George Santos is America’s most captivating politician. In a world where everyone has their little secrets, Santos stands apart. There are those who enhance, embellish what they have accomplished, then there are the liars who end up admitting their fault. Finally, there is George Santos.
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The few acquaintances who do not speak ill of him remember that George Santos was ambitious. The 34-year-old New Yorker understood, in 2020, after having failed to be elected to Congress, that he had to make adjustments to his biography.
The reality of a modest life with his mother and sister, from one apartment to another without being able to pay the rent, was not enough. He invented an impressive secondary education, then university, without having done any of this.
He created professional accomplishments in the most renowned firms on Wall Street, without anyone having seen him there. “Son of Brazilian immigrants” did not command enough respect, he built a family history made up of Stalinist persecutions and subterfuges to escape the Holocaust.
THE ELECTION OF AN IMPOSTER
Twisting the facts in this way, George Santos – whom many, for years, only knew as Anthony Devolder – managed last November to be elected Republican representative of the 3rd district of New York, a district covering Long Island and part of the borough of Queens.
He may also have benefited from dissatisfaction with Democrats, who are seen as indifferent to fears about crime. In fact, even traditionally left-leaning voters have allowed themselves to be cajoled by the charlatan, Jody Kass Finkel confessing to the Washington Post, for example, that “if he had been what he claimed to be – Jewish, educated, versed in finance and in real estate – I could have lived with that”.
Because indeed, the excess of self-esteem made the young fabulist commit a series of real sins for New Yorkers. He introduced himself as a Jew, without being one. He falsely associated himself with the Holocaust. He conceived a non-existent link to the attacks against the World Trade Center. He even went so far as to scam the owner of a sick dog, a veteran into the bargain.
IF IT DIDN’T EXIST…
If Santos hoped to escape the checks, it failed. Newsrooms are now working to dissect his imposture, including bringing him closer to the central character of Steven Spielberg’s film, Catch Me If You Can (Catch Me If You Can).
The real Frank William Abagnale was a forger and forger, a stunning trickster. George Santos is much more like an odious “Forrest Gump”, always, as if by chance, in the right place and at the right time, but without the simplicity and benevolence of the character played by Tom Hanks.
Santos embodies the model politician of this populist and anti-establishment era. Like so many candidates from the Tea Party and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, he appeared out of nowhere, escaped the usual oversight and ran a campaign steeped in demagoguery. In his case, however, he simply overdid it.
AFP photo
Figurines of George Santos, with and without a Pinnochio nose, will soon go on sale at the National Bobblehead Hall Of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee.
FALSE, FALSE AND ARCHIVES!
1) His grandparents – Ukrainian Jews – fled Stalinist and then Nazi persecution and escaped the Holocaust.
FAUX
There are no Jewish or Ukrainian references in his genealogy. Different documents prove that his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, where the name Santos is common among Catholic families.
2) Her mother died of cancer in 2016 as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
FAUX
No document proves that his mother was affected by the toxic dust caused by the attacks. There is no indication that she was at the World Trade Center on that fateful September 11. The only job NBC News has found for her is as an employee of an importer who went bankrupt in 1994.
3) Having done most of his secondary studies at Horace Mann School in the Bronx district of New York, George Santos admits having had to leave the prestigious institution in 2008 – before the end of his last year – because of the financial difficulties that the Great Depression imposed on his parents.
FAUX
He never attended Horace Mann School and later only earned a vague high school equivalency diploma.
4) Santos says he received a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College, a renowned New York university in 2010, where he finished in the top 1% of his class.
TRIPLELY WRONG
First, he would have managed to complete a four-year university education in two years, if we accept his lie that he left Horace Mann High School in 2008.
In any case, Baruch College has no registration to its name in 2010, nor does the University volleyball team in 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 has been unable to find his name anywhere among its graduates.
5) He achieved phenomenal success working on Wall Street with Citigroup and then Goldman Sachs.
FALSE AND FALSE
The division of Citigroup where he claims to have worked had been dissolved five years before his arrival. At Goldman Sachs, his resume says he doubled his unit’s revenue — from $300 million to $600 million — in seven months. Neither Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs have any trace of his presence there.
6) He “lost four employees” in the gay bar Pulse shooting in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016, where 49 people were killed.
FAUX
The New York Times could not associate any of the victims with the companies for which Santos says he worked.
7) He founded an organization, Friends of Pets United, which rescued 2,500 dogs and cats between 2013 and 2018.
FAUX
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 has been registered in New York or New Jersey where George Santos claims to have been active.
A FEW MORE UNLIKELIHOODS…
He campaigned as an openly gay Republican, although he was married to a woman from 2012 to 2019. He spoke of a long experience in real estate, but his biography in his online campaign site alleges that he and his family managed a portfolio of thirteen properties. In reality, he and his mother, his sister and he rather led a modest life in different lodgings from which they were repeatedly expelled, unable to pay their rent. Between 2005 and 2008, he said he performed as a “drag queen” in Rio de Janeiro. After initially denying the story, he eventually clarified, “I had fun at a festival. Take me to court for a life!”
AN INDISPENSABLE MYTHOMANE
Perhaps even more remarkable than all the inventions and reinventions of George Santos is that he still sits in the United States House of Representatives.
Since the revelations about the fabrications of the chief smoker in Congress have multiplied, Kevin McCarthy, the “Speaker of the House”, has chained the contortions so as not to have to chase him from the Republican delegation.
With a majority of barely four seats in the House, McCarthy cannot afford to squander the slightest vote: a few absences, a sick elected official and that’s all the Republicans’ angry agenda against the Biden administration. who will find himself emasculated.
«FOLLOW THE MONEY»
Ultimately, it is the financing of his election 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, beware. In a parallel trial, the company’s founder swore under oath that Santos was just a “freelancer” who sold event sponsorships and worked on commission.
That said, as noted by the North Shore Leader, the local publication behind this tidal wave of disclosures, its holdings have made an “unexplainable jump” from zero to eleven million dollars in two years.
Santos claims that in 2020 he managed a billion and a half dollar investment fund at Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm. He then boasted of “record yields” of 12 to 26%.
A year later, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission – the US Securities and Exchange Authority – accused Harbor City of being a “Ponzi scheme”, having stolen $17 million from investors.
Now Congress is investigating the source of the $700,000 he lent to his campaign last year. “I only embellished my CV; nothing criminal!” Not so sure, George… Or is it Anthony instead? We get lost in his lies.
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