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| By all appearances, the summer of 2020 was a very good time for George Santos. He was pulling in a six-figure salary from a Florida-based investment firm, and he had won the Republican Party’s support as a first-time candidate contesting a Long Island House seat. | 各种迹象表明，2020年夏天对乔治·桑托斯来说是段好日子。他在佛罗里达州的一家投资公司领着六位数的年薪，而作为首次代表长岛竞选众议院席位的候选人，他还获得了共和党的支持。 |
| Yet that June, Mr. Santos presented the State of New York with a very different story. According to federal prosecutors, he falsely claimed that he was unemployed in order to twist open a spigot of pandemic-era jobless benefits that eventually amounted to $24,000. | 然而在那年6月，桑托斯对纽约州讲的故事却截然不同。据联邦检察官透露，为了申领疫情失业救济金，他谎称自己失业，最终陆续领到了2.4万美元。 |
| For the entirety of his public life, Mr. Santos has been a man shrouded in myths. He cast himself as a self-made American success story, spinning audacious lies about university degrees, fast cars and vast wealth. And when that persona unraveled, fellow politicians and the media fixated on the idea that he was a criminal mastermind evading detection. | 桑托斯的整个公共生活仿佛云山雾罩。他将自己塑造成白手起家的美国成功典范，编造出他坐拥大学学位、跑车和巨额财富的大胆谎言。当他的人设被揭穿，政坛同僚和媒体都确信他就是个未被抓现行的犯罪大师。 |
| The searing 13-count indictment unveiled by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York on Wednesday cut through all of that. It cemented a story closer to “The Great Gatsby,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” or other mainstays of a popular subgenre of frauds that snakes like a corrupt seam through American life. | 周三，纽约东区联邦检察官宣布的13项严厉指控戳穿了这一切。这份起诉书呈现的故事更像《了不起的盖茨比》、《天才瑞普利》或其他讲述暗中蜿蜒侵蚀美国生活的热门诈骗题材类型。 |
| In prosecutors’ telling, George Santos, defendant, is just another grifter with a taste for fame and designer goods, willing to lie and defraud wealthy people to get what he wants. That the stage happens to be politics seems incidental: As a two-time congressional candidate, he took advantage of donors, state officials and even the House of Representatives. | 在检方陈述中，被告乔治·桑托斯不过又是一个热衷名利和奢侈品的骗子，为了满足欲望不惜撒谎，并对富人行骗。选择政坛作为舞台似乎是顺其自然：作为两届国会候选人，他利用了捐赠人、州政府官员甚至整个众议院。 |
| “It feels like a particularly American story,” said Amy Reading, a historian of American cons, before referencing Mr. Santos’s work for a Florida firm cited by the S.E.C. for wrongdoing. “Here you have someone who worked for an actual Ponzi scheme, while falsely claiming unemployment benefits in a global pandemic, and then he fell up to Congress.” | “感觉这是个特别美国的故事，”研究美国骗局的历史学家艾米·雷丁在提及桑托斯在一家佛州公司的工作之前说道，美国证券交易委员会指出该公司存在不当行为。“这个人参与过真实的庞氏骗局，同时在全球大流行期间骗领失业救济金，然后在国会落马。” |
| Former Senator Alfonse D’Amato, a Long Island Republican whose name graces the courthouse where Mr. Santos was arraigned, was more blunt. | 长岛共和党人、前参议员阿方斯·达马托——传讯桑托斯的法院正是以他的名字命名——说得更加直白。 |
| “He’s a two-bit thief,” he said. “He is dead in the water. They got him good.” | “他就是个无足挂齿的小贼，”他说。“他已经完蛋了。他们要将他绳之以法。” |
| Mr. Santos has already begun fighting that narrative. Though he has admitted to some lies, he pleaded not guilty in a packed courthouse on Long Island to all 13 counts, including money laundering, wire fraud, false statements and stealing public funds. Then he walked outside to reaffirm his intention to seek re-election. | 桑托斯已经开始反驳这种叙事。尽管他承认撒了谎，但在长岛一个座无虚席的法院里，他对包括洗钱、电信欺诈、虚假陈述和窃取公共资金在内的13项指控均不认罪。随后他在法庭外重申了寻求连任的意愿。 |
