After the midterm elections, new elected officials entered the Capitol at the beginning of the year, especially in the House of Representatives, where the Republican Party narrowly regained the majority. If most of them still enjoy a certain anonymity and relative peace, that is not the case for the now infamous George Santos, representative of the third district of New York, who defeated the Democrat Robert Zimmermann last November.
Son of Brazilian immigrants and grandson of European refugees fleeing the Holocaust during World War II, conservative who fully owns his homosexuality, graduate in finance from a major New York school, Wall Street executive within major groups who later became the head of a company, then an important politician, the extraordinary career of the elected New Yorker has all the makings of an American success story. Problem: everything is fake, or almost.
As the investigations increase, Americans discover day after day the extent of George Santos’ lies about his past. Now doubt has given way to certainty: Congress has among its members one of the biggest mythomanias in US political history.
A serial liar with a fake resume
The review of the fabrications of the new representative from New York Magazine and Time Magazine is staggering, so much so that ten fingers are not enough to count them. Absolutely all of George Santos’s statements are subject to caution and most of the elements of his personal history that were advanced during his election campaign are erroneous.
For example, he never attended the prestigious private Horace Mann Academy or New York University and did not graduate from Baruch College. He has not worked on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup and has never had any colleagues who died in the terrorist attack that targeted the LGBT+ nightclub Pulse in Orlando in June 2016. The quasi-ghost company Devolder that he set up in Florida during of 2021, has never had a commercial activity, a website, a LinkedIn page or even a client. No trace of the animal defense foundation Friends of Pets United, which he claims to have directed.
To a largely exaggerated professional life is added a totally imaginary private life. Her husband could also be a fictional character: he never appeared with her during her campaign, and no marriage records could be found in New York City.
Even worse, the elected official lied about the cause of his mother’s death to gain the sympathy of voters, claiming that she suffered from health problems due to her presence in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. If this The latter died in 2016, but she was working never in the twin towers and was in Brazil during the terrorist attacks. The story about his grandparents is also not true: they did not flee the Holocaust, did not change their names and were not originally from Europe. He therefore has no Jewish heritage beforehand, contrary to what he might say during interviews.
All types of fraud
If George Santos has the imagination of a Hollywood screenwriter or a novelist, he also seems to be a lover of all kinds of scams. In particular, the chosen one is suspected by the Brazilian judge of stealing a man’s checkbook when he was younger, and then of issuing several fraudulent checks. A case that could get him a prison sentence in Brazil.
He is also accused by several people of using his fictitious animal welfare fund to embezzle money from a fundraiser held in 2017 in New Jersey, as well as money from an online kitty that was supposed to pay for the medical expenses of the sick dog of a dog . homeless disabled veteran from same state. The financial management of his election campaign also raises questions in relation to donations, loans and expenses. Several investigations are underway to clarify the situation and determine whether he has broken the law.
After all these revelations, calls for resignation have multiplied both locally and nationally. If the main interested party refuses to leave his seat for the time being, the affair has created a small earthquake in the conservative microcosm of New York, and some of the local Republican Party officials have simply dropped him, while the third district of New York could be taken over of the Democrats in the event of a new election.
Simple question, (extremely) complex answer
Joseph G. Cairo, one of them, did not mince words: “His lies were not just lies. He disgraced the House of Representatives. He is not welcome here in the Republican seat. In Congress, the subject is sensitive, and in the corridors a mixture of unease, mistrust and humor is palpable. The Conservatives, who only have a very narrow majority in Parliament, are beset by internal tensions and the George Santos case is not a priority at the moment. Especially since Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican spokesman, could count on his vote during his difficult election for the Assembly.
Much contested by the Speaker, he must retain each of his supporters to remain in office for the next two years. Several times he therefore preferred to evade the subject by recalling that the voters had made their choice during the election, voluntarily forgetting in passing that the latter had been duped.
So what do we really know about George Santos? The answer to this simple question turns out to be complex. Apart from the fact that he is 34 years old, of Brazilian origin and that he has just been elected to the House of Representatives, not much. As these lines are written, a new revelation is panicked social networks. According to several testimonials, photos and supporting videos, the chosen New Yorker would have been a drag queen in Brazil. Nothing unusual a priori. Unless we remember that he embraced all the anti-LGBT rhetoric of the conservative camp during his campaign.