George Santos aide in hot water over 'menacing sexual comments' to Long Island journalist

A key congressional staffer for disgraced Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is facing discipline after he made "menacing sexual comments" to a Long Island reporter who has been convering Santos critically, The Daily Beast reported on Friday.

"Convicted drug dealer Vish Burra, Santos’ 32-year-old director of operations and a former producer for MAGA mastermind Steve Bannon’s podcast, will be disciplined for targeting reporter Jacqueline Sweet in a series of menacing tweets, The Daily Beast has confirmed," reported Justin Rohrlich. "'This kind of behavior from anyone is unacceptable, much less from a congressional staffer,' Santos communications director Naysa Woomer told The Daily Beast on Friday. 'Threats of violence of any kind will not be condoned. The tweets have been deleted and disciplinary action will be taken.'"

Sweet was responsible for a number of scoops against Santos, who has faced a deluge of scandals since being elected in 2022, including that he was charged with writing bad checks to an Amish dog breeder and that he stole from his former roommates. The incident started after Sweet was covering courthouse proceedings against Santos.

"'I knew you were looking into my eyes!' Burra posted Thursday night, in response to a tweet by Sweet about him glaring at her in the courtroom during Santos’ arraignment a day earlier on Long Island. 'Jacqueline couldn’t keep her eyes off me!'" said the report. From there, Burra continued to directly attack Sweet multiple times for her coverage of the hearing. When an account under the name '@GeorgeSantosStan' told Burra he 'should have hit [Sweet] with that venom,' Burra replied in a since-deleted tweet, 'I think she wants me to hit her with something else!' Burra kept up the harangue, seemingly trying to provoke Sweet into a public dispute. 'Hey now we can’t have both of you in court,' @GeorgeSantosStan tweeted. To that, Burra responded, 'I think she wants me to lock her up somewhere else!'"

Santos, who was revealed as having lied about almost every aspect of his background and qualifications on the campaign trail and whose campaign finance reports are littered with irregularities, was indictedthis week on 13 federal charges including wire fraud, money laundering, theft of unemployment funds, and false statements to Congress. Prosecutors allege, among other things, that he took money intended for pandemic relief and used them to pay off credit cards and buy luxury items for himself. He denies all charges.

Ironically, Santos could go down partly due to an anti-fraud bill he co-sponsored after taking office.