A federal judge has granted a request by nearly a dozen news organizations to unseal the names of three individuals who secured a $500,000 bond to keep Rep. George Santos out of pretrial detention — names the fabulist congressman has said he’d rather go to jail than disclose.
In a decision still under seal, Magistrate Judge Anne Shields granted the requests by the news organizations, which maintained there is a “compelling public interest” in making public the names of Santos’ guarantors, who co-signed the bond to keep him out of jail pending a trial on charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress.