The Justice Department requested the Federal Election Commission hold off on further investigating freshman Republican New York Congressman and man with a highly improbable life story George Santos so it can pursue its own criminal investigation, the Washington Post reports.
The FEC is investigating a change in reporting from Santos on his source of election funds, specifically a $500,000 injection into the campaign that he first filed as a loan to his campaign account, but then not checking that in his latest filing, meaning the money was either an illegal donation or loan if Santos cannot prove he gave the money to his campaign himself.
The request came from the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, which although it sounds like a boring part of the Law & Order franchise is actually a specialist unit that looks into allegedly corrupt public officials and operations.