Republican politician who reportedly made up his life story gave an explanation.
George Santos’ biography seemed fairly outstanding for a recently elected congressman. The 34-year-old immigrant family’s son attended Baruch College, a public university in New York, and went on to work for companies like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Santos later rose to prominence as a financier and founded an organisation that helps save animals. The issue is that his biography was allegedly false, and as a result, he may now be subject to legal as well as political repercussions for his extensive creations.
Santos allegedly created his resume from scratch, according to information published in the New York Times on December 19. It wasn’t simply that he overstated his prior experience.
The Times discovered that he didn’t appear to be a Baruch College graduate, didn’t work for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, didn’t have any records of being a successful banker, and didn’t even have any records of having registered his animal rescue charity. Additionally, The Times discovered that he had been accused of check fraud in Brazil.
Santos’s repeated claims to be Jewish, to have Jewish lineage, or to be descended from Holocaust refugees have not been supported by any evidence, according to a number of sites. At one point, Santos even referred to himself in a campaign position paper as a “proud American Jew.”
On December 26, Santos acknowledged to adding “a little bit of fluff” to his resume during a media tour with supportive publications. In other words, he admitted that he never received a college degree, never worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, and wasn’t Jewish (despite claiming to be “Jew-ish”). Santos disputed the Times’ story of his criminal charge in Brazil and dismissed lying about fundamental biographical details as embellishment. He reportedly told the New York Post, “I am not a criminal.”
One of the strangest political scandals in American history has been brought on by the story. There have been murders perpetrated by members of Congress. In actuality, one congressman even murdered another lawmaker. We have witnessed every scandal imaginable, even in the modern era. Examples include Anthony Weiner tweeting a pornographic image of himself and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s infamous Facebook post regarding Jewish space lasers. However, given that Santos is the subject of inquiries into possible criminal behaviour and requests for his resignation from other Republicans, it’s difficult to think of a precedence for a crisis like this.
1.Who is George Santos ?
We do know a few things about Santos. He was elected in November to an open congressional seat that spans a sizable portion of Long Island’s North Shore and is held by the openly homosexual son of Brazilian immigrants. Democrat Robert Zimmerman was defeated by Santos by a margin of 54 to 46 percent. From 2020, when Biden had won the district by the same margin, this constituted a significant change. Santos lost comfortably by a score of 56 percent to 43.5 percent when he ran against incumbent Tom Suozzi in a seat comparable to this one that year.
Santos is also a fervent fan of Trump; in fact, on January 6, 2021, he attended a demonstration at the Ellipse where he repeatedly declared that the former president had won the election.
Additionally, it is evident that one company Santos worked for, Harbor City Capital, has been accused of being a Ponzi scheme by the Securities and Exchange Commission, notwithstanding his apparent deception regarding his resume. Regarding Santos’s previous employment, he did work for DISH Network for a short time as a Portuguese-speaking customer service representative.
Santos has also been charged with creating a GoFundMe that garnered $3,000 to cover a dying service dog of a crippled homeless veteran’s life-saving operation while keeping the money for himself. The reports that I would let a dog die is startling and absurd, he tweeted in response. Santos said, “Throughout the past 24 hours, I have received encouraging messages and images of dogs I had assisted in euthanizing over the years.”
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Santos has also disputed the assertion that he donned drag while residing in Brazil. Santos used to act in drag as “Kitara Ravache,” according to Eula Rochard, a performer who goes by that name.
On Thursday morning, Santos aggressively denied the allegations. The besieged New York Republican declared, “The most recent fixation from the media stating that I am a drag Queen or ‘acted’ as a drag Queen is totally incorrect. “While I am hard to deliver results, the media is making absurd assertions about my life.”
2. What are the unknowns?
Not much is known to us. This covers everything from fundamental information about Santos’s life to specifics regarding his interactions with the Brazilian legal system, as well as his current residence.
What’s more, we don’t know where Santos gets his money. While claiming a salary of $750,00, the lawmaker lent his own campaign $700,000. A $1 million property in Rio de Janeiro and a seven-figure savings account were among the millions of dollars in assets he reported. For someone who was twice evicted in 2015 and 2017 for failing to pay rent and who has been prosecuted for failing to pay debts, it represents a significant turn in luck. Even in 2020, he only listed one type of income – total pay over $5,000 from a single source — and had no other assets.
On his initial media tour, Santos said little about his money other than to acknowledge that he had no real estate. On Twitter, he had previously asserted that he was a landlord with 13 properties. In a later interview with Semafor, the representative stated that his sudden fortune was the result of “capital introduction,” in which he helped facilitate transactions for affluent clients. “If you’re looking at a $20 million yacht, my referral fee there may be anything between $200,000 and $400,000,” Santos said as an example of how he made a living.
3. What follows next?
Federal and municipal authorities are already looking into Santos, and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, has been “looking into some of the issues that have come out.” Additionally, the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center has complained to the Federal Election Commission about potential violations by Santos, including whether he utilised campaign cash for personal needs and hiding the source of the money he loaned his campaign.
A fellow New York lawmaker and former prosecutor named Dan Goldman has proposed that Santos be the subject of a criminal inquiry for conspiracy to defraud the United States and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.
In a conversation with Vox, Goldman refrained from opining on whether Santos ought to be barred from the House of Representatives. “I don’t believe that the fundamental question is whether I believe George Santos should serve in Congress. The more significant query is whether Kevin McCarthy and the Republican leadership believe George Santos belongs in Congress.
Many of Santos’ fellow Republicans have also urged him to step down. Along with other New York Republicans, including Representatives Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams, the Nassau County Republican Party, long regarded as the most influential county party in New York, has called for Santos to resign. The Nassau County GOP chairman, Joe Cairo, demanded George Santos’ resignation while claiming that his campaign last year was “a campaign of deceit, falsehoods, and fabrication.”
A senior Trump White House adviser and one of just two Jewish Republicans in the House, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), demanded Santos’ resignation last week and referenced the New York Republican’s fabrications on his family’s involvement in the Holocaust in doing so. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a member of the Republican leadership, acknowledged that Santos still “belongs to the Republican conference” despite having “a long way to go to earn trust” and still being under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
Santos currently needs McCarthy almost as much as McCarthy currently needs Santos. McCarthy barely managed to win the 15th vote and became speaker. McCarthy needs every vote he can get due to his slim majority and the prospect of regular member absences now that the House has done away with proxy voting.
Furthermore, it would be hazardous to force Santos to quit because he represents one of the most Democratic seats in Congress held by a Republican. In a special election, it would be challenging for a Republican to keep the seat, and a defeat would further jeopardise the GOP majority.
It’s a matter of waiting for the next shoe to drop in the interim. The only motivation for Santos to step down at this time, even how untenable the status quo may appear to be, would be a sense of guilt, and it doesn’t appear that he carries that weight.
