For months since his expulsion from Congress, George Santos has blithely stoked political intrigue on social media and sold customized videos of himself on Cameo.
On Tuesday, he tried to argue that all that publicity could taint his criminal trial next month.
In pretrial filings and a court hearing on Long Island, New York, Santos’ lawyers urged the federal judge overseeing the case to take extra steps to screen potential jurors with a 137-question written survey, and then obscure their identities from the public, to ensure that the proceeding was fair.
“Unlike typical high-profile cases, Santos’ situation intertwines political controversy, complex financial crimes and unprecedented media scrutiny in a manner that creates extraordinary challenges for seating an impartial jury,” the lawyers wrote, including a tally of 1,500 articles about him in New York newspapers.
How to select a jury was one of several pretrial disputes that Santos’ lawyers and federal prosecutors argued Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, where jury selection is scheduled to begin Sept. 9.
Santos, a former Republican member of Congress who represented parts of Queens and Nassau County, could technically still avoid a trial by pleading guilty to the 23 charges he faces, which include money laundering and aggravated identity theft. The House voted to expel him last year, and prosecutors are prepared to present evidence that he swindled donors, filed false campaign documents and faked unemployment to secure government checks.
Yet all indications are that Santos is moving swiftly toward trial. The court has summoned about 800 potential jurors. Prosecutors said they had lined up as many as 30 people to testify. And after rejecting an earlier attempt by Santos to narrow the case, Judge Joanna Seybert, who is overseeing the trial, has kept it on a schedule that could result in a verdict shortly before Election Day.
For his part, Santos pleaded not guilty again Tuesday and kept uncharacteristically quiet as he shuffled in and out of the courthouse.
Seybert agreed to seat a partly anonymous jury. But she also ruled that she saw no need to deviate from the usual oral jury selection process.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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