| “The reality is, this is a witch hunt,” Mr. Santos, 34, said, invoking another old American motif. “This is the beginning for me of the ability to address and defend myself.” | “真相是，这就是一场猎巫行动，”34岁的桑托斯的说法来自于另一个古老的美国母题。“这是我有能力应对和为自己辩护的开始。” |
| The indictment prompted a new round of calls by rank-and-file Republicans for Mr. Santos to resign or to even be expelled from Congress, but it remains far from clear if the political system will exact a price. | 这份起诉书引来大批共和党人的新一轮呼吁，要求桑托斯辞职，更有甚者要将他驱逐出国会。但目前远不清楚政治体制是否会付出代价。 |
| House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, who cannot afford to lose a single vote from his spare Republican majority, has already said that he has no intention of trying to push Mr. Santos out of office unless or until he is convicted at trial. That stance fits with House precedent in recent cases involving Republicans like Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska and Chris Collins of New York but could take years to play out. | 来自加州的众议院议长麦卡锡已申明，他无意驱逐桑托斯，除非或至少等到他被定罪才会考虑此举。在共和党占微弱多数席位的众议院，麦卡锡不愿失去任何一票。他的立场符合众议院在最近几起案件中的表态，这些案件涉及内布拉斯加州的杰夫·福滕贝里和纽约州的克里斯·柯林斯等共和党人，最后的结果可能要等数年时间才会水落石出。 |
| Democrats do have the ability to force a vote on expelling Mr. Santos from the House, but they would need dozens of Republicans to defy Mr. McCarthy and join them to meet the required vote threshold. For now, they have trained their attention on pressuring Mr. McCarthy to act on his own. | 民主党人确实可以迫使众议院对是否驱逐桑托斯进行表决，但他们需要数十名共和党人违背麦卡锡的意愿，站到他们一边，才能达到必要的表决门槛。目前，他们将注意力集中在向麦卡锡施压上，敦促他自行拿出办法。 |
| “This is not somebody who was afforded an opportunity to get rich quick and couldn’t resist the temptation,” said Representative Daniel S. Goldman, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor from Manhattan. “This is someone who is a premeditated serial liar, whose total existence is a lie and a fraud.” | “此人并非面对一夜暴富的机会而无法抗拒诱惑，”曾担任曼哈顿联邦检察官的民主党众议员丹尼尔·戈德曼说。“他是早有预谋的惯骗，其全部的存在就是一个谎言和一个骗局。” |
| Voters may be the first to issue a verdict of Mr. Santos. Republican leaders in New York and Nassau County, who supported him just two years ago, plan to back a primary challenger next year. They have a history of lining up money and volunteers to see their candidates through. | 选民可能最先对桑托斯做出判决。两年前还支持他的纽约和拿骚县的共和党领导人计划明年支持一位初选挑战者。他们过去往往会安排好资金和志愿者帮助他们的候选人通过选举。 |
| “He’s out, no matter how you do it, because we have a good party in Nassau County,” Edward F. Cox, the chairman of New York’s Republican Party, said. | “不管你怎么做，他都出局了，因为我们党在拿骚县是优秀的党派，”纽约共和党主席爱德华·考克斯说。 |
| But Mr. Cox, the son-in-law of former President Richard M. Nixon, added a note of frustration, too. “He will make a fortune out of the attention that has been given to him,” he said. | 但这位前总统尼克松的女婿也表达了无奈。“他会利用自己受到的关注发笔大财，”他说。 |
| Mr. Cox was not the only critic of Mr. Santos left uneasy by the indictment. In shining a light on his misconduct, prosecutors indirectly illuminated the many ways in which political, financial and media institutions failed to weed out people like him. In fact, there was no indication federal prosecutors were investigating Mr. Santos before The New York Times and other news media began documenting his widespread lies and unusual financial dealings in December. | 考克斯并非唯一一个看过起诉书后感到不安的桑托斯批评者。检察官在揭露他的不当行为时，也间接地说明了政治、金融和媒体机构何以在许多情况下没能将他这样的人剔除出去。事实上，在《纽约时报》和其他新闻媒体于12月开始记录桑托斯散布的谎言和不寻常的金融交易之前，没有迹象表明联邦检察官正在调查桑托斯。 |
| Since then, the news media has assembled a remarkable catalog of lies by Mr. Santos. | 从那时起，新闻媒体收集了桑托斯的大量谎言。 |
