Congressman-elect Daniel Goldman hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet, and he has already trained his sights on a future colleague, George Santos. The ex-prosecutor — who helped lead both impeachment trials in which President Trump was found to be not guilty and acquitted — is now running the same script against the Long Island fabulist. 

Mr. Goldman was elected to represent New York’s 10th district, the gerrymander of which runs from the Upper West Side down through SoHo and Tribeca and through Sunset Park before hanging a sharp left into Bensonhurst and Borough Park. The seat has long been held by Representative Jerrold “Jerry” Nadler, now of the 12th.

Mr. Goldman’s campaign office released a statement accusing Mr. Santos of “conspiracy to defraud the United States by knowingly and intentionally interfering with a federal election through dissemination of misinformation.” A conspiracy involves an illegal agreement, criminal intent, and proof of an overt act to further that intent.  

In 1910, the Supreme Court held that the “statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government.” The conspiracy aims to “obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operation.”  

Fourteen years later, Chief Justice Taft explained that “defraud” means to “interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” The jurist explained that it is “not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation.”   

Mr. Goldman notes that conspiracy to defraud the United States was among the “charges levied by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III against Russian infiltrators in our 2016 election,” while noting that it is the basis for one of the January 6 committee’s four criminal referrals of President Trump to the Department of Justice. 

The former prosecutor is also touting less exotic charges against Mr. Santos relating to “filing false statements to the Federal Election Commission.” The New York Times reports that he lent his campaign $5800,000 during the 2022 campaign and another $80,00 in 2020. It is unclear where those funds originated, one element of wider uncertainty regarding his personal and professional past. 

The effort to tie the tangled threads of Mr. Santos’s story has turned to his time in, among other places, Brazil. Mr. Goldman alleges that his fellow congressman-elect has “previously been convicted of fraud in Brazil.” At issue is the alleged use of purloined checks. Mr. Goldman’s statement characterizes Mr. Santos as a “fugitive.”

The Times, which broke the story, stopped short of saying that Mr. Santos was “convicted,” but merely that documents in the Brazilian court “show that Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was charged, but that the case remains unresolved because authorities were later unable to locate him.” 

Mr. Santos told the New York Post: “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world.” He doubled down in an interview with City & State, asserting, “I’m not a wanted criminal in any jurisdiction.”  

The Times reports that its review of the documents suggest that “Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was charged, but that the case remains unresolved.” The Gray Lady makes no mention of a conviction.  

Mr. Goldman’s office did not respond to requests for comment.