JANET BURNS

acing a perilous quest for riches, a fictitious but wise man once said, “Ah, as long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last, but when the piles of gold begin to grow... that’s when the trouble starts.”

In this case, Howard, as portrayed by Walter Huston in the 1948 film adaptation of the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, was talking about his fellow gold-diggers and the treacherous cost of achieving wealth in the 1920s southwest.

But he could have been talking about the tribulations of U.S. Representative George Santos a hundred years later over on the east coast — that is, depending on how the rest of this story plays out, and how much more digging we see.

To wit, the biggest Santos news we’re aware of this week is the appointment of a new campaign treasurer for the congressman, a situation which probably sounds a lot simpler than it is.

In mid-February, the Federal Election

Comission sent a letter to Rep. Santos demanding that he appoint a new treasurer to oversee his campaign finances within a month; in prior weeks, Santos’ relatively longtime treasurer Nancy Marks, a veteran GOP finance operator, resigned from the post, then Santos said that another person was his treasurer, who swiftly denied that they held the post.

After the legal 10-day deadline to appoint a new treasurer for Santos’ reelection campaign (which may or may not be happening, officially) had more than passed, the FEC told Santos he had one more month to appoint a new treasurer, or risk having the campaign’s accounts frozen; a week later, in late February, an FEC filing for the campaign named Andrew Olson of Elmhurst, listed at Santos’ own prior address, as his new campaign ‘money guy.’ Tim Balk reported for the New York Daily News the next day that Santos’ lawyer had “declined to confirm whether Olson was the new treasurer.”

If it’s true, Olson is likely to have an exciting road ahead, whether or not it ultimately leads to lucre.

Lee Brown reported for the New York Post on February 16, “Disgraced Long Island Rep. George Santos is reportedly set on running for re-election in 2024 — even as outraged locals marched on his district office Wednesday again, demanding his ouster over his lies. Fellow New York Rep. Richie Torres confirmed reports that ‘Santos is telling advisors that he wishes to serve a 2nd term, despite previously promising that he wouldn’t run for reelection.’”

Other Recent Highlights:

• In an hour-long filmed interview, Rep. Santos told semi-disgraced British news personality Piers Morgan that he is “just a regular person” who makes mistakes, and also that he was surprised he got caught: “I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then.”

• Video footage from the House of Representatives was used in a viral parody by the well-known humor account Bad Lip Reading, in which Santos gets several solid nods, including the voicedover claim, “I also invented ‘movie date night.’ It’s not a big deal.”

• As Jessica Piper reported for Politico on Feb. 22, “One of George Santos’ first acts as a candidate for Congress in 2019, according to his campaign finance filings, was making a series of four-figure donations from his campaign to a pair of local Republican groups and President Donald Trump’s reelection committee. But according to those groups’ own filings, the contributions were never received — and may not have been donated.”