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