AGI – After just five months as the new deputy in Congress the political career of George Santos, 34, is probably over. But at the judicial level, it’s only just beginning that the man whom investigators dubbed “compulsive liar“, A”serial scammers“, an unprecedented political case, someone who risks spending the rest of his life in prison for lying about everything and doing it casually.
The New York congressman, who found himself in the limelight for completely making up part of his life, was arrested ahead of his expected court date. There are 13 charges against him, including money laundering, theft of public funds And bank fraud. Santos surrendered to the judicial authorities and was brought before the court to undergo the usual procedure, which includes fingerprint and photograph registration and then the reading of the charges in the courtroom.
Hired at Goldman Sachs, two degrees, mother died on 9/11, all wrong
Santos was elected Republican in a Democratic district in New York and has one biography terrific, paved with lies. He said he did worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigrouphave taken two degreesand to have lost his mother, died in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, on September 11, 2001while four members of his staff were victims of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. These are just some of the stories invented by the congressman.
His mother died of an illness a few years later. Suspicion should have arisen when he said during the election campaign last year that he was a wealthy descendant of Ukrainian Holocaust survivors, although Santos isn’t exactly a Ukrainian and Jewish surname, or when he asked to be called Anthony and then switched he went from one rally to the next, sometimes introducing himself as Santos, sometimes as Devolder, his mother’s surname.
No reporter in New York had bothered to go old school to check the candidate’s story out of thin air. No one called Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to ask how Santos, who described himself as a “successful broker” and was coveted by Wall Street, was like.
Too bad no one had ever heard of him, but that only came to light after his sensational election, which was a key element in the Republicans winning a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Claiming for unemployment benefit is cheating on a war veteran
Although he was employed by an investment firm and received one $120,000 annual salaryin March 2020 he applied get unemployment benefits. linked to Covid. According to the federal prosecutor Santos received without being entitled to more than $24,000, This emerges from reading the twenty pages of the indictment issued by the Department of Justice.
When asked about his Jewish origins on television after the election, Santos replied with a wink: “I’m not really Jewish, let’s say.” i am like a jew“. The rest appeared like a flood. Since mid-November, a new one has been appearing every day: it wasn’t her didn’t even graduate yethad not invented “carbon capture technology” and the story that his family had forced him to leave the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx “months before” his graduation during a time of economic hardship.
But Santos is far more than a “compulsive liar”: According to investigators, he is a fraud. According to the investigation, this is the case used campaign donations to purchase tailored clothing and personal expenses. The allegations also include Cheated on an Iraq war veteran in 2016whose sick dog, a pit bull named Sapphire, was in dire need of care.
Santos had started a fundraiser on Gofund.me to pay for medical expenses, only to keep all the donations, $3,000. Sapphire had died shortly thereafter. Another dog is said to have stolen it from an Amish family.
The non-existent sports career and the false testimonies in Congress
In addition, the deputy had also invented his sports career: yes, he was introduced as a champion in volleyball at college level, but old friends remembered that the only physical activity was dressing up as a drag queen and performing at the Rio de Janeiro carnival. Santos’ biography has much more to offer. He made a false testimony before Congress when he presented salary data from unclear companies in 2020, the year of his first candidacy that ended in defeat.
Two years later, for the 2022 midterm elections, he reported salaries in the millions coming from his own company, the Devolder Organization, but prosecutors found it was all false. There were no salaries and no dividends. Santos has to clarify who the money came from. Someone suspects he’s behind it Russian donors He is close to President Vladimir Putin, which would explain his vehement opposition to arms sales to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
The federal prosecutor will also ask him to account for the more than 11,000 donations, all of identical amounts, just under $200, the quota that triggers the requirement to issue a receipt and taxpayer records. A electoral committee that sent him to Congress called for his resignation.
The Democrats in Washington have done the same. Republicans have been embarrassed, but Santos has been for months His own party colleagues considered him a nuisancea foreign body. No one in the Chamber lobbies wants to have coffee with him or be photographed.
The Long Island epilogue appears to be scripted. A new future, they suggest on social media, could open up a few miles to the north. On Broadway, with a musical. Title: Who Is George Santos? But the real story seems unmatched at the moment. And it hasn’t been told yet.