George Anthony Devolder Santos (/ˈsɑːntoʊs/) is an American politician from New York State. A member of the Republican Party, Santos was elected in 2022 to represent New York's 3rd congressional district, which covers part of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, after having run for the seat unsuccessfully two years earlier.
Questions about Santos's background emerged several weeks before the election in The North Shore Leader, a weekly publication based in Long Island.[1][2][3] Six weeks after the election, numerous news outlets began reporting that large parts of his self-reported biography appear to be fabricated, including claims about his ancestry, education, employment, charity work, and property ownership.[4] Santos has admitted that many or most of his claims about his background have been lies,[4][5][6] and as of late December 2022 he is under investigation by federal, state, and county authorities.
Santos claimed that his mother's parents were Ukrainian Jews who fled from the Holocaust to Brazil, but records obtained by several sources showed that his mother's parents were born in Brazil and none of her ancestors were Ukrainian or Jewish. Despite originally claiming to have "Jewish background beliefs" and calling himself a "a proud American Jew", Santos later said that "I never claimed to be Jewish ... I said I was 'Jew-ish'."[4][7]
There have been several judgments against Santos in eviction and personal debt cases in the United States. In 2008, he confessed to check fraud charges in Brazil, but did not appear in court.[8] Santos denied committing a crime and said, "I’m not a wanted criminal in any jurisdiction".[9][10]
Early life and background
Santos's maternal great-grandfather was born in Belgium and immigrated to Brazil in 1884.[11] Santos's parents were born in Brazil, and he has claimed to have dual citizenship.[12]
Santos claimed that his maternal grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled to Belgium and then to Brazil to escape the Holocaust during World War II,[13][14] but genealogical records and other evidence show that his ancestors have lived in Brazil for at least three generations and that there is nothing to indicate they have any connection to Ukraine, have any Jewish heritage, or are Holocaust survivors.[15][7][11] Santos has also claimed that he was biracial and was born to an African American father, who had Angolan roots, but there is no evidence of such.[16][15] In November 2022, he told Jewish Insider that his "mother's Jewish background beliefs ... are mine".[7][17]
In a 2022 campaign position paper his campaign sent to pro-Israel groups, Santos called himself a "a proud American Jew".[6] In December 2022, he told the New York Post: "I never claimed to be Jewish ... I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish'."[4]
On his campaign website, Santos wrote that his mother was "the first female executive at a major financial institution" and that she worked in the South Tower of the World Trade Center and died a few years later after surviving the September 11 attacks.[18] His mother's actual occupation has been described as domestic worker[19] or home care nurse.[20] In July 2021, Santos claimed that his mother had died due to (and soon after) the September 11 attacks;[21] she actually died in 2016.[22]
Despite previously claiming to have grown up in a wealthy family, Santos has since admitted that he "was born and raised in abject poverty".[23] A Catholic priest reported that Santos had told him the family could not afford a funeral when Santos's mother died in 2016.[18][18][24] The priest recalled that a collection at a memorial mass raised a "significant" amount for the family, which he gave to Santos.[18]
Santos claimed to have attended the Horace Mann School before withdrawing because of family hardship. The school reports it has no record of Santos.[25]
After obtaining a high school equivalency diploma, Santos spent time in Brazil. In 2008, Santos (then 19) stole a checkbook from a man in Brazil who was being cared for by Santos's mother, and wrote fraudulent checks. He confessed and was charged with check fraud, but did not respond to a court summons; Brazilian authorities told The New York Times that the case remains unresolved.[15] In his Post interview a week after the Times reported this, Santos denied it. "I am not a criminal here—not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world," he said. "Absolutely not. That didn't happen."[26] The Times noted that it had documentary records of the charges.[4]
Santos claimed to hold a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from Baruch College, but the school has no record of this, and the period Santos said he was at Baruch overlapped with his time in Brazil.[15] He also claimed to hold a Master of Business Administration degree from New York University, but NYU has no record of his attendance.[27]
In December 2022, Santos told the Post: "I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé ... We do stupid things in life."[4][26]
Career history and claims
From October 2011 to July 2012, Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens.[28][19] During this time, he reportedly told acquaintances and coworkers that his family was wealthy and had extensive real estate holdings in the U.S. and Brazil.[19] He repeated this claim during his 2022 congressional campaign, claiming that he and his family owned 13 rental properties in New York. No such properties were listed on his campaign's financial disclosure forms or in public records.[15] Santos admitted to the Post that the claim was false and he owned no properties as of the end of 2022.[26]
A 2013 Rio de Janeiro court notice of embezzlement charges against Santos describes him as an "American teacher", 25 and single.[18] In September 2014, an acquaintance lent Santos several thousand dollars he said he needed to move in with his boyfriend. The acquaintance recalled that Santos had claimed to be a graduate of NYU's business school, even though Santos did not seem to know that that school is commonly known as the Stern School. Santos refused to pay the money back; a judge later rejected his claim that the money had been a gift and ordered Santos to repay it with interest, which he had not done as of 2022.[19]
Santos claims to have founded Friends of Pets United, which he described as a charity for rescue animals, in 2013, and to have run it until 2018.[15] He claimed that the group was a tax-exempt charity, but the Internal Revenue Service has no record that the group was registered as a charity. The group held a 2017 fundraiser event for a New Jersey animal rescue group, but the organizer of the rescue group said that Santos never gave it any of the proceeds.[15][26]
Santos described himself as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" and said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither company has any record of him.[15] Santos's campaign website stated that he "began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm",[4] but Citigroup sold its asset management division in 2005.[15] Santos's claimed employment at Citigroup overlapped with his employment as a Dish Network customer service representative during the same period.[19] He clarified to the Post that a subsequent employer had been in limited partnerships with those companies and his claim that he had been employed there was "a poor choice of words ... I will be clearer about that".[26]
Santos also claimed to have worked for MetGlobal, and by 2019 was working for LinkBridge Investors, eventually becoming a vice president, according to his campaign disclosure form and a company document.[15] While running for Congress, he moved from LinkBridge to become a regional director at Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm the Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently accused of running a $17 million Ponzi scheme.[15] Santos was not personally named in the lawsuit, nor were other colleagues of his, and he publicly denied any knowledge of the fraud.[15]
According to his financial disclosures, Santos was the sole owner and managing member of the Devolder Organization, which he said was a family-owned company that managed $80 million in assets.[15] On financial disclosure forms, Santos called Devolder a "capital introduction consulting" firm.[15] Although based in New York, the company was registered in Florida, where it was dissolved in 2022 for failing to file annual reports. During his 2022 campaign for Congress, Santos lent his campaign more than $700,000, and reported receiving a salary of $750,000 and dividends of between $1 million and $5 million from Devolder, even though he also listed the company's estimated value as in the same range.[15] Despite the claims about the company's size, Santos's financial disclosure forms did not list any clients using the company's services; three experts in election law interviewed by the Times said that this omission "could be problematic if such clients exist".[15] On December 20, 2022, the day after the Times article was published, Santos re-registered the Devolder Organization in Florida.[29] Josh Marshall reported on Talking Points Memo that Santos listed himself as the registered agent on the paperwork, which could only be done if he lived in Florida and not New York.[30] He gave as the company's mailing address a Merritt Island apartment purchased by a couple in August.[31]
In a November 2022 interview, Santos discussed the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, saying: "I happened to, at the time, have people that worked for me in the club ... My company at the time, we lost four employees that were at Pulse."[32] None of the 49 victims slain in the attack appear to have a connection to any of the companies named in Santos's biography.[15] In a December 2022 interview, Santos changed his account, saying: "We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando".[4]
Political career and expressed views
Santos is the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress.[33][34]
Santos has aligned himself with Donald Trump.[15] He has called police brutality a "made-up concept".[15] In a 2022 speech to the Whitestone Republican Club in Whitestone, Queens, Santos called abortion "barbaric" and compared it to slavery.[35]
2020 U.S. House election
Santos ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 3rd congressional district against Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi.[36] He lost to Suozzi, 55.9 percent to 43.4 percent, a margin of approximately 46,000 votes.[37]
Post-2020 election activism
On January 6, 2021, Santos attended President Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. Santos later said that Trump "was energized", gave "a great speech", and was "at his full awesomeness" that day. After the speech, a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, disrupting the counting of the electoral votes that formalized Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election.[38][33] Santos later said he was "never on Capitol grounds" on January 6; called it a "sad and dark day"; and acknowledged that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election.[33][34] But he was later captured on video saying that he had written a "nice check to a law firm" to bail January 6 arrestees out of jail, saying: "Don't want to publicize it, but pretty adamant about that. Imagine breaking into your own house and being charged for trespassing."[33]
2022 U.S. House election
In 2022, Santos once again ran for the 3rd congressional district, although the district borders were different after the 2020 redistricting cycle. He ran against Democrat Robert Zimmerman.[39][40] Santos and Zimmerman are both openly gay, making this the first instance of two openly LGBTQ candidates competing against one another in a general election for a seat in Congress.[41][42] The district covers a portion of northern Long Island (in Nassau County), along with a small portion of northeast Queens.[15][43] The Long Island portion of the district includes Oyster Bay and North Hempstead,[20] while the Queens portion includes the neighborhoods of Whitestone, Bayside, Little Neck, and Queens Village.[44]
Santos filed personal financial disclosure forms required of congressional candidates by the House in early September, 20 months past the due date, when he had raised $5,000 in campaign funds. The North Shore Leader took note of the contrast between them and similar forms he had filed for the 2020 elections. In 2020, he had given a net worth of $5,000 and claimed his only income was his $50,000 Harbor Hill salary. But by 2022, he said he was worth between $2.5 and $11 million, including $1–5 million in personal bank accounts, a Rio condominium dwelling valued between half a million and a million dollars, and business interests accounting for the rest. He reported no real property in the U.S., at odds with past claims that he owned two mansions in Long Island, one of which, in the Hamptons, he had reportedly told fellow Republicans he was selling for around $10 million because he rarely used it (the Leader reported that at the time, someone with no connection to Santos owned it, and it was valued at $2 million).[12]
The Leader also noted that a $600,000 loan Santos had reported making to his campaign earlier in the year on his required campaign financial disclosure forms was not listed as a liability on his personal forms, even as he had disclosed a $20,000–50,000 car loan he took out for the Nissan he drove. He claimed no income.[12]
During his campaign, Santos made large expenditures; he used campaign funds to pay for shirts for staff from Brooks Brothers, meals at the restaurant at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and $40,000 in airline fares, including to out-of-state locations in California, Texas and Florida, and a stay at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida.[15] The Leader endorsed Zimmerman in the race, calling Santos "most likely just a fabulist—a fake".[45][46]
Late in the campaign, both parties realized the elections on Long Island would be close and could decide control of the House. A Democratic political action committee spent $3 million in the 3rd District race to support Zimmerman. On the Republican side, the Congressional Leadership Fund spent nothing, while at the same time committing $1.5 million to the neighboring 2nd and 4th district races, also ultimately won by Republican candidates. Evan Chernack, Zimmerman's campaign manager, who knew about some of Santos's questionable business dealings, believes this suggests that Republicans at the national level were aware of at least those matters.[47]
Santos defeated Zimmerman in the November 2022 election[39][40] by around eight percentage points,[48] flipping the district (in what observers saw as a "mild upset") and helping Republicans retake control of the House by a narrow margin.[15]
After winning election to Congress, Santos was one of several incoming House Republicans to attend a Manhattan gala organized by the New York Young Republican Club that featured Republican politicians alongside white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and other extreme right-wing figures.[15][49] He was featured as a "special guest" at the event. The gala also featured Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican representatives-elect Cory Mills and Mike Collins, far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, white supremacy activist Peter Brimelow and members of the Freedom Party of Austria and Alternative for Germany, two right-wing European parties with an authoritarian heritage.[49]
False biographical claims
On December 19, 2022, after Santos won the 2022 election but before he was to take office in January 2023, The New York Times reported that he had apparently misrepresented many aspects of his life and career, including his education and employment history.[15] An attorney for Santos said the report was a "smear" and "defamatory" but did not address its substance. Santos did not produce any documents to substantiate his claims, despite several requests from the Times to do so.[15][27][50] Other news organizations confirmed the Times's reporting.[51][52]
On December 19, Santos posted on Twitter a statement from his lawyer saying that The New York Times was "attempting to smear [Santos's] good name with these defamatory allegations"; on December 22, Santos wrote on Twitter: "I have my story to tell and it will be told next week."[53] Calls grew from constituents[54] and Democrats[54][55] for Santos to resign or not take his seat.[54][55] Democrats, including Zimmerman, called for the House Ethics Committee, Federal Election Commission, and U.S. Attorney's Office to probe Santos's conduct.[50][56] Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said that Santos should resign or not be seated in the House, pending an investigation of the "litany of deceptions";[54][57] the group's director said that while "there have been instances where candidates have exaggerated their background" in the past, the group "hadn't seen anybody who's made up an entirely false life story."[57]
Republican leaders were largely silent on the scandal.[58][59] House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy made no comment.[60] Some former Republican supporters called upon Santos to explain himself,[57] including the chairman of the Nassau County Republican Committee[55] and former Long Island Republican congressman Peter T. King.[61]
A week after the Times's story broke, Nick LaLota, another newly elected Long Island Republican congressman, called for the House Ethics Committee to investigate Santos. Nassau County Republican chairman Joseph G. Cairo said he was "deeply disappointed" in Santos, saying, "I expected more than a blanket apology" after Santos publicly addressed the issue for the first time. "The damage that his lies have caused to many people, especially those who have been impacted by the Holocaust, are profound." He did not call for Santos to resign or be investigated.[62]
