George Santos is a liar.
A Republican elected to Congress in the mid-term elections, Santos has now admitted to concocting whole chunks of his biography – his education, his employment and even his heritage.
Though Santos is insistent that he will serve his two-year term in the US House, he is facing growing condemnation, calls to step down as well as possible ethics investigations.
Let’s take a closer look at the controversy surrounding Santos:
Who is he?
Santos, 34, is a resident of New York’s Queens.
He previously ran for US Congress in 2020 but failed.
In 2022, he was elected to the US House in a district that includes some Long Island suburbs and a small part of Queens.
Santos was part of a small red wave in blue New York which helped the Republicans take back the House with a slender majority.
In his campaign for office, Santos portrayed himself as the embodiment of the American dream.
He claimed to have impressive academic and professional accomplishments.
Lies, lies, lies
The trouble began after reporting from The New York Times cast doubt on many of Santos’ claims including his college education and employment history.
Santos’ biography, formerly posted on his campaign website, stated that he graduated from Baruch College in 2010 with an economics and finance degree.
But Baruch said it had no records showing a person with Santos’ name and birthdate had ever graduated.
According to his biography, Santos then worked at Citigroup as “an associate asset manager in the real asset division.”
But Citigroup spokesperson Danielle Romero Apsilos confirmed company records showed Santos never worked for them either.
Santos’ biography said he later worked for the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
That firm too said it had no record of his employment.
A different biography posted on the website of the National Republican Congressional Committee said Santos had earned a second degree at New York University.
A spokesman for NYU said it could also find no records indicating Santos had been a student.
On social media, Santos portrayed himself as a successful real estate investor whose family owned multiple properties. Yet records indicate he had financial problems. Court records indicate Santos was the subject of three eviction proceedings in Queens between 2014 and 2017 because of unpaid rent.
In the summer of 2020, Santos was hired by Harbor City Capitol Corp. an investment firm based in Florida. That company, however, ceased operating in 2021 after it was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme.
Santos wasn’t named in the SEC complaint.
He told The Daily Beast earlier this year that he was shocked by the allegations of wrongdoing.
After leaving Harbor City, Santos registered a company called the Devolder Organization with the state of Florida, state records show.
In the financial disclosure form filed with the House of Representatives in September, Santos reported that the company paid him an annual salary of $750,000 and at least $1 million in dividends. He described the company’s business as “capital intro consulting.” His only other listed asset was an apartment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he said was worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
The newspaper also raised questions about the truthfulness of other aspects of Santos’ life story and said he faced an unresolved criminal fraud investigation in Brazil, where his family once lived.
Santos was initially defiant – accusing the newspaper of “attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations” through a statement put out by his lawyer.
Things fall apart, Santos comes clean-ish
Then, a Jewish American site The Forward raised questions about claims on Santos’ campaign website that his grandparents “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.”
CNN then confirmed Santos’ claims about his grandparents were false based on family trees from by genealogy websites, Jewish refugee records and interviews with multiple genealogists.
Santos has also faced questions over his sexual orientation.
The Daily Beast last week reported that Santos, who claims to be openly gay, was married to a woman before his 2020 election campaign.
On Monday, Santos finally came clean in an interview with the New York Post.
“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” Santos admitted.
He also told the newspaper: “I campaigned talking about the people’s concerns, not my resume” and added, “I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign.”
“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume.”
He added: “I own up to that. … We do stupid things in life.”
Santos told the Post he had “never worked directly” for either Citibank or Goldman Sachs, saying he had used a “poor choice of words.”
He told the Post that Link Bridge, an investment company where he was a vice president, did business with both.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos told the Post in a line that left some thinking of the character George Costanza from the TV show Seinfeld. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
But CNN reported that Santos did in fact call himself a ‘proud American Jew’ in a document given to Jewish groups during the election.
Santos also attempted to put to rest the questions over his sexuality.
“I dated women in the past. I married a woman. It’s personal stuff,” Santos told the Post, calling the relationship “a little toxic”.
However, he insists that he is now a happily married gay man.
“I’m very much gay. I’m OK with my sexuality. People change. I’m one of those people who change,” he told the newspaper.
Despite calls for him to vacate his seat in Congress, Santos is refusing to do so.
He told the Post “I’m not a criminal” – inviting comparisons with disgraced president Richard Nixon’s infamous 1973 declaration that “I am not a crook.”
What can Congress do?
Not much right now.
Things might change when Santos actually gets seated in Congress .
While several Democrats have called for the Republicans to refuse to seat Santos or expel him, that outcome remains unlikely.
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who will likely be House Speaker, has remained silent on the entire matter.
Which is unsurprising given the fact that he is already working with a slender majority and different factions are already at each other’s throats.
While lying to the voters isn’t a crime, Santos could be facing a slew of investigations about his past by the ethics’ committee in the House and Senate particularly if any finance law violations related to his campaign are uncovered during the probes.
Such investigations have been the downfall of many politicians – just ask Nixon and Bill Clinton.
MSNBC has reported that the NY Attorney-General is also “looking into a number of issues” surrounding Santos but did not go into detail.
With inputs from agencies
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