| There is the fake résumé, fabricated down to the rapid growth he helped achieve at a major bank he never worked for and the 3.89 GPA he earned at a college he never attended. He claimed — falsely — that some of the people killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., were his employees. He told Nassau County Republican leaders he was part of a champion volleyball team at Baruch, the college he did not attend. He lied about houses he said he was building and sports cars he said he owned. | 他的简历是假的，其中编造了他帮助一家大银行实现快速增长的经历（实际上从未在那里工作过），以及在一所大学获得了3.89的GPA成绩（但从未在那里上过学）。他谎称在佛罗里达州奥兰多的Pulse夜总会枪击案中丧生的一些人是他的员工。他告诉拿骚县共和党领导人，他是巴鲁克大学冠军排球队的成员，但是他并没有念过这所大学。他声称自己正在建造的房屋和拥有的跑车也是无中生有的事情。 |
| And then there were the reports that he raised money to pay for lifesaving surgery for a veteran’s dog, only to keep the money, and that he took part in an illegal card-skimming scheme. | 还有报道称，他筹集资金为一名退伍军人的狗进行救命手术，却私吞了这笔钱。他还参与了非法的盗卡欺诈。 |
| There were hints in the 20-page indictment that prosecutors may still be digging through the tangled web of Mr. Santos’s financial life. It included work for the Florida investment firm accused of operating a Ponzi scheme; campaign finance reports riddled with irregularities; and attempts to broker the sale of luxury goods between wealthy businessmen he met through his political campaign. | 这份长达20页的起诉书表明检察官可能仍在挖掘桑托斯错综复杂的财务网络。其中包括为一家佛罗里达投资公司从事的工作，该公司被指控经营庞氏骗局，以及他的竞选财务报告充斥着违规行为；他试图在通过政治竞选结识的富商之间促成奢侈品买卖。 |
| The indictment also provided new details about three distinct schemes that prosecutors said Mr. Santos undertook in recent years. | 起诉书还提供了检察官所说的桑托斯近年来实施的三个不同骗局的新细节。 |
| They charged him with two counts of making false statements on personal financial disclosure reports that he had submitted to the House, by misstating the source of his income and then by overstating it. | 他们以两项罪名指控他在提交给众议院的个人财务披露报告中做出虚假陈述，即虚报收入来源，然后夸大收入来源。 |
| The unemployment benefits scheme resulted in two counts of wire fraud and one count of stealing public funds. | 他因利用失业救济的诈骗行为而被控犯有两项电信欺诈罪和一项窃取公共资金罪。 |
| The most complicated scheme laid out in the indictment involved Mr. Santos, a fake super PAC and a pair of wealthy Republican donors. | 起诉书中列出的最复杂的骗局涉及桑托斯、一个假的超级政治行动委员会和两个富有的共和党捐助者。 |
| Beginning in September 2022, prosecutors said, Mr. Santos and a political operative working for him began pushing the donors to make large donations. In email and text messages, they falsely told the donors that the company was a super PAC working “exclusively” to elect Mr. Santos by buying TV ads. | 检察官说，从2022年9月开始，桑托斯和手下的一名竞选操盘手开始敦促捐助者进行大笔捐款。在电子邮件和短信中，他们谎称该公司是一家超级政治行动委员会，通过购买电视广告“专门”帮助桑托斯竞选。 |
| In fact, it was a limited liability company, and after the two donors wired $25,000 each just days before the election, Mr. Santos pocketed the money himself. Prosecutors said he had used it to buy designer clothing and to pay off debts. None of the money went to the campaign. | 事实上，这是一家有限责任公司，就在选举前几天，两位捐助者分别汇款2.5万美元后，桑托斯自己将这笔钱收入囊中。检察官说他用其购买名牌服装和偿还债务。没有一分钱用于竞选。 |
| Mr. Santos’s next court appearance is set for June 30, but his attention to another legal matter beckoned sooner. On Thursday, the congressman reached a settlement agreement with Brazilian authorities to accept responsibility and pay damages in a 2008 case involving a stolen checkbook that Mr. Santos used to buy goods, including a pair of shoes. | 桑托斯的下一次出庭时间定于6月30日，但他很快就要被另一项法律事务占据精力。周四，这名国会议员与巴西有关当局达成和解协议，在2008年的一起案件中承担责任并支付赔偿，该案件涉及一本被盗的支票簿，被桑托斯用来购物，包括一双鞋。 |
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