NEW YORK — Former US Congressman George Santos is asking for a partially anonymous jury as federal prosecutors push to allow some of his early campaign lies into evidence as the discredited New York Republican’s September fraud trial approaches.
Santos’ attorneys argued in court documents Tuesday that the identities of individual jurors should be known only to the judge, the two parties and their attorneys because of the extraordinary amount of media attention the case and their client have received. They said the publicity poses “significant risks” to “the safety, privacy and impartiality of the jurors.”
Santos was elected in 2022, representing parts of Queens and Long Island before running alone in the sixth legislator in history to be expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives in December. He to abandon a hopeless attempt to return to Congress in April as an independent.
“The extensive and largely negative media coverage, combined with the political nature of the case, creates a substantial risk that jurors will face intimidation or harassment if their identities are known, which could jeopardize the fairness of the trial,” Santos’ attorneys wrote. “Moreover, the mere risk of public ridicule could impair the ability of individual jurors to judge Santos’ case solely on the facts and law as presented in court.”
Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, whose office is handling the case, declined to comment Wednesday.
Meanwhile, prosecutors filed their own motions with the court earlier this month, ahead of the Sept. 9 trial.
Among other things, they want to admit into evidence a number of lies that Santos told during his campaign, such as his false claims that he graduated from both New York University and Baruch College, that he worked at financial giants Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and that he headed a family business with assets worth about $80 million.
They argue that the widespread fabrications about his background are “inextricably linked” to the criminal charges against him and that they would help “establish the suspect’s state of mind at the time.”
Santos is accused of a series of financial crimes, including lying to Congress about his wealth, collecting unemployment benefits while actually working and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses such as designer clothes. He has pleaded not guilty
In their 71-page memo to the court, filed Aug. 2, prosecutors also seek to prevent Santos from arguing at trial that he is the subject of a “vindictive or selective prosecution,” citing his numerous public statements dismissing the case as a “witch hunt.”
They argue that Santos’ claims are “baseless,” “completely irrelevant to the question of his guilt” and would only serve to “inject distracting and damaging claims about improper government motives into the trial.”
Peace’s office also asked the court to compel Santos to cooperate with the required pretrial document exchange process, known as discovery. According to the office, the government provided his legal team with more than 1.3 million pages of documents, while they produced only five pages themselves.
Santos’ lawyers declined to comment on the government’s arguments.
Last month, federal judge Joanna Seybert turned down Santos’ request to have three of the 23 charges against him dismissed. The two sides are scheduled to appear in federal court in Central Islip on Aug. 13.
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Follow Philip Marcelo on twitter.com/philmarcelo.