George Santos May Be Gone From Congress, but His Trial Still Looms

For months since his expulsion from Congress, George Santos has blithely stoked political intrigue on social media and sold customized videos of himself on Cameo.

Now, he is arguing that all that publicity could taint his criminal trial next month.

In a flurry of pretrial filings, Mr. Santos’s lawyers have argued that the federal judge overseeing the case must take extra steps to screen potential jurors with a lengthy written questionnaire, and then obscure their identities from the public, if the proceeding is to be fair.

“Unlike typical high-profile cases, Santos’s situation intertwines political controversy, complex financial crimes and unprecedented media scrutiny in a manner that creates extraordinary challenges for seating an impartial jury,” the lawyers wrote, including a tally of 1,500 articles about him in New York newspapers.

How to select a jury is one of several pretrial disputes that Mr. Santos’s lawyers and federal prosecutors are expected to argue on Tuesday in Federal District Court on Long Island, where jury selection is scheduled to begin on Sept. 9.

Mr. Santos, a former Republican congressman who represented parts of Queens and Nassau County, could technically still avoid a trial by pleading guilty to the 23 charges he faces, which include money laundering and aggravated identity theft. The House voted to expel him last year, and prosecutors are prepared to present evidence that he swindled donors, filed false campaign documents and faked unemployment to secure government checks.

Yet all indications are that Mr. Santos is moving swiftly toward trial. The court has summoned 850 potential jurors. Prosecutors said they had lined up “dozens of witnesses” to testify. And after rejecting an earlier attempt by Mr. Santos to narrow the case, Judge Joanna Seybert has kept it on a schedule that could result in a verdict shortly before Election Day.