes Seven Months After Trump Freed Him From Prison: Report

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The U.S. Department of Justice is criminally investigating former Rep. George Santos (R-NY), NPR reported on Tuesday.

On Feb. 23, Santos posted a video on X in which he said he would be attending President Donald Trump’s State of the Union the following day.

“I’m going to be there for the State of the Union in the gallery, guys,” he said in the video.

During this time over on Kalshi, a gambling website, millions of dollars were being wagered on whether Santos would attend Trump’s speech. Lo and behold, Santos did not attend.

The next day, the disgraced congressman tweeted, “Watching SOTU from an airport tv was not part of the plan! FML.”

But according to NPR’s investigation, Santos’s absence from the SOTU very much was part of the plan. Now he is the subject of an insider trading investigation:

What Santos didn’t say was that he had already placed bets on Kalshi that he was not going to appear at the State of the Union address, according to three people with direct knowledge of his trades who were not authorized to speak publicly. They say Santos misled the public and turned a profit based on that deception in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Kalshi detected Santos’ trades, froze his account and referred the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice, which both opened investigations into Santos, according to a person familiar with Kalshi’s investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

NPR noted that neither the DOJ nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission replied to requests for comment.

“Well, that’s news to me,” Santos told NPR when the outlet asked about the insider trading investigation. When asked if he has ever had an account with Kalshi, he replied, “I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no.”

Santos told NPR that he knows Kalshi’s co-founder Luana Lopes Lara, and said he would call her and report back to NPR. But according to a person familiar with Kalshi’s probe into the matter, the co-founder does not know Santos.

In October, Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year prison sentence for wire fraud and identity theft. Santos served less than three months of that sentence. A month after he was first elected to Congress in 2022, Santos was revealed to have lied extensively about his career, education, and other biographical details, such as his false claim that he was Jewish.

In his post announcing the commutation, Trump concluded it by saying, “Good luck George, have a great life!”

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