Observers expressed doubt about whether the House would take action, given the chamber's narrow Republican majority in the incoming Congress.[52][63] Santos said he would vote for McCarthy for speaker of the House in the January 3, 2023, election on the floor of the House, and McCarthy is struggling to obtain the majority of votes necessary to win the speakership (the narrow Republican majority means that McCarthy cannot win without almost all House Republicans' votes).[60][64] Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress, said that the House, because it has the responsibility to determine the qualifications of its members, could decline to seat Santos, triggering a special election, and that Congress would do so "if we had a system that was genuinely built around integrity", but added that "the odds of that happening are zero".[50] Walter Shaub, the senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, said that Republicans were unlikely to remove Santos from office via expulsion or exclusion, but could deny him committee assignments.[65] The policy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that Santos should not be given access to national security or intelligence information, and suggested that "in the regular course of events" he would be unable to obtain a security clearance.[65]
Several days after the revelations, the New York State Attorney General's Office said it would review Santos's conduct.[59] By December 28, federal prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York were investigating Santos's finances, and the Nassau County district attorney was investigating him for unspecified reasons.[66]
On December 26, 2022, Santos admitted to lying about his educational and employment history in interviews with WABC radio[67][68] and the Post.[26][69][5] He told WABC radio: "I'm not a fraud. I'm not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and made up this fictional character and ran for Congress."[70] Santos told the Post that the controversy "will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good ... I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign."[5][71]
The next day, Santos was interviewed by Tulsi Gabbard on Fox News, his first television appearance since the controversy broke.[72] Gabbard asked Santos about the meaning of "integrity"; Santos said he showed "courage" by admitting his mistakes on national television.[73] Gabbard then asked Santos "Do you have no shame?", to which Santos responded that he "can say the same thing about the Democrats"; Gabbard then told Santos that that her question was not about Democrats.[73][74] Asked about his purported Jewish heritage, Santos responded: "My heritage is Jewish. I’ve always identified as Jewish. I was raised as a practicing Catholic ... I understand everybody wants to nitpick at me".[74] Asked about his lies about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, Santos said that whether they were lies was "debatable" and that the nature of his work would require a "discussion that can go way above the American people's head".[72][73]
The Republican Jewish Coalition, which previously hosted Santos at their events, announced on December 27 that he would no longer be welcome at them, because he "deceived us and misrepresented his heritage". "In public comments and to us personally he previously claimed to be Jewish", said the organization's CEO, Matt Brooks.[75] Former U.S. senator Norm Coleman, the group's chairman, told the Times in an email he did not think Santos would be in Congress long.[76]
Following calls for his resignation, including from Republicans, Santos told New York Republican officials that he does not plan to run for reelection in 2024.[77]
Personal life
Santos has offered conflicting accounts of his residence.[19] During his 2020 campaign, he listed his home as being in Elmhurst, Queens, outside the boundaries of the district in which Santos was then seeking office.[19][a] Santos and his husband later moved to a rowhouse in Whitestone, Queens; its owner said they had moved there in July 2020.[19] In January 2021, Santos claimed he and his husband had found stones and eggs thrown at the apartment after they returned to it from a party at Mar-a-Lago, vandalism that had required him to spend several hours on the phone with the police and insurers. His landlady, the owner, and occupant of the rowhouse's lower unit did not recall any such incident and the Times found no police report of any vandalism at the address during that time. In March 2022, Santos told Newsday that he had moved out of the Whitestone rowhouse and moved into an unspecified other neighborhood because of the vandalism, but seven months later, Santos said that he still lived in the Whitestone home.[19] Santos was registered to vote at the Whitestone address during his congressional campaigns, but did not appear to live there.[15]
Three times in the mid-2010s, Santos was evicted from rented Queens properties (in Jackson Heights, Whitestone, and Sunnyside) due to failure to pay rent. A Queens court entered a civil judgment of $12,208 against him in the second eviction.[78] Santos told the Post that his mother's illness had forced his family into debt at the time; he had yet to pay the rent he owed, as he "completely forgot about it".[70]
In February 2016, Santos registered to vote in Florida, where he voted in that year's election in November, and then re-registered again in New York six days later, The Intercept has reported.[79]
Santos's landlord said he had moved out in August 2022, leaving behind $17,000 in damages,[19] but records showed he was still registered at the address when he voted that November. He continued to receive mail there after the election, including the certificate of his election victory, according to the landlord, who had thrown most of it out.[54] Santos told reporters that he planned to move to Oyster Bay, but he and his husband apparently moved into a house in Huntington, outside his congressional district's boundaries, in August 2022.[19][a]
In a 2020 interview, Santos claimed that he had received treatment, including radiation, for a brain tumor.[80]
In October 2022, Santos told the media: "I am openly gay, have never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade".[42] Santos married a woman in 2012.[28] They divorced in 2019, according to The Daily Beast.[28] The first time Santos publicly disclosed his marriage came in December 2022, when he told the Post: "I dated women in the past. I married a woman", adding that he was "OK with my sexuality. People change."[4]
No comments:
Post a Comment
be sure to scroll down and hit the publish button when done writing