George Santos’ New Treasurer Wants You to Know He’s Not George Santos’ Treasurer

“We informed the Santos campaign on Monday that Mr. Datwyler would not be interested in serving as their treasurer.”

George Santos

Rep. George Santos leaves a GOP conference meeting on Capitol Hill.Andrew Harnik/AP

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On Wednesday afternoon, more than a half-dozen campaign committees affiliated with George Santos filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission stating that Thomas Datwyler, a campaign finance consultant, had taken over as the committees’ treasurer. It meant that Datwyler was replacing Nancy Marks, the Santos campaign treasurer who may be key to unraveling the source of the mysterious $705,000 Santos loaned himself during last year’s campaign.

There was only one problem: Datwyler had not agreed to serve as treasurer. In fact, he had told the Santos campaign on Monday that he did not want the job. As Datwyler’s attorney, Derek Ross, told me over the phone, “We informed the Santos campaign on Monday that Mr. Datwyler would not be interested in serving as their treasurer. So it appears that there was some miscommunication between that conversation and today’s filings.”

It is not clear who filed the paperwork stating that Datwyler was taking over as the person overseeing the financial operations of Santos’ campaign. I reached out to Marks’ office to ask if she was responsible for the filings, but she didn’t respond.

On Tuesday, in what now appears to be her departing action, Marks submitted a number of amended reports for Santos’ campaign. In one of them, which was first reported by the Daily Beast, Marks unchecked a box that had previously indicated that a $500,000 loan from Santos to his campaign had come from the “personal funds of the candidate.” In other amended filings, that box remained checked—making it hard to figure out what exactly was going on.

Was Marks saying the $500,000 Santos had loaned his campaign did not originate in his own personal finances? Santos has made clear he wasn’t the source of the paperwork change. “Let’s make it very clear,” he told CNN on Wednesday, “I don’t amend anything, I don’t touch any of my FEC stuff, right?”

Mother Jones emailed Santos’ congressional office at 3:20 on Wednesday afternoon to ask it to clarify the Datwyler mix up. It has not yet responded.

At 3:46, someone submitted yet another FEC filing, this one covering the Devolder-Santos for Congress committee, Santos’ main campaign operation. Like the others, it states that Datwyler is now its treasurer. Datwyler did not agree to that, either.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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