George Santos, the embattled Republican congressman charged with fraud and money laundering, has secured three unidentified guarantors for his $500,000 bond.
At his May 10 arraignment, where Santos pleaded not guilty, US Magistrate Judge Anne Shields released the 34-year-old lawmaker but told him he would have to get three co-signers for the bond. He now has them, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In a departure from typical practice in federal court, Shields didn’t require defense lawyer Joseph Murray to identify the guarantors in open court.
Keeping secret the identities of those who have sponsored bail for a defendant is rare. In January FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried asked a federal judge in Manhattan to do so for two people helping to secure his bail, to protect them from public scrutiny and potential harassment. The judge ordered the names disclosed “for the limited purpose of asserting the public’s claimed right of access” to the identities, saying there was no danger of impairing law enforcement and that the privacy interests of the co-signers was limited.
