It was never enough, from bilking a homeless veteran out of money that had been raised to pay for a sick dog’s surgery, to maintain that he had employees who died in the Pulse shooting. This is the story of the shameless lies and scams that the fabulist George Santos, a congressman from New York State, has told.
Something wasn’t quite kosher here, in this story of a Jew-ish politician.
George Santos is hardly the first scammer elected to office – he comes from a long line of grifters in his profession including Senators Bob Menendez and Ted Collins and Representatives Duncan Hunter, Corrine Brown, and Chaka Fatah, among others – and he most certainly won’t be the last but few, if any, have so completely invented their backstory that none of it stands up to even casual scrutiny.
Most Americans learned of Santos’s extraordinary fabrications from a New York Times story published after the last midterm election, but a local newspaper, the North Shore Leader, sounded the alarm months earlier.
Within certain political circles and to some people in his congressional district, however, this wasn’t exactly news. There had been story after story about his bizarre actions and comportment that he was already known to some as George Scamtos. Meanwhile, the redistricting drama in New York State turned Santos from what is known as a “sacrificial” candidate – one to whom no one was paying attention – into a front-runner.
Fortunately, at least for Santos, the Republican Party’s permissive atmosphere had created a free-for-all in some contests. Santos most likely thought, “Who’s actually going to check.”
Attention must be paid. Enter the New York Times.
The journalists at the Times soon found that a serial fabricator had been elected to and sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Third Congressional District.
NY-03 is by far the wealthiest congressional district in New York State and the fourth wealthiest nationally. It is also one of two districts (along with New York’s 11th) where Republicans represent a portion of New York City.
The district is comprised of part of the North Shore of Long Island stretching from far northeastern Queens County across northern Nassau County. The communities in the district include Bayside, Floral Park, Glen Oaks, Great Neck, Jericho, Levittown, Little Neck, Manhasset, Oyster Bay Cove, Old Brookville, Port Washington, Syosset, and Whitestone.
As a result, George Santos is my congressman.
Santos has made dozens upon dozens of false or dubious claims about his biography, work history, criminal record, financial status, ethnicity, religion, and other matters, both in public and in private.
Six weeks after his election, numerous news outlets reported that large parts of his self-published biography appeared to be fabricated, including claims about his ancestry, education, employment history, charity work, property ownership, and crimes of which he claimed to be a victim.
To his, ahem, credit, Santos has admitted to lying about his education and employment history.
There is perhaps nothing more vile, f—ked up, and shameless than someone claiming he had family members who had been hunted by Hitler as he systemically murdered 6 million Jews as well as at least 4 million Communists, homosexuals, and others deemed incompatible with the Aryan dream. In 2021, the then candidate said in a campaign that his “grandparents survived the Holocaust.” Several months later, he told a reporter for the Jewish News Syndicate, “I’m very proud of my grandparents’ story” for “fleeing Hitler.”
Equally vile, however is his claim that his mother “was in her office in the South Tower on September 11,” adding that she “passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.” Records show that his mother was in Brazil on the day of the September 11 attacks and employment records show she only worked for one company, located in Queens, and that company shuttered in 1994.
On a more lighthearted note, one of my favorite claims was that Santos contended that he had graduated from Baruch College with degrees in economics and finance in 2010 and that he had been the “star” of the college volleyball team. Obviously, his fact checkers overlooked the fact that Baruch does not have a volleyball team and has not ever had one for that matter. More unfortunately for George, Baruch issued a simple statement saying that they had no record of his attendance at all.
Finally, for s**ts and giggles, Santos’ C.V. includes stints at Goldman Sachs and at Citigroup. Both companies issued statements similar to the one issued by Baruch about Mr. Santos. He did however work at a financial services firm called Harbor City, which the Securities and Exchange Commission accused of running a Ponzi scheme. The company was later shut down. Santos, for his part, told prospective investors that the company was “100% legitimate” (when someone at a financial services firm takes the extra step to tell me that his employer is 100% legitimate versus just 90% or 80%, I always give him the benefit of the doubt), according to a report by CNN.
So, here we are.
Two 2023 federal indictments allege 23 fraud-related charges against Santos, to which he has pleaded not guilty and he has rejected calls to resign and managed to survive an expulsion vote called not only by members of his own party but by members of his own Congressional delegation.
This week, the House Ethics Committee released a report implicating Santos in fraud and referring the findings to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. Santos then announced that he will not stand for reelection in 2024 but, once again, he continues to defiantly refuse to resign his seat.
These are the stories that have thus far come to light, but more seem to surface almost on a daily basis. For a fabulist like George Santos, the story is, however, never quite over.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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