George Santos on his introduction of the SALT Relief Act Recorded February 28, 2023
George Anthony Devolder Santos (born July 22, 1988) is an American former politician and convicted felon who served as the U.S. representative for New York's 3rd congressional district from January to December 2023, before he was expelled. He had run for the seat in 2020 but was defeated by incumbent Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi. Suozzi opted against seeking re-election in 2022, and Santos ran for Congress again. That time, Santos prevailed, defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman. Santos, who is gay, was the first Republican to be openly LGBT before being elected to Congress.
Within six weeks of Santos's election, news outlets began reporting that much of his biography appeared to be fabricated. Santos admitted to having lied about his education and employment history, while his disclosures about his business activities, income, and personal wealth were inconsistent with one another. Further, Santos had not disclosed his criminal history or the existence of lawsuits against him. Santos was sworn in as a member of the House in January 2023, but faced ongoing media scrutiny as well as demands for his resignation from members of both parties.
On December 1, 2023, following an investigation by the House Ethics Committee and a federal indictment, the House of Representatives voted 311–114 to expel Santos. Santos is the first member of the House expelled without having previously been convicted of a crime or having fought for the Confederacy. He is also the sixth member of the House to be expelled and the first Republican. In August 2024, Santos pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud.[2][3]
Early life, family, and education
George Anthony Devolder Santos[a] was born on July 22, 1988,[7][b] to Fátima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder and Gercino Antônio dos Santos Jr. (known as Junior), both of whom were born in Brazil;[9] he has a younger sister, Tiffany.[10]
His maternal grandparents, Paulo Horta Devolder and Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder, were also born in Brazil. Three of his four maternal great-grandparents were also born in Brazil, with the other born in Belgium.[9] His mother, Fátima Devolder, immigrated to Florida as a migrant worker to pick beans in 1985. She later moved to New York City and was a housekeeper, cook, and nanny.[11][12][c] Gercino Santos was a house painter.[14] Santos has claimed dual citizenship in the U.S. and Brazil.[15][d] In 2013, a Brazilian court described him as American.[17]
Santos has said his family was poor during his childhood, living in a rat-infested basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, near a Brazilian immigrant enclave in Astoria. Relatives and friends recall that his parents and an aunt often bought him dolls, toys, and clothes despite their lack of money.[18] His parents' marriage appears to have ended by 1998, when records in Gercino's native state of Minas Gerais show that he remarried there. Santos remained close to his mother (living with her intermittently until her death) and maintained infrequent contact with his father.[19] According to a biographer, Santos developed a reputation within his family for deceit and theft during his childhood.[e]
Around 2008, George moved to Niterói in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area, where his mother, Fátima, was then living, and lived there until 2011,[15][27] although acquaintances of Santos from that period are unsure whether he lived in Brazil or merely visited. Many knew him as Anthony Devolder. Fátima lived in difficult circumstances, working odd jobs, moving around frequently due to unpaid rent, and obtaining electricity illegally. Santos told people his family had money because his father was a high-paid executive in New York.[28]
A friend from that time says Santos was very involved in local LGBT activism, handing out leaflets and regularly attending meetings of a local activist group and Pride parades.[28][f] Two former acquaintances said that he competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants in 2008 using the drag name Kitara Ravache,[g][30][31] with one saying that Santos began dressing in drag in 2005. Manoel Antiqueira, who performs in drag as Eula Rochard, recalls Santos returning from a 2007 trip to the U.S. with expensive materials for a dress that were not available in Brazil at the time.[28][h] Santos denied having been a drag queen, calling the allegations "categorically false" and accusing the media of making "outrageous claims about my life";[37] two days later, he said, "No, I was not a drag queen in Brazil, guys. I was young and I had fun at a festival."[38]
While in Brazil, Santos's politics were shaped by his family's generally strong support for right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro, who later became Brazil's president. Santos supported Bolsonaro despite his open homophobia. The Santoses frequently disparaged Brazil's then-president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on social media. After winning his House election, Santos posted a picture of himself with Bolsonaro's equally conservative ally Carla Zambelli.[39]
Early career
From October 2011 to July 2012, Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens.[40] Hired for his second-language skills, he handled calls from Portuguese-speaking customers.[41]
The New York Times verified that sometime after 2013, Santos worked for HotelsPro, a subsidiary of Turkey-headquartered MetGlobal.[42] In early 2016, Santos moved to Orlando, Florida, where HotelsPro was opening an office. He registered to vote and changed his driver's license to his Florida residence.[43]
Santos has worked for LinkBridge Investors, a company that states that it "connects investors with fund managers".[42] His 2019 campaign disclosure form and a company document list him as a vice president,[24] but that same year, the company president testified in a lawsuit that Santos was a freelancer who worked on commission.[44] A press release for the company referred to him as its New York regional director.[45]
Harbor City Capital
In January 2020, shortly after launching his first campaign for Congress in November 2019,[24][46] Santos began working for Harbor City Capital, a Florida-based alternative investment firm. The SEC later filed a civil suit accusing the company of running a $17million Ponzi scheme.[47] In June 2020, during his first run for Congress, Santos (under the name George Devolder) opened an office for Harbor City Capital in Manhattan[48] and became the firm's New York regional director.[i][50] He was not named in the lawsuit, and he has denied knowledge of the fraud.[24] In 2020, Santos claimed to be managing $1.5 billion in funds for Harbor City, with a fixed yield of 12 percent and an internal rate of return of 26 percent.[47] An investor said Santos called him after the SEC suit was filed, crying that he had lost a million dollars of his own money as a result.[51] Harbor City paid Santos at least through April 2021,[52] but Andrew Intrater, a New York financier, said Santos told him he had been let go before that due to conflicts with his political activities.[53]
Devolder Organization
Around the time he is reported to have left Harbor City Capital, Santos founded a limited liability company (LLC) called the Devolder Organization, and his reported personal income rose substantially.[j] The company had no public presence when major media investigations commenced, and Santos has given inconsistent explanations of its business.[54]
According to his financial disclosures, Santos was the sole owner and managing member,[k] managing $80 million in assets.[24] On financial disclosure forms, Santos called the organization a "capital introduction consulting" firm.[24] Although based in New York, the company was registered in Florida, where it was dissolved in September 2022 for failing to file annual reports. Santos said that its accountant had missed the annual filing deadline.[55] In 2022, the organization lent Santos's congressional campaign more than $700,000. Santos reported receiving a salary of $750,000 and dividends of $1–$5 million from the company, even though he also claimed that its estimated value was in the same range.[24]
Despite his claims about the organization's size, Santos's financial disclosure forms listed no clients.[24] In July 2022, Dun & Bradstreet estimated Devolder's revenue at less than $50,000.[56] Santos listed himself as the registered agent for the LLC and listed Florida as his state of residence. The company's mailing address was a Merritt Island apartment[57] owned by Harbor City's chief technology officer.[49]
The House Ethics Committee's investigation found that Santos incorporated the LLC in May 2021, although he reported income from it on his 2020 income tax return.[58] The committee found that when Santos applied for a business account in May 2021, he told the bank that the organization made $800,000 in net profit every year and grossed $1.5M; his May 2022 campaign financial disclosure said that the company's assets were in the $1M to $1.5M range. The organization's 2021 financial statements showed $614 of income and over $14,000 of expenses, amounting to a loss exceeding $13,000, and at the time Santos filed the 2022 disclosure, there was $4 in the company bank account.[l] The committee said that both Santos' personal and business accounts were used for a series of "significant" cash deposits followed by prompt cash withdrawals of similar amounts, and the source of the cash was unclear.[60] The unexplained cash withdrawals amounted to over $240,000.[59]
Early political activities
Santos was president of United for Trump, a small New York-based group supporting Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. In July 2019, the group staged a counter-protest to an anti-Trump rally in Buffalo, New York, which led to shouting and a fistfight.[61][62]
Santos ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 3rd congressional district, against Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi, launching his campaign in November 2019.[24] Normally, the Nassau County Republican Committee, known for the tight control that its leadership exercises over often competitive races for its nominations, would have discouraged an unknown candidate with such minimal experience. However, Suozzi was expected to win the race easily, and no other candidates had put their names forward.[63] Santos raised funds, spoke to donor groups, and attended a phone-banking session at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump's children; his efforts impressed party officials. He bought entire tables at New York Young Republican events. Other candidates making the same rounds noticed that Santos repeatedly exaggerated his fundraising totals, with a wide contrast between what he said and what he reported in his campaign finance disclosure forms.[64]
