Typing the headline for this article was one of those surreal moments that you didn’t think could possibly happen until it did. And yet, here we are. It’s being reported that perpetually beleaguered Congressman George Santos will announce his 2024 reelection campaign tomorrow. He has repeatedly been shown to be a liar and a fraud with an almost entirely bogus resume. Perhaps even worse, his fundraising and campaign finance activities look far more than “problematic” (more on that in a moment) and he is currently under investigation. But he seems to think he can win another term anyway. (NY Post)

Truth-challenged Long Island Rep. George Santos will announce his reelection campaign Monday in Washington D.C., a source told The Post.

Despite facing multiple calls to resign from both parties over a series of lies about his personal and professional life, the Republican congressman has “called big donors and sat down with supporters and believes he can raise $500,000 to $750,000 in the second quarter of 2023,” said a person close to Santos.

“Many of us Americans are willing to accept all sorts of resurrection, perhaps Representative George Santos will be another,” said entrepreneur Josh Eisen, a top Santos donor — who declined to say whether he would back him again.

There are already Republicans lining up to take a shot at him in the primary next year. But that could also be a problem. If there are too many qualified candidates with their own local followings, they could splinter the vote to the point where Santos might actually win with a plurality. And then he would almost certainly be fed into a wood chipper against a very well-funded Democrat in the general election.

Returning to the ongoing investigation into Santos’ bizarre campaign finance history, Politico has an update this weekend. We previously had to wonder where he came up with the huge amounts of cash he was splashing around in the 2022 campaign. But now, even though his campaign spent nothing during the first quarter of the year, Santos somehow wound up with less money than he started with.

Rep. George Santos’s (R-N.Y.) congressional campaign officially lost money during the first quarter of 2023 after it reported having to issue refunds in excess of the contributions it received.

The New York Republican, who has been beleaguered from before he was sworn in after it was revealed he’d fabricated major portions of his biography, raised a scant $5,333.26 during the first three months of the year. But his campaign also refunded $8,352; meaning that he actually took in less than $3,000 than he paid out.

If a sitting member of Congress only raises $5,000 in an entire quarter, that’s not a campaign. That’s an invitation to head for the exits, preferably early. People were lining up to demand that he refund their money faster than anyone volunteered to give him any. The largest donation he received was $245.95, but the name of the person who supposedly donated it doesn’t appear anywhere in the FEC records.

That sounds awfully suspicious already, doesn’t it? But it fits in with a pattern of many small-dollar donations he claims to have received and which fell below the mandatory reporting limit.  He also claimed a huge number of expenses that were mysteriously just pennies shy of the value where the campaign would have to keep receipts.

The campaign currently has roughly $25,000 cash on hand. Where did all the rest of the money go? Perhaps we’ll know more when the ongoing investigations conclude.