George Santos Has a Bad Case of the Shoppies

George Santos, the checkered first-term Republican congressman from New York, pleaded not responsible to 13 felony fees together with wire fraud and cash laundering on Wednesday, stemming from a federal indictment filed earlier this week alleging that Santos, amongst different issues, spent hundreds of {dollars} of solicited marketing campaign funds “on private bills, together with luxurious designer clothes and bank card funds.”

In different phrases, it seems that Consultant George Santos could also be affected by a foul—even felonious—case of the shoppies.

Drew Angerer/Getty Pictures

Santos, who represents a bit of Queens and Lengthy Island that includes the wealthiest congressional district in New York, has constructed up a curious style profile since he arrived in Washington earlier this 12 months. Throughout his swearing-in, Santos wore a pale blue sweater below a navy blazer that made him look, because the Washington Submit put it, “very very like a freshman at a prep faculty in hell.” Inside his first chaotic week on the Home ground, he made a present of hobnobbing with fellow lightning-bolt Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz in his thick-rimmed Ray-Bans frames and a Cartier Santos watch, which Forbes joked may very well be a knockoff. On Twitter, he’s long-established himself because the unofficial Home type correspondent, providing a evaluate of NASA’s newest spacesuit and a best-and-worst-dressed checklist from the White Home Correspondents’ Dinner. (“God I miss #JoanRivers❤️,” he tweeted, referring to the late comic’s internet hosting gig on the E! celeb style present Trend Police.) He gave the present president of the New York Younger Republican Membership a Ferragamo tie proper off his neck. In grifting and politics, few issues are extra vital than trying the half.

However because the indictment suggests, Santos’s shoppies effectively predate the constructing of his present D.C. standing wardrobe. Earlier this 12 months, Santos confessed to utilizing stolen checks to buy $1,300 value of sneakers and clothes in Rio de Janeiro in 2008. Two of Santos’s former roommates accused him of stealing a checked Burberry scarf after which sporting mentioned scarf to a “Cease the Steal” rally in Washington in 2021. On Election Day 2022, Santos solid his vote in Queens sporting a quilted Burberry coat and an enameled Hermès “Clic H” bracelet, which, just like the Ray-Bans, has develop into one other certainly one of his staple items. And again in December, the New York Submit noticed Santos serving to his sister transfer, toting objects in procuring baggage from Goal, Macy’s, and Hermès.