Suozzi later recalled that he had no doubt he would defeat Santos, an unknown who was not well-funded and who at the time was registered to vote in an area of Queens that was outside the district.[64][65] When reporters pressed him about living outside the district, Santos claimed an address that turned out to be his campaign treasurer's.[64] Because Santos was so little-known in the district, the Suozzi campaign decided not to pay for opposition research, deciding that it would be counterproductive to increase his name recognition.[63] As expected, Suozzi prevailed; he defeated Santos 56.0%-43.5% (a margin of about 46,000 votes).[66] Despite Santos's loss, local Republicans were pleasantly surprised by his performance.[67]
Refusal to accept election results
Santos refused to accept his 2020 defeat and falsely claimed that the vote totals had been manipulated. He began raising money and hiring additional staff for a recount, insisting that half the Democratic ballots should have been discarded. Santos also refused to leave the orientation session for new members of Congress even after his opponent's victory was certified.[64]
Santos spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally the day before the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, telling the crowd that the election he lost by 13 percentage points in 2020 was stolen from him.[64] On January 6, he attended Trump's Save America rally at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. He 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 United States presidential election.[68] Santos later said he was "never on Capitol grounds" on January 6, called it a "sad and dark day", and acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.[68][69]
Shortly after his loss to Suozzi, Santos formed GADS PAC, a leadership PAC, and began raising money to run for Congress again.[70] Then-New York state Republican chair Nick Langworthy noted that "George never stopped being a candidate" and was "spending time at Mar-a-Lago, raising money in different circles".[67] U.S. representative Elise Stefanik endorsed him in August 2021 and helped him raise over $100,000 at a fundraiser.[71]
Some Republicans had reservations about Santos. In mid-2021, one of his former advisors uncovered questionable business practices at Harbor City, but was unable to get press coverage.[63] Late in the year, Santos's campaign commissioned a vulnerability study, which revealed significant issues. Some staff members advised him to drop out; instead, he dismissed the concerns and refused to show his diplomas, leading several staffers to resign.[72][63] Those who stayed became increasingly concerned and asked him to seek professional help.[73]
Despite internal concerns, Santos continued his campaign, donating $185,000 to the county Republican committee, which endorsed him.[64] Suozzi announced he would not seek reelection to Congress in November 2021, improving Republicans' chances of winning the seat.[74] Unopposed for the Republican nomination, Santos ran against Democrat Robert Zimmerman.[75] Zimmerman's campaign had access to a lengthy opposition research file but chose to focus on voter outreach instead.[63]
In September 2022, The North Shore Leader raised questions about Santos's employment, financial disclosures, and claims of wealth, but other media outlets did not report on the matter until after the election.[76] Santos defeated Zimmerman by 8%, flipping the district and helping Republicans retake the House.[77] After his victory, numerous outlets reported that much of Santos's biography appeared fabricated. Santos admitted to lying about his education and employment history, while his financial disclosures were inconsistent.[78][54]
The Santos campaign announced in April 2023 that he would seek reelection in 2024.[79] The state's Conservative and Republican Party chairs said they would not support Santos.[80]
Following the failure of an October 2023 vote to expel him from the House, Santos said he would run again in 2024 even if he was expelled from the House before the election.[81] In November 2023, after the House Ethics Committee's report made further fraud allegations against Santos, he reversed course and announced that he would not seek re-election.[82]
During the 2024 State of the Union Address in March, Santos announced that he would run for the House in New York's 1st congressional district, challenging incumbent Republican Nick LaLota,[83] who had long advocated for Santos's expulsion or resignation. Santos called LaLota a RINO. "[T]o hold a pathological liar who stole an election accountable," LaLota responded, "I led the charge to expel George Santos. If finishing the job requires beating him in a primary, count me in."[84]
On March 22, 2024, Santos announced his departure from the Republican Party, stating that he, "in good conscience, cannot affiliate myself with a party that stands for nothing and falls for everything." He intended to continue his congressional campaign as an independent.[85] On April 23, 2024, Santos dropped out of the race.[86]
Tenure
George Santos's constituent office in Douglaston, during his tenure
On January 11, only eight days after the start of his tenure, four Republican New York congressmen who had also been elected in 2022—Anthony D'Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams—called for Santos to resign.[87] The other two freshman Republican members of Congress from New York, Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler, followed suit.[88] Joseph Cairo, the chair of the Nassau County Republican Party, also called for Santos to resign, saying that he had "disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople".[87]
Santos refused to resign,[89] and kept the support of Republican House leadership, including former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, House majority leader Steve Scalise, and Representative Elise Stefanik (the fourth-highest-ranking House Republican), who relied in part on Santos's vote to support their very narrow (four-seat) House majority.[90][91] McCarthy did not deny Santos committee assignments or impose any penalty on him for the misrepresentations he made during his campaign.[91] Santos was assigned to the committees on small business and space, science, and technology.[92][93] On January 31 (two weeks after the assignments were announced), he announced at a meeting of House Republicans that he was vacating his committee memberships, but said the move was temporary; he never rejoined.[94]
In February 2023, Santos co-sponsored a bill to designate the "AR-15–style rifle" the National Gun of the United States.[95][96]
In 2023, Santos voted in favor of the key bills supported by the House Republican leadership.[90] After his indictment in May, House Republican leadership reiterated that they would not seek to force Santos to resign or expel him from the House.[90] A subsequent attempt by Democrats to force a vote on an expulsion resolution was blocked and referred to the Committee on Ethics.[97]
Later in 2023, House Democrats announced they would introduce a resolution to censure Santos. Unlike an expulsion, the measure would need only a simple majority to pass. Democrats said that Republicans, who had informally criticized Santos, should have no problem with a censure vote.[98] Five New York Republicans who had already called on Santos to resign—LaLota, Molinaro, D'Esposito, Langworthy and Lawler—said they would vote for censure, as did Ohio Republican Max Miller.[99]
Roll Call reported in July 2023 that Santos's office lagged behind those of members from neighboring districts in handling constituent service requests.[100]
In October, Santos voted to keep McCarthy as speaker when eight Republicans joined with House Democrats to remove him. He refused to support Steve Scalise as McCarthy's replacement, since the Louisiana congressman had not personally sought Santos's support.[102]
Expulsion resolutions
Distribution of votes on the 3rd and ultimately successful attempt to expel George Santos from Congress: Democratic yesDemocratic no Republican yesRepublican no Democratic not votingRepublican not voting Democrat present
In May 2023, after Santos was indicted on federal charges, Robert Garcia and other House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel Santos from the House, which required a two-thirds vote, or 290 votes, in favor. Because an expulsion motion is privileged, the Republican House leadership was required to either schedule a vote within two legislative days, table the proposal or refer it to the Ethics Committee. They introduced a motion to send the resolution to the Ethics Committee.[103][97] The House approved the motion by 221–204 along party lines; seven Democrats voted "present".[97] After Santos was indicted on additional charges in October, D'Esposito introduced a second expulsion resolution, cosponsored by the other five Republican House freshmen from New York.[104] After Rep. Mike Johnson was elected speaker, the sponsors moved to force a floor vote on the resolution.[105]
On November 1, the expulsion motion failed 213–179, with 19 voting present. Support was mostly from Democrats, joined by 24 Republicans, while 31 Democrats joined Republicans in opposing. California representative Katie Porter, one of those 31, believed that it was wrong to expel Santos before his case had been disposed in the courts or the House Ethics Commission had issued its report. Santos said the result was a victory for due process and dismissed the resolution as a political stunt by his colleagues anxious about their re-election prospects in 2024.[106]
In the wake of the Ethics Committee's report on Santos two weeks later, Garcia announced he would introduce another expulsion resolution, with the expectation that it would be voted on after the Thanksgiving recess. It was seen as possible that some of the representatives who had voted against expelling Santos previously would reconsider their positions in the wake of the report. One, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, said he would vote to expel, as "[t]he report's findings are extremely damning".[82]
Rep. Michael Guest, chair of the Ethics Committee, introduced an expulsion resolution of his own after the report was released.[107] Over the holiday recess, Santos said on an X Space that he expected to be expelled the following week when Congress returned.[108] He said he would "wear it like a badge of honor", called Guest a "pussy" and said that no one from Mississippi was going to push a New Yorker out of Congress. Santos said it was hypocritical of the House to expel him.[109]
On December 1, the House voted to pass Guest's resolution to expel Santos, 311–114.[110] Specifically, 206 Democrats and 105 Republicans voted for the resolution, with two Democrats[m] and 112 Republicans voting against his expulsion. Ten representatives did not vote, with two voting present and the rest absent.[111] He is the sixth member of the House to be expelled, the only Republican, and the only member expelled without first being convicted of a federal crime or having supported the Confederacy.[112][113][114][115]
After Suozzi won the February 2024 special election to fill Santos's seat, leaving the House Republicans with an even narrower majority, Santos lashed out at his former Republican colleagues who had voted to expel him in a group text. "I hope you guys are happy with this dismal performance and the 10 million dollars your futile Bull Shit cost the party," Santos wrote. "I look very much forward to seeing most of you lose due to your absolute hate filled campaign to remove me from Congress arbitrarily."[116]
Political positions
Politically, Santos has aligned himself with former president Donald Trump.[24] At a March 2019 event held by the conservative #WalkAway Foundation that encouraged members of the LGBTQ community to leave the Democratic Party, Santos (introducing himself as Anthony Devolder) claimed to have formed a group called United for Trump and asked Blaire White, a transgender YouTuber, how she could "help educate other trans people from not having to follow the narrative that the media and the Democrats put forward".[117] In 2023, Santos attended a rally of supporters outside the Manhattan courthouse where Trump was arraigned on felony charges of falsifying business records.[118]
After the October7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Santos said, "I think every inch of the United States at this point should be mapped out again and completely checked. I don't care if we go into a police state for a couple of months."[120]
False biographical statements
On December 19, 2022, after Santos had been elected to Congress but before he had taken office, The New York Times reported that he had lied about many aspects of his biography.[24] His lawyer denied the allegations.[24][121][122] On December 22, New York attorney general Letitia James announced that an investigation had been opened into Santos.[123]
On December 26, Santos broke his silence with interviews on WABC[124][125] and with The New York Post.[126][127] He denied being a criminal, saying, "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".[128] Santos admitted to the Post that he had lied about graduating from college and working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. 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.[129]
Family
Santos was raised as a Catholic and has identified himself as a Catholic. At various points in his career, however, he has claimed to be "Jewish"; "Jew-ish"; "half Jewish"; a non-observant Jew; "a proud American Jew"; and a "Latino Jew".[130]
In a January 2020 appearance on Talking GOP, a cable TV show he co-hosted, Santos claimed his maternal grandfather grew up Jewish, converted to Catholicism before the Holocaust, and raised his children Catholic. While Santos said that he was Catholic and that he was not "trying to claim Jewish heritage", he added, "I believe we are all Jewish, at the end – because Jesus Christ is Jewish. And if you believe in Jesus, and we're all brothers in Christ, I mean". The video resurfaced in early 2023.[131] More specifically, Santos has claimed that his maternal grandparents were Jewish Holocaust refugees who fled Soviet Ukraine and German-occupied Belgium.[132]
On an October 2020 radio show, Santos claimed that Democratic former congressman Steve Israel offered him his support during an event hosted by the Council for a Secure America, a bipartisan group co-chaired by Israel. Santos claimed that Israel told him: "You're going to be the first Republican I am voting for in my life." Israel denied saying anything of the kind, and Santos did not appear on the event's guest list.[133][130] Santos did not otherwise make much mention of his purported Jewish ancestry during his 2020 run, but referred to it frequently in 2022 when all the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Suozzi were Jewish.[64]
At a meeting at the U.S.–Israel PAC a month before his 2022 election, Santos courted pro-Israel activists by falsely claiming to be "halakhically Jewish", according to attendees.[130] A co-chair of the organization said this served to give the impression that Santos's mother was Jewish, getting "a chuckle out of the crowd".[130]
Santos's former roommate said Santos frequently made antisemitic jokes and said that it was acceptable for him to do so because he was Jewish. The former roommate corroborated a claim that Santos previously joked online about Adolf Hitler killing Jews and Blacks.[134][135]
On December 21, 2022, following Santos's November 2022 election to Congress, The Forward and Jewish Insider reported that Santos's claims about his family's alleged Jewish heritage were false.[9][132] His maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, not in Ukraine or Belgium.[9]
During a December 26, 2022 interview, Santos said: "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'".[126] On December 27, 2022, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) asserted that Santos would no longer be welcome at RJC events because he had "'deceived' the organization and 'misrepresented' his Jewish heritage".[136]
In 2023 media appearances, Santos claimed that his claim to Jewish ancestry was vindicated by DNA test kits; however, he did not reveal the DNA information.[137][138][139] Santos said on a May 2023 podcast that he was raised Catholic but considered himself a "member of the tribe" because his mother's ancestry was predominantly Jewish. Santos said he had many Jewish friends among his constituents and went to Shabbat dinners "more often than most".[139] Six months later, he promised CNN's Manu Raju that he was still working on getting proof of his grandparents' ancestry, but that he was experiencing difficulty due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.[n] In November 2023, Santos reportedly said that he was "finishing getting the last pieces" of evidence that his grandparents, after emigrating to Brazil, had forged documents that enabled them to "blend in and all of that".[141]
In 2020, Santos claimed that he was biracial and that his Brazilian-born father had Angolan roots. Jewish Insider could not confirm this information.[24][132]
Mother
On his campaign website, Santos wrote that his mother was "the first female executive at a major financial institution", worked in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and died "a few years later" after surviving the September 11 attacks.[142] On her 2003 visa application, however, his mother stated that she had not been in the country since 1999;[143] in June 2001, Fatima reported that she was living in Brazil.[144] Her actual occupation has been described as domestic worker[145] or home care nurse.[146][147]
Upon the death of Santos's mother, a Brazilian newspaper described her as a cook. Santos's former roommates and friends said she spoke no English.[43] In July 2021, Santos wrote that "9/11 claimed my mothers[sic] life". In an October 2021 interview, he said his mother was "caught up in the ash cloud" during 9/11 but "never applied for relief" because the family could afford the medical bills. In December 2022, he claimed that his parents survived being "down there" at the World Trade Center during 9/11.[148][149] A priest at the family's Catholic church reported that when Santos's mother died in 2016, Santos told him that the family could not afford a funeral. The priest recalled that a collection at a memorial Mass raised a "significant" amount for the family, which he gave to Santos.[142] He also had a friend set up a GoFundMe.[150] In November 2023, Vanity Fair reported that the funeral home never received the $6,000 it was owed for its services.[151]
In his February 2023 Piers Morgan interview, Santos insisted his mother had been at the World Trade Center the day of the attack. "It's quite insensitive to try to rehash my mother's legacy", he said. "She wasn't one to mislead me ... I stay convinced that's the truth".[152]
Education
In 2019 and 2020, Santos said that as a child, he attended the Horace Mann School, an elite preparatory school in the Bronx, before withdrawing because of family hardship. After the school denied those claims, Santos asserted that he had attended Horace Mann for only six months in ninth grade and suggested that he had used one of his other names. The school reiterated that it had no record of a student at the time using any variation of Santos's name.[153][43][154][155] Santos's biographer wrote that although Santos has retracted claims about his higher education, he remained adamant about having attended Horace Mann despite the complete absence of evidence supporting this claim.[155]
Santos falsely claimed to hold a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from Baruch College and to have graduated near the top of his class. His claimed period of attendance overlapped with his time in Brazil.[24][42] Santos's friends recall times when he claimed to be taking classes at Baruch but never seemed to study.[43] In January 2023, Santos falsely told a Republican Party chairman that he had been a "star player" on the Baruch volleyball team (as his LinkBridge supervisor had been), having won the league championship and defeated Yale University. At the time in question, Yale had no men's varsity volleyball team.[156][157][158] In a pre-election radio interview, Santos said his supposed volleyball career led to him needing both knees replaced.[159][160] Santos later admitted that he had never graduated from college.[78]
In his interview with Morgan, Santos said that he lied about his college experience to meet perceived societal expectations. He added that he could not afford to attend college.[152] Santos said he did not know the source of the spurious GMAT score in his résumé published by the Nassau County Republican Committee. Morgan asked why Santos thought he could get away with lying about his education in a congressional election, and Santos replied that no one had raised any questions about his claims during his 2020 campaign.[162] In a February 2023 Newsmax interview, Santos blamed his résumé lies on the local Republican Party;[163] later, after expulsion from the House, he said that a campaign staffer had written his résumé.[164]
Employment
Santos has used various aliases, including "Anthony Zabrovsky" and "Anthony Devolder".[165][153][150] A 2011 Wikipedia userpage created under the latter name claims that the account holder had acted in Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.[36]
After returning to the U.S. from Brazil, Santos told friends that he had worked as a journalist for Brazilian media conglomerate Globo.[166]The New York Times could not find his name on the organization's website.[43] Santos also told a roommate in late 2013 that he was a model who had worked at New York Fashion Week and would be appearing in Vogue.[166]
Santos has called himself 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.[24] His campaign website stated that he was "an associate asset manager in the real asset division" of Citigroup,[78] but the company sold its asset management division in 2005, before his claimed period of employment.[24] On a 2022 podcast, Santos claimed that while employed at Goldman Sachs seven years earlier, he had attended the SALT Conference; while there, he had allegedly criticized the company for investing in renewable energy, calling it a taxpayer-subsidized scam. Anthony Scaramucci, who runs the conference, said there is no record that Santos ever attended.[153]
Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens from October 2011 to July 2012, overlapping the time he said he worked at Citigroup.[40][145] He later told the New York Post that his Citigroup claim was "a poor choice of words" and that a subsequent employer had been in "limited partnerships" with those companies.[126] Acquaintances and coworkers said that Santos claimed his family was wealthy and had extensive real estate holdings in the U.S. and Brazil.[145] He repeated this claim during his 2022 congressional campaign, saying 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.[24] Santos later admitted to the Post that the claim was false and that he owned no properties as of the end of 2022.[126]
In a November 2022 interview, Santos discussed the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting that took place in Orlando, saying that his company "lost four employees" there.[167]The New York Times found no connection between the 49 victims killed in the attack and any company named in Santos's biography.[24] In a December 2022 interview, Santos changed his story, saying, "We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando".[78]
During his 2022 congressional campaign, Santos told prospective donors that he was a producer for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Michael Cohl, Spider-Man's lead producer, denied that Santos was involved with the show. The musical's playbills did not contain his name. Santos was living in Brazil in 2011 when the show opened, and his alleged time as producer overlaps his employment at Dish Network.[168]
In August 2023, Santos downplayed the significance of the many false or exaggerated claims he had made related to his job history, saying that he had not posted his résumé online during his campaign. He also noted that "studies show that most people lie on their résumés. It's just unfortunately ... the reality".[169]
Residence
During his 2020 campaign, Santos gave his address a residence in Elmhurst, Queens, located outside the district in which he was then seeking office.[145][p] Santos and his partner later moved to a rowhouse in Whitestone, Queens; its owner said they had moved there in July 2020.[145] In March 2022, Santos told Newsday that he left Whitestone because of an alleged January 2021 vandalism incident.[145] He was registered to vote at the Whitestone address during his congressional campaigns, but did not appear to live there.[24]
Santos's landlord said he moved out of the Whitestone residence in August 2022, leaving $17,000 in damages,[145] but records showed he was still registered there when he voted that November. According to the landlord, Santos continued receiving mail there after the election, including the certificate of his election victory.[170] Santos told reporters he planned to move to Oyster Bay, Nassau County, but he and his partner apparently moved into a house in Huntington, Suffolk County (outside the boundaries of the 3rd congressional district) in August 2022.[145][p] He told the Post the house was his sister's, but The New York Times later found she lived in Elmhurst.[171]
Victimhood
On at least three occasions, Santos has claimed to have been the victim of various unreported crimes. In January 2016, he claimed to have been robbed of the money he was on his way to give his former landlady's attorney in settlement of her eviction claim against him.[172] Five years later, Santos claimed he and his partner had found stones and eggs thrown at their Whitestone apartment after they returned to it from a party at Mar-a-Lago. The owner, who lived in the building's lower unit, did not recall any such incident; the Times found no relevant police report.[145]
After his election, Santos told two Brazilian journalists on a podcast that during mid-2021, he had been mugged in New York City as he walked out of a building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in mid-afternoon. Thieves, he said, made off with his briefcase, watch, and shoes, and fled the scene before anyone noticed anything. Vanity Fair noted that the intersection in question is one of the busiest in the city with high security at its luxury businesses. Santos did not provide a police report of the incident.[173] His description of the alleged assault included a comment that has been characterized as an "overtly racist" stereotype about Black people being likely to commit crimes.[174]
In October 2023, Santos told the Times that a few months earlier, his niece had vanished from a Queens playground, only to be found 40 minutes later in the company of two Chinese men. He claimed to suspect that the incident was retaliation for his opposition to the Chinese Communist Party. The newspaper found that while the incident had been reported to police, investigators found no evidence to support the story and suspected it had been invented.[175]
Health
In addition to his claim in October 2020 of having both knees replaced,[159][160] Santos said in an interview earlier that year that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and received radiation treatment. He also claims to suffer from an immunodeficiency and acute chronic bronchitis. When asked in 2022, his campaign did not give details or answer questions about his purported brain tumor.[176]
Charitable work
In his 2020 campaign online biography, Santos claimed he and his family had worked charitably on behalf of children born with the rare genetic skin disorder epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Vice News found that no one involved with the few charities that specifically work with EB patients in the U.S. or Brazil had ever heard of or received contributions from him.[177] Sometime during 2022, the campaign changed the website so it no longer mentioned EB; the revised language said that his family's charitable efforts were directed at "helping at-risk children and America's veterans".[178]
Campaign finance
During Santos's 2020 campaign, a consultant described him as "a walking campaign-finance violation." Santos suggested that donors bypass contribution limits by donating to other Republicans' PACs, which would then send the money back to him.[64]
Financial disclosures
In September 2023, Santos filed his personal financial disclosures 20 months late.[q] In 2020, he reported a net worth of $5,000 and only $50,000 from Harbor City Capital, but the House Ethics Committee later reported over $90,000 in income and exposed $80,000 in mostly fictitious loans to his campaign.[179][180] He personally profited $28,000 from repayments of those loans.[181] By 2022, he claimed a net worth of $2.5 to $11 million but reported no U.S. property, despite earlier claims of owning Long Island mansions.[182] A $600,000 loan to his campaign was missing from his 2022 forms, but later bank records showed $715,000 in loans from his personal savings and Devolder accounts. The committee suggested these loans may have been illegal campaign contributions.[183]
In March 2023, Santos reportedly brokered a $19 million yacht sale between two major campaign contributors. Although not illegal, the transaction's timing raised concerns about potential campaign finance violations. Authorities are investigating.[184] His campaign in July 2023 reported raising $133,000 but refunded $85,000 to him. Many donors were linked to Chinese billionaire Miles Guo, whom Santos has publicly supported.[185] By April 2024, Santos’s 2022 campaign reported no fundraising or spending, but its debt had increased to nearly $800,000, with $630,000 in loans claimed to be from Santos personally.[186] Four months later, the campaign reported a similar amount of outstanding debt against $562 in cash on hand.[187]
Campaign spending
During his campaign, Santos spent prodigiously; 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 locations in California, Texas and Florida, and a stay at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida,[24] part of $30,000 in hotel bills, $14,000 paid to car services,[188] and an equivalent sum spent at a Queens restaurant.[189] That much airfare, the Times later noted, is far more than most candidates spend on their first election and closer to the amounts spent by party leaders who have served in Congress for years. Two campaign aides told the Times that staff were increasingly concerned during the campaign that Santos was more interested in spending the $3million raised for the race "frivolously" than on winning the election.[171] The October 2023 indictment suggests that at least $11,000 in spending on luxury items was money obtained through credit card fraud and identity theft, by Santos allegedly using donors' credit card information without their knowledge or consent, representing himself as them, and diverting those funds to a company he controlled.[190]
The House Ethics Committee found several instances of apparent personal spending during and after the campaign that were not reported to the FEC. In February 2022, he had spent $1,700 at two Atlantic City casinos, $1,500 at a pet store, and smaller amounts on JetBlue, various retailers and the Adventureland amusement park in East Farmingdale on Long Island. A July hotel bill in excess of $3,000 was reported, but conflicts with Santos's personal calendar showing he was elsewhere at the time and not doing any campaigning. Charges for a taxi and hotel in Las Vegas were made to the campaign during a time when Santos said he was there for his honeymoon. At the end of November, following his election victory, Santos's campaign wired him $20,000, which also went unrecorded. He spent $6,000 of it at Ferragamo, withdrew $1,000 in cash from a Queens ATM and, later, $800 at a casino. Other money was used to pay his rent.[181]
Santos's campaign finance reports listed a company called "Cleaner 123" as receiving $11,000 over four months in rent for campaign staff housing in the district. Neighbors of the house said that Santos and his partner appeared to have been living there during that time.[171]
Santos continued to spend campaign money lavishly even after being expelled from the House. His FEC filing for the last quarter of 2023 reports a $1,300 expense at the Capitol Hill Club, a private Republican social club, on December 4, three days after his expulsion.[191]
Donations to other candidates
Santos's campaign and GADS PAC reported making a combined $180,000 in contributions to other Republican campaigns. A review by the Times of those other campaigns' financial reports found many instances where their reports and Santos's reports did not match.[192]
The PAC reported making two $2,900 donations to Michelle Bond's unsuccessful primary campaign for the Republican nomination in the neighboring 1st district. Her campaign's reports show a single donation of $5,000, $800 less than Santos's PAC reported. The PAC's donations to Blake Masters's unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Arizona are acknowledged by the recipient, but a subsequent $2,000 from Santos's campaign committee is not, and the Masters campaign says it can find no records of it. The address Santos's campaign gave for that contribution, like some of the donations Santos reported, was apparently fictitious, this one in the Florida Panhandle.[192]
This pattern also extended to Republican candidates for state office. Disclosure reports for those campaigns on file with the New York State Board of Elections in Albany show over 20 donations to them from Santos's campaign and his PACs during the 2020–22 election cycle. There are no corresponding reports of those donations on Santos's and GADS PAC's FEC filings.[192]
Politico later looked at Santos's 2020 campaign finance reports, and found similar discrepancies in both state and federal reports. Shortly after being formed in 2019, Santos's campaign committee made its first donations, $9,000 total, to Trump's presidential campaign committee and two local Republican organizations. The first, at $2,800, is not reported in the Trump campaign's filings and exceeds the cycle limit for contributions from one campaign to another. The second is to the "Town of Oyster Bay Republican Club", a nonexistent entity. The New York state records of two Republican organizations that do use the town's name show no contributions from Santos. Similarly, a $2,000 contribution to the Nassau County Republican Committee is not reflected on that organization's records. "It's impossible to believe that all three of these political committees independently lost track of political donations from Santos's campaign during this period", a campaign finance lawyer the website spoke to said.[193]
In April 2023, Texas representative Beth Van Duyne reported that her campaign had never received its share of a joint fundraising committee (JFC) created for a fundraiser held with Santos in July 2022. In a report filed by its treasurer, Nancy Marks, the JFC reported raising $11,600. Around $2,000 was spent on the event, at a Garden City, New York, restaurant; the rest was, according to the report, divided evenly between the two campaigns, with each receiving almost $5,000. A spokesman for the Van Duyne campaign said that money was never disbursed to them and that it will not hold further fundraisers with Santos through it. Santos's campaign had no comment.[194]
Campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel speculated that the failure to share the money might indicate that Santos's campaign was using the JFC to evade campaign contribution limits. He noted that two contributors gave a combined $5,800 to it in August, equal to the amount they had already contributed directly, the legal maximum, to Santos's campaign. There could be more innocent explanations, Kappel allowed, such as the check getting lost in the mail, but in that case, the campaign treasurers should have long ago resolved that. He also noted that although Santos's campaign treasurers had both filed termination reports with respect to the JFC earlier in 2023, the FEC had not obliged by mid-April, suggesting that the JFC may be the subject of complaints to the commission.[194]
Unitemized expenses
In a later article, the Times noted that Santos's campaign spent more than $5,000 on flights to and hotel stays in Washington and West Palm Beach, Florida, for Republican fundraisers in the first quarter of 2021, a time when the next congressional election was almost two years away and he had no primary challenger. By the end of the year, Santos's reported expenses for those trips had reached $90,000 and had become more lavish, with hundreds of dollars spent on transportation, hotels, and food around the country.[192]
In early 2022, the campaign filed amended reports. Among the changes made were upward adjustments to some of the expenses he had reported at the end of 2021. A $60 meal at a Michigan sushi restaurant was now reported as having cost $199.99, along with three additional expenses of that exact amount on that date. Five previously reported Uber and taxi rides went from $267 total to $445. A subsequent amended report, in May, reported no transactions on the date to which the sushi dinner had previously been attributed.[192]
Santos's campaign financial disclosures went on to include many other expenses of $199.99—one cent below the $200 threshold at which campaigns are legally required to provide receipts and disclose recipients.[171][195] An election law expert the Times talked to suggested that this could indicate awareness of the law and intent to violate it.[171][r] One of those expenses was for a Miami hotel where rooms rarely rent for under $600 a night.[197] The Times later reported that other Miami businesses where the campaign reported spending money could not find receipts for those amounts or said the expenses did not reflect the prices of the products allegedly purchased.[198]
Politico later compared Santos's campaign reports to other congressional campaigns that spent similar total amounts, and found that only nine percent of them had recorded any expenses in the $199–200 range. Most of those were to the videoconferencing service Zoom, which offers a business plan for $199.90. Of 4,300 campaigns that filed reports during the cycle, only 25 reported any expenses of exactly $199.99; of those, the most times that amount was claimed was four, while Santos's campaign claimed it 37 times. Politico called this "a statistical improbability".[197]
The Times noted that the $199.99 transactions reached a total of 1,200 separate payments in Santos's early 2022 amended report, totaling over $250,000. They were still in the amended report from May of that year, which had removed the larger sushi-dinner bill and taxi expenditures. By the end of the campaign, the total unitemized expenditures had exceeded $365,000, 12 percent of his total campaign expenses and six times that of any other member of Congress from New York. Since federal election regulations require that campaigns itemize all transactions with a particular vendor once the amount exceeds $200, the Times calculated that Santos's campaign would have to have done business with over 1,800 separate concerns for all the unitemized transactions to be lawfully reported as such. His campaign lists 270. An expert at the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said the campaign's reporting was "so ludicrous that it's completely wrong" and suggested the campaign was covering up its actual expenses.[192]
Santos suggested in a subsequent interview that the recurrences of "$199.99" could have been clerical errors that could be "rectified if there is any discrepancy."[199]
Il Bacco restaurant
Il Bacco in Little Neck
During his two congressional runs in 2020 and 2022, Santos reported having spent over $25,000 at Il Bacco, an eatery popular for New York City Republican events;[195] he had also entertained prospective Harbor City clients there.[51] Santos's 2022 campaign reports owing Il Bacco nearly $19,000 for its election night victory party, in addition to seven of the instances where the campaign had reported spending exactly $199.99.[195]
Santos appointed Il Bacco's owner, Giuseppe "Joe" Oppedisano,[200] along with his daughter, the restaurant's manager, to his campaign's "Small Business for Santos" Coalition; Oppedisano in turn donated $6,500 to his campaign and its associated PACs. Oppedisano's brother Rocco also gave Santos's campaign $500. Because Rocco[201] is not a U.S. citizen and his permanent resident status was revoked after guns and drugs were seized from his properties in 2009, he cannot legally make campaign contributions.[195]
Political action committee
In July 2021, Santos loaned GADS PAC $25,000, five times what it had on hand at the time. The next day, the PAC donated the same amount to the campaign of Lee Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island who became the party's gubernatorial nominee in 2022. Starting in April 2022, GADS PAC, by then flush with donations from Santos supporters, repaid him in four installments over two months. Santos had effectively arranged for his campaign contributors to repay the loan. At the time these were reported, Robert Maguire, an expert on the subject at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), found several aspects of the transaction "extremely strange", including Santos's loan to a PAC (rather than his campaign committee, as is more typical) and his establishment of a leadership PAC for himself before even being elected to Congress (such PACs are used by party leaders and committee chairs or ranking members, to support colleagues).[70]
The House Ethics Committee examined Santos's and GADS PAC's bank records and found neither the 2021 loan nor one for $2,000 supposedly made to it by Santos a year later. Similarly, none of the $30,000 in repayments to Santos were actually made. Almost half that money was given to another New York political committee; neither it nor GADS PAC reported the transaction to the FEC.[202]
FEC investigations
During 2021–22, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) wrote over 20 letters to Santos's campaign about problems with its disclosure reports. Fourteen concerned contributors exceeding the $2,900 per cycle limit and insufficient information on the terms of loans to the campaign. Some original reports also unlawfully described contributions as coming from anonymous donors. The campaign responded with amended reports, ultimately filing 36 in total[192] for the 10 periods in which reports were required.[203]
In December 2022, the FEC wrote to Marks, then Santos's campaign treasurer, about the same problems, as well as other potential violations, including contributions from apparent political organizations not registered with the commission and insufficient disclosures regarding other contributions, such as the 48-hour notice required for contributions of more than $1,000 during the last 20 days before the election. The campaign had until January 24, 2023, to correct those violations.[204] Santos's attorney denied any unlawful spending of campaign funds.[205]
In January 2023, the CLC filed a complaint with the FEC, alleging that Santos used campaign funds for personal expenses, concealed the source of $700,000 he gave his campaign, and falsified expenditures.[206]End Citizens United (ECU) filed separate complaints with the FEC, DOJ, and Office of Congressional Ethics.[207] Another non-profit advocacy group, Accountable.US, filed an additional FEC complaint by the end of the week, alleging over $100,000 in contributions over the limit.[208]
On January 24, the campaign filed amended reports with the FEC, unchecking boxes that said two loans, including $750,000, had come from Santos's personal funds without explaining who did lend the money. Other loans were still marked as coming from Santos. Campaign finance experts noted the unusual number of amended reports filed.[209] In February, Santos said the money came from his own finances.[199]
On January 27, it was reported that the Justice Department asked the FEC to suspend its probe while federal prosecutors conducted a parallel criminal investigation.[210] Five House members requested the attorney general to investigate potential violations of campaign law and the Foreign Agent Registration Act.[211]
At the end of January, ECU filed another FEC complaint against the Santos campaign, pointing to $260,000 raised as a recount fund, despite New York not allowing candidates to request recounts. Expenses appeared to duplicate those reported before the election. Santos denied involvement in the FEC filings.[198]
In February, the FEC informed Santos that his campaign had raised more than $5,000 without debts, deeming him a candidate in the 2024 elections. The FEC gave him until March 14 to declare candidacy;[212] Santos filed a statement confirming his candidacy.[213]
Campaign treasurer
The campaign's January 2023 reports listed Thomas Datwyler as treasurer, but he denied involvement, saying his name was forged. The FEC asked the campaign for clarification.[214]
In February, the FEC gave Santos's campaign until March 14 to name a new treasurer or face suspension.[215] A week later, the campaign hired Andrew Olson, but his address matched Santos’s, and no one knew him.[216] Olson had no prior campaign experience and listed no phone number.[217]
In May 2023, after his indictment, Santos filed new FEC paperwork listing himself as treasurer.[218] A day later, he hired Jason D. Boles, previously a treasurer for Marjorie Taylor Greene.[219] CREW filed another FEC complaint, alleging that Olson was fictitious.[220]
When Santos filed new paperwork after announcing his 2024 candidacy, Boles was listed as treasurer.[84]
Alleged use of fictitious donors and donations
Mother Jones found in late January 2023 that many contributions to Santos's 2020 campaign were from fictitious or nonexistent names and addresses, all given through WinRed, an online processor of small-donor contributions for Republicans. Twelve donations, totaling $30,000 of the $338,000 Santos reported raising from individual contributors, were from real people who denied having donated the amount claimed. Nine of those donors were among the 45 listed as having given Santos the maximum allowed under law for both the primary and general cycles.[221] The magazine later found that relatives of Santos in Queens who had been reported to have given his campaign over $45,000 denied having made those donations; one said he could not have afforded the amount.[222]
As part of its investigation into $365,000 in unitemized campaign expenditures, the Times found some Santos donors who said they were reported to have given more than the legal limit and more than their own records showed, sometimes in ways that suggested an attempt to make the contributions appear legal. One donor said the $20,000 the campaign reported he gave ($7,000 more than his records showed in contributions to Santos and related organizations) was in 24 separate transactions, all of which used his former address but different versions of his name, and incorrectly claimed he had a spouse.[192]
Federal prosecutors later said Marks had told them she made up contributions from members of Santos's family and hers in 2021 so the campaign could appear to have raised more than $250,000 from third parties in the third quarter of that year. By doing so the campaign qualified for financial and logistical assistance from the Republican National Committee (RNC).[223] Those numbers also helped dissuade other candidates from entering the race for the nomination.[224] Shortly after Marks's guilty plea Santos was indicted on charges related to the scheme.[190]
Alleged credit card fraud and misuse of WinRed
TPM reported that a contributor to Santos's 2020 campaign had discovered unauthorized charges totaling nearly $15,000 on their credit card, made through WinRed during 2021 and 2022. Despite the contributor's decision not to continue supporting Santos, these charges were recorded, some exceeding cycle limits. WinRed, accused of enrolling donors in unauthorized recurring contributions, initially failed to find a record of these transactions but eventually refunded $2,000. The full refund was later provided by American Express.[225]
In 2021, the donor's card was also used for unauthorized contributions to Tina Forte, totaling $2,900 each, which they had never authorized. Another donor to Forte found a $5,800 charge on their card, far exceeding their intended donation. After complaints, refunds were issued.[225]
In July 2023, Forte's campaign manager suspected Red Strategies USA, partly owned by Santos, of inflating WinRed's fees in reports. For example, $35,000 in "credit card fees" was reported when WinRed typically charges only 4%, suggesting an excessive amount given the campaign's fundraising.[226] NBC News found similar discrepancies in Santos's campaign's use of WinRed, with $206,000 paid to WinRed instead of the expected $33,000, leaving $173,000 unaccounted for.[227]
The October 2023 superseding indictment accused Santos of a scheme involving unauthorized use of donor credit cards, leading to charges of aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud.[190] Santos's consultant, Sam Miele, later admitted to unauthorized use of donor credit cards and lying about campaign expenditures, including defrauding one donor of $470,000.[228]
In a letter, Republican Max Miller alleged that Santos had used his and his mother's credit cards for unauthorized contributions, calling Santos a "crook" on the House floor. He claimed that over 400 others, including Republican members, were similarly defrauded.[229] Santos's final campaign finance report listed a $16,000 debt to WinRed, despite no previous disclosure of transactions with the platform.[191]
Misrepresentations in fundraising
Santos's campaign paid $50,000 in fees to Miele, who had called Republican donors falsely claiming to be then-House speaker Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff and asking them to support Santos.[63] In mid-January 2023, McCarthy said though he had "some questions about it", he had "no idea" about the falsity of Santos's résumé when he ran, nor that Miele had posed as McCarthy's chief of staff, Dan Meyer.[230][231] Some contributors to the Santos campaign said they were motivated to give to him because of his supposed Wall Street experience or his claim to be Jewish, both later found to be fictitious, and felt cheated in the wake of those disclosures.[230] Following an August indictment on charges of wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering,[232] Miele pleaded guilty in November to one count of wire fraud; his lawyer would not say whether he had agreed to testify against Santos.[228]
Red Strategies and RedStone Strategies
RedStone Strategies, a super PAC supporting Santos in the race that had told potential donors a month before the election that it had raised $800,000 and was seeking to raise another $700,000, did not register with the FEC as a campaign organization. It was thus not known who donated to RedStone or ran it; the Devolder Organization and Jayson Benoit, one of Santos's former Harbor City coworkers who lived at and owned the Merritt Island address,[49] were listed as officers of a similarly named organization in Florida records. There is no record that RedStone spent any money on advertising in support of Santos. It also described itself as a 501(c)(4) organization, which means that while it could spend on political advocacy as long as that was not its primary purpose, it could not support candidates directly.[189]
RedStone received $110,000 in a series of 76 payments over 2021 from Tina Forte's campaign, whose treasurer was the same former Harbor City coworker of Santos's and a co-owner of RedStone along with Marks and the Devolder Organization. Forte's campaign's FEC reports have some issues as well, such as many unnamed donors and $14,000 in reimbursements to the candidate for unnamed personal expenses, along with the allegations from donors of unauthorized credit charges via WinRed.[225]
Demauro, Forte's campaign manager, said that Santos recommended that they hire the similarly-named Red Strategies USA as a consultant in 2021 without disclosing that he had an interest in the firm, and even seemed to have pretended to be meeting its principals, former Harbor Hill associates, for the first time along with Demauro. The agreement between the campaign and Red Strategies called for the firm to keep 80 percent of any funds it raised, an amount Demauro believes the campaign was trying to obfuscate with its initially inflated statements of WinRed credit card fees. She recalls that Marks, the campaign treasurer, repeatedly ignored her requests for bank and account statements; her own paychecks were frequently late.[226]
The House Ethics Committee reported that a witness identified as working for the Forte campaign[s] confronted Santos in December 2021 about his failure to disclose his interest in Red Strategies. The witness noted that Santos's name was on the incorporation papers filed in May (it was actually the Devolder Organization). Santos responded that he had merely bought into the company in August.[233]
RedStone Strategies was formed in November 2021 following complaints from the Forte campaign about Red Strategies. Santos represented himself as its "managing partner" while signing one contract with another vendor; he also used a RedStone email address in his capital introduction work. During 2022 RedStone paid Santos at least $200,000;[t] an October payment of $50,000 was used by Santos over the next month to spend over $4,000 at Hermés, pay for some OnlyFans subscriptions and pay his rent and credit card debts.[235]
On October 5, 2023, Marks pleaded guilty in a federal court in Long Island to numerous campaign finance violations. Her plea agreement recommended she serve between 42 months to four years in federal prison.[236] Santos was indicted five days later on charges of wire fraud related to the diversion of funds to RedStone under the pretense that it was to buy television advertising when in fact none of it was, or could have been.[190]
Rise NY
In late 2020, after Santos had lost the election to Suozzi,[237] Marks and Tiffany Santos established a PAC called Rise NY, which paid RedStone $6,000 in April 2022. It later raised money from many Santos donors who had exceeded the $2,900 limit for direct campaign contributions. PACs are allowed to make unlimited contributions to candidates and parties, but cannot coordinate efforts with campaigns. Rise NY's Twitter account posted accounts of voter registration events and rallies it claimed to have organized during the campaign; Rise NY reported paying salaries to some Santos campaign staff, $10,000 to a company Marks runs, and a $20,000 salary to Tiffany Santos. It also reported multiple expenditures at Il Bacco, the Queens Italian restaurant where Santos's 2022 campaign spent $14,000, and at a gas station near Santos's Whitestone apartment.[189][u]Newsday reported later that, for two months in 2021, Rise made Santos's $2,600 rent payments, and it later paid $1,800 for three tickets for Santos and two guests to attend a gala sponsored by the Liberty Education Forum, a group the PAC gave over $50,000. It also reported $6,500 in payments to Santos.[237]
The House Ethics Committee, in reviewing bank records for Rise, RedStone and Santos's businesses, found "numerous unreported transfers to and from the campaign bank account" during 2022. Some went to other accounts under Marks's control, $10,000 to the Devolder Organization, and $50,000 went between Rise and the campaign, in amounts exceeding $20,000 at one point.[239]
Andrew Intrater, the financier who had lost most of the $625,000 Santos persuaded him to invest in Harbor City, said his $175,000 contribution to Rise NY was underreported to the state by $95,000 until a later amended report.[192] Later, he learned that his contributions had amounted to 40 percent of the organization's funding.[240] A $25,000 donation he made to RedStone Strategies, purportedly for a large television ad buy, was never reported to the FEC because RedStone had never registered with it.[192]
Mother Jones reported at the end of February 2023 that despite no official connection to Rise, Santos regularly solicited contributions to it and in some cases personally delivered checks from it, including two for $62,500 each to the Nassau County and Town of Hempstead Republican committees, suggesting that he had some role with Rise.[v] In late 2021, over $55,000 Santos raised with the promise of registering voters was instead diverted to Outspoken Middle East, an LGBTQ news platform aimed at that region of the world.[240]
Outspoken founder Charles Moran said he had approached Santos asking for financial help; since the contribution was legal for Rise to have made, he accepted it. Former ambassador Richard Grenell was also involved with starting Outspoken; he spoke at a Santos fundraiser around the same time and formally endorsed Santos in July 2022. Intrater told Mother Jones that he had only learned from them about the diversion and that Santos had told him repeatedly during 2021 that contributions to Rise were being spent to build the Republican Party in New York.[240]
Investigations and legal issues
House Ethics Committee
In January 2023, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman, House Democrats from New York, filed an ethics complaint with the House Ethics Committee over Santos's financial disclosure reports. In March, the House Ethics Committee announced a formal inquiry and created a subcommittee to investigate allegations of having failed to provide proper financial disclosures to the House, sexual misconduct, and conflict of interest.[242]
In June, the committee announced that it was expanding its investigation to cover the unemployment fraud alleged in the May 2023 federal indictment of Santos.[243] It announced that it had sought the voluntary cooperation of about 40 witnesses and subpoenaed 30 others.[244]
Two months later, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the most senior Democrat in the House and a former member of the party's leadership, wrote the Ethics Committee asking they make public whatever they had found so far about Santos. "More than enough time has passed for the [committee] to conduct a fair and accurate assessment of the veracity of the allegations against Rep. Santos and of the scope of his misconduct", he said.[245]
On November 16, the Ethics Committee released its Investigative Subcommittee's report, accusing Santos of fraud similar to what he had already been criminally charged with,[246] such as diverting campaign funds for personal use, as well as money raised for RedStone Strategies that donors were told would be used on campaigns. The subcommittee listed some of those personal purposes, including over $4,000 to Hermés, plastic surgery and Botox, payments of personal credit card bills and other debts, travel to Atlantic City and Las Vegas that had no campaign purpose, and a small amount on OnlyFans subscriptions. In a news release accompanying the report, the committee said "[it]s investigation revealed a complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos's campaign, personal, and business finances ... [He] sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit." It believed "there was substantial evidence that Representative Santos violated federal criminal laws, some of which are the subject of the pending charges filed against him in court."[247] Santos subsequently announced he would not run for reelection, although he would remain in Congress for the rest of his term. He called the report "a disgusting politicized smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk."[82]
Brazilian check fraud charges
After obtaining his high school equivalency diploma, Santos spent time in Brazil. In 2008, he forged checks, stolen from a man his mother was caring for, to buy R$1,313 (about US$700) worth of clothing.[15] He gave his name as Délio.[28] When writing the checks, Santos presented identification bearing his photo but the check owner's name. The store owner became suspicious when the signatures on two checks did not match.[15] A few days later, another young man came in to return a pair of shoes that Délio had bought; the store clerk, who had had to cover the loss, traced Santos through the man's Orkut profile.[28] Santos later admitted to the theft in a message to the clerk and confessed to police before he was charged with check fraud in 2010.[43][24] The case was archived by a Brazilian court in 2013 because authorities there were unable to locate Santos.[248][249]
In January 2023, Rio de Janeiro prosecutors announced that they would revive the fraud charges since they knew where Santos was.[250][248] In March 2023, prosecutors announced a plea bargain with Santos,[251] and in May 2023, Santos formally settled the bad check charges; under the agreement, agreeing to pay 24,000 Brazilian reais (almost US$5,000), with most compensating the defrauded salesman and the remainder donated to charity.[252]
Evictions and unpaid judgments
Santos was evicted from rented Queens properties (in Jackson Heights, Whitestone, and Sunnyside) three times in the mid-2010s over unpaid rent. A onetime roommate described moving into the first apartment in December 2013 after befriending Santos; it had only two bedrooms and one bathroom, and Santos shared it with his mother, sister, and later his boyfriend.[166] Morey-Parker recalls that eviction notices were sent monthly,[253] that new roommates rapidly cycled through the apartment,[254] and that Santos's personal finances fluctuated wildly: "[He] would go to bars with rolls of hundred dollar bills and, three days later, he would have no money."[255] Santos was locked out of the apartment in the summer of 2014 and told the housing court that he needed access to the apartment to feed pet fish, which a former roommate later said had never existed.[253]
Santos signed a lease on an apartment in Whitestone in 2014.[253][172][145] In 2023, Pedro Vilarva, who had been Santos's boyfriend at the time, told the Times that Santos claimed he was expecting money from his investment work at Citigroup, so Vilarva paid most of the bills, but Santos "never ever actually went to work".[43] The relationship soured in early 2015 when Vilarva stopped believing Santos's promises, and after Vilarva came to believe Santos had taken his cell phone to pawn it, he discovered the 2013 Brazilian charges against Santos and moved out.[256][43]
Santos remained in the apartment through November of that year, owing a month and a half's rent. His landlady filed for eviction, and he agreed to leave by December 24 and pay her $2,250 in back rent,[172] telling the court that his mother's illness had hindered his ability to work but he would soon be able to repay the money from "business loans".[253] In mid-January 2016, he told Queens Housing Court that he was mugged on his way to make the payment, but police were unable to take a report at the time, telling him to return later. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has no record of the incident.[172]
In October 2015, a small claims court judge ordered Santos to pay Peter Hamilton $5,000 plus interest to repay a loan Hamilton made to Santos in September 2014 for moving expenses. In December 2022, Hamilton told The Times that the judgment had not been paid.[145]
In his third known eviction case, a Queens court entered a civil judgment of $12,208 against him in 2017.[24][257] In housing court, he said he would seek emergency rental assistance.[253] Santos told the Post that his mother's illness had forced his family into debt at the time; as of December 2022 he had yet to pay the rent he owed, saying he "completely forgot about it".[128]
Friends of Pets United
Santos claimed to have rescued over 2,500 animals as founder and operator of a charity called Friends of Pets United (FOPU) from 2013 to 2018. FOPU activities are poorly documented, and in 2022, The Times found little evidence of its existence other than a closed Facebook account; former volunteers and associates described it as disorganized and said that far fewer animals were saved. FOPU held fundraising events and donated money to other rescue groups, but several recipients said they received significantly less than what Santos promised. Santos told many people that FOPU was a legitimate charity, but it never received non-profit tax-exempt status from the IRS, was not registered as a charity with the state of New York, and never registered with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets as required of animal rescue groups from September 2017. The contractor providing animal-related services to New York City said that it never dealt with FOPU, and the group was not authorized to take dogs from city shelters. Santos said in February 2023 that he "never handled the finances" of FOPU, although its volunteers and groups that dealt with FOPU said that he seemed to be the only person who did so. All mentions of FOPU were removed from Santos's official biographies as his other claims began to be widely questioned by the media.[258] Santos's biographer described FOPU primarily as a vehicle for selling puppies from Santos's personal Golden Retriever and those he obtained from commercial breeders, and as a means for Santos to conduct unaccountable fundraising in the name of other, better known rescue groups.[259]
Theft charges
In November 2017, Santos was charged with theft by deception in York County, Pennsylvania, after bad checks were written to an Amish dog breeder from his account. Days after he gave the breeder a $15,125 check for "puppies", Santos and FOPU hosted an adoption event at a pet store. After the check bounced, the Pennsylvania charge was brought against him. Tiffany Bogosian, a school friend of Santos's from Queens, assisted in getting the charges dropped after he told her that his checkbook had been stolen in 2017 and he had received an extradition warrant from Pennsylvania at his New York address in 2020. She successfully argued that the signatures on the checks were not Santos's, and the case against Santos was dismissed in May 2021, after Santos ultimately paid the farmer who lodged the police report.[260][261][262][263] Santos's record was expunged in November 2021.[260]
In February 2023, The Washington Post reported that three other Amish dog breeders allegedly were never paid by Santos but never filed police reports.[263]
Allegations of mishandling funds
In January 2023, retired U.S. Navy veteran Richard Osthoff and retired police officer Michael Boll accused Santos of having stolen funds that were donated to a GoFundMe fundraiser. In May 2016, Osthoff was homeless and was told that surgery to remove a life-threatening stomach tumor from his service dog would cost $3,000. A veterinary technician recommended that he contact the owner of FOPU, Anthony Devolder, one of Santos's aliases, who then set up a GoFundMe page. After the fundraiser had reached its goal of $3,000 in June, Santos closed it and withdrew the money. Osthoff, Boll, and GoFundMe received no funds, and the dog died in January 2017.[264][265][266] GoFundMe banned Santos, who had organized the fundraiser, at the end of 2016.[266] Santos denied swindling Osthoff;[267] in October 2023 he denied even knowing him to the Times, which reported having text messages suggesting otherwise.[175] The FBI is investigating Osthoff's allegations.[268]
The veterinary technician who had recommended Santos to Osthoff said that Santos later offered to raise funds to repair her farm in New Jersey so that it could be used for animal rescue.[258] FOPU held a 2017 fundraiser event, charging $50 per attendee, eventually raising $2,165, with Santos controlling the money.[258] The veterinary technician said that Santos was elusive and never gave her any of the proceeds, instead only giving excuses for not transferring the money.[24][258]
The owner of a Staten Island pet store told the Times that, after a successful series of fundraisers, Santos, known as Anthony Devolder to the store owner, asked the owner to make the check out to him personally rather than FOPU. The owner refused but later saw that on the payee line of the canceled check, "FOPU" had been crossed out and replaced with "Anthony Devolder".[258]
A pet rescue operator in the Bronx told the Times that after Santos had boasted of his Wall Street experience and connections to her to assure her he could raise thousands of dollars for her organization, he held a fundraiser in March 2017 and then sent her a check for $400. She stopped working with him, believing he was either overpromising or skimming.[258]
Credit-card skimming
CBS has reported that Santos's name came up in a 2017 international credit card skimming scheme perpetrated by Brazilians in Seattle. After Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, a Brazilian living in Orlando, was arrested using a card skimmer at an automatic teller machine, a search of his car found an empty FedEx box with the return address written being one of Santos's former residences in Winter Park,[269] which Trelha was later reported to have jointly leased with Santos,[270] the same one given on a Florida traffic ticket issued to Santos in October 2016.[269] CBS later reported that two Secret Service agents interviewed Santos in New York; he voluntarily surrendered two of his cellphones to them. The case remains open, but as of February 2023 Santos has not been identified as a suspect.[271]
After the story was reported in 2023, Trelha made a sworn declaration to the FBI that he had committed the crime at the urging of Santos, who had also taught him how to set up the skimmer and camera necessary to steal passwords and how to clone ATM and credit cards. The two had an agreement to split the proceeds, Trelha said, but after his arrest Santos kept all the money for himself, reneging on a promise to hire a top defense lawyer and pay Trelha's bail. At the time he said he declined to tell federal authorities as Santos had threatened to report his Orlando roommates to immigration authorities as they were in the U.S. illegally.[272][w]
Santos told reporters the day after Politico reported the declaration that he was innocent, saying, "Never did anything of criminal activity, and I have no mastermind event." He said he had only met Trelha "a couple of times in my life" and that he had willingly assisted every law enforcement agency that contacted him: "Got information for them. Got everybody arrested and deported."[275]
Sexual harassment allegation
Also in February 2023, Derek Myers, the prospective staffer who secretly recorded Santos admitting "errors of judgment" in making some of his claims, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Santos with the House Ethics Committee, alleging Santos had touched his groin inappropriately while inviting him out to a karaoke bar and telling Myers that his husband was out of town. Myers also alleged that Santos had violated House rules by having him work as a volunteer for a week before his paperwork was processed.[276] Santos denied the allegation. In June, Myers told the Ethics Committee that he had gotten the job after sending seven payments of $150 each to Santos's director of operations.[277]
In its November report, the committee said it could not substantiate the allegation. Myers (unnamed in the report) had said the incident occurred while he and Santos were alone in the office going over mail from constituents. However, witnesses told the committee that staff did not want someone from outside the office going over mail, and that Santos had never been alone with Myers that day. The committee also noted inconsistencies in Myers's testimony to them, and his admission that after the incident he reported it to the FBI in the hope of collecting money as an informant.[278]
Federal indictment
In May 2023, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York indicted Santos on 13 criminal charges: seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives. Prosecutors accused Santos of "three distinct schemes": fraudulent solicitation of political contributions, unemployment benefits fraud, and making false statements on the financial disclosure reports he submitted to the House of Representatives. In the fraudulent solicitation scheme, Santos allegedly persuaded two supporters to donate $25,000 each to a limited liability company controlled by him and then used the money for personal expenses. He told them it was a Super PAC and that the money would buy TV ads to support his campaign. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Santos also allegedly obtained a total of $24,000 in unemployment benefits from mid-2020 to April 2021 while drawing an annual salary of $120,000.[279][280]
At the arraignment the day the indictment was unsealed, Santos pleaded not guilty and was granted pretrial release on a $500,000 bond with conditions, including surrendering his passport and restricting his travel to Long Island, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Afterwards, he told reporters that this was a "witch hunt" and that he was still running for reelection in 2024.[279][281][282]
Prosecutors turned over 80,000 pages of material to Santos's lawyers by June 2023.[283]
The names of the guarantors of Santos's $500,000 bail bond were initially under seal.[284] Media outlets sought to unseal the names of the guarantors, a motion Santos opposed.[284][285] District Judge Joanna Seybert denied Santos's appeal and ordered the names unsealed; they were revealed to be Santos's father Gercino dos Santos Jr. and aunt Elma Santos Prevenand.[286][287] They had not been required to put up any cash or property as collateral for the bond but would be liable for the entire amount if Santos fled.[284][286]
In August 2023, Santos said he would not consider a plea deal at the time,[169] but a month later prosecutors told the judge that they were both sharing substantial new evidence with Santos and his lawyer while looking at "possible paths forward" with them, raising speculation regarding a possible plea deal,[288] which Santos has denied.[289]
Marks's guilty plea in October was seen as an ominous development for Santos, who was referred to as "Co-Conspirator No. 1" in her plea agreement, due to the falsifications in his campaign finance reports she admitted to making. "One way or another, the government is going to use that information in his case", said one law professor. Kappel said it was "bad news" for him, noting that the lack of a provision in the agreement that she continue cooperating may indicate that the government has enough evidence implicating Santos to believe her testimony would not be needed to convict him.[290] Her plea agreement alluded to text and email exchanges between her and Santos.[224]
Superseding indictment
Superseding indictment filed October 10, 2023 (document number 50 of the case)
Five days after Marks's plea, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, alleging 10 additional felonies committed by Santos including conspiracy against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, credit card fraud, and money laