George Santos is America’s most intriguing politician. In a world where everyone has their little secrets, Santos stands out. There are those who improve and beautify what they have achieved, and then there are the liars who end up admitting their guilt. Finally, there is George Santos.
• Also read: Life of Lies: Can You Spot a Cheater?
• Also read: An elected Republican admits his past as a “drag queen” after long denials
The few acquaintances who don’t speak badly of him remember that George Santos was ambitious. The 34-year-old New Yorker understood in 2020, after not being elected to Congress, that he needed to make adjustments to his bio.
The reality of a modest life with a mother and sister moving from one apartment to another without being able to pay the rent was not enough. He invented an impressive secondary education, then a university, without having done any of this.
He created professional successes in the most prestigious companies on Wall Street without anyone having seen him there. Not respected enough, “Son of Brazilian Immigrants” built a family history of Stalinist persecutions and subterfuges to escape the Holocaust.
THE CHOICE OF A CHEATER
George Santos — known to many for years only as Anthony Devolder — twisted the facts in this way and last November managed to be elected Republican representative for the 3rd Circuit of New York, a circuit that includes Long Island and part of the circuit Queens includes .
He may also have benefited from dissatisfaction with Democrats, who are seen as indifferent to fears of crime. Indeed, even traditionally left-wing voters have been duped by the charlatan, Jody Kass Finkel, who admitted to The Washington Post, for example, that “if he had been what he claimed to be — Jewish, educated, well-versed in finance and in real estate — I could have lived with that.”
Because indeed, the young fabulist has committed a number of real sins for New Yorkers due to his inflated self-esteem. He introduced himself as a Jew without actually being one. He wrongly associated himself with the Holocaust. He concocted a non-existent connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center. He even went so far as to cheat the owner of a sick dog, and a veteran at that.
IF IT DOES NOT WORK…
If Santos hoped to escape the controls, it failed. Newsrooms are now working to analyze his cheating, including getting close to the central character in Steven Spielberg’s film Catch Me If You Can.
The real Frank William Abagnale was a forger and forger, a mind-blowing con man. George Santos is much more like an obnoxious “Forrest Gump”, always randomly in the right place at the right time, but without the simplicity and goodness of the character played by Tom Hanks.
Santos embodies the model politician of this populist and anti-establishment era. Like so many candidates from Donald Trump’s Tea Party and MAGA movement, he emerged from nowhere, eluded normal scrutiny and campaigned with demagogy. In his case, however, he simply overdid it.
Photo: AFP
Figures of George Santos with and without the Pinnochio nose will soon be available for sale at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee.
FALSE, FALSE AND ARCHIVE!
1) His grandparents – Ukrainian Jews – fled Stalinist and then Nazi persecution and escaped the Holocaust.
FAKE
There are no Jewish or Ukrainian references in his genealogy. Various documents show that his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, where the name Santos is common in Catholic families.
2) Her mother died of cancer in 2016 as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
FAKE
No document proves that his mother was affected by the toxic dust of the attacks. There is no indication that she was at the World Trade Center on that fateful September 11th. The only job NBC News has found for her is as a clerk for an importer that went bankrupt in 1994.
3) After completing most of his secondary education at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York, George Santos admitted that he left the prestigious institution in 2008 – before the end of his senior year – due to the financial difficulties imposed by the Great Depression had to go to his parents.
FAKE
He never attended the Horace Mann School and later earned only a vague high school diploma.
4) Santos said he received an economics and finance degree from Baruch College, a prestigious New York university, in 2010, where he placed in the top 1% of his class.
TRIPLE WRONG
First, if we accept his lie that he graduated from Horace Mann High School in 2008, he would have managed to complete a four-year college education in two years.
In any case, as of 2010, Baruch College has no registration in his name, nor does the varsity volleyball team, on which George Santos said he was a “star.”
He also claims to have earned an MBA in International Business from New York University, but NYU could not find his name anywhere among its graduates.
5) He achieved phenomenal success working on Wall Street at Citigroup and then at Goldman Sachs.
WRONG AND WRONG
The Citigroup division where he is said to have worked was dissolved five years before he arrived. His Goldman Sachs résumé says he doubled his unit’s sales from $300 million to $600 million in seven months. Neither Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs has any trace of his presence there.
6) He “lost four employees” in the June 12, 2016 shooting at the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida, which killed 49 people.
FAKE
The New York Times was unable to match any of the victims to the companies Santos said he worked for.
7) He founded an organization, Friends of Pets United, which rescued 2,500 dogs and cats between 2013 and 2018.
FAKE
The organization’s activities are nowhere to be found on social media. The IRS, the federal tax agency, has no record of its existence, and no such nonprofit organization has been registered in New York or New Jersey where George Santos claims to have been active.
A FEW MORE LIKELIHOODS…
- He entered the campaign as an openly gay Republican, despite being married to a woman from 2012 to 2019.
- He spoke of a long background in real estate, but his bio on his online campaign page claims that he and his family managed a portfolio of thirteen properties. In reality, he, his mother and sister led a rather humble life in different shelters, from which they were repeatedly evicted because they could not pay their rent.
- Between 2005 and 2008 he appeared as a “drag queen” in Rio de Janeiro. After initially denying the story, he finally clarified, “I had fun at a festival. Bring me to justice for life!”
AN ESSENTIAL MYTHOM
Perhaps more remarkable than all of George Santos’ inventions and reinventions is that he is still a member of the United States House of Representatives.
As revelations about the chief smoker’s inventions mounted in Congress, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has contorted to avoid chasing him from the Republican delegation.
With a majority of just under four seats in the House of Representatives, McCarthy can’t afford to waste even the smallest vote: a few absentees, a sick elected official and it’s all the Republicans’ furious agenda against the emasculating Biden administration will see.
“FOLLOW THE MONEY”
Ultimately, it is the funding of his campaign that risks sinking George Santos.
In his first attempt to run for Congress in 2020, he declared a salary of $55,000 as vice president of a business development company.
As with everything with him, be careful. In a parallel process, the company’s founder swore under oath that Santos was just a “freelancer” selling event sponsorships and working on a commission basis.
However, as the North Shore Leader, the local publication behind this tidal wave of disclosures, noted, its holdings have made an “inexplicable jump” from zero to $11 million in two years.
Santos claims that in 2020 he managed a $1.5 billion mutual fund at Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm. He then went on to boast of “record returns” of 12% to 26%.
A year later, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission — the US stock market regulator — accused Harbor City of being a “Ponzi scheme” for stealing $17 million from investors.
Now Congress is investigating the source of the $700,000 he borrowed for his campaign last year. “I just embellished my CV; nothing criminal!” I’m not sure George… Or is it Anthony instead? We lose ourselves in his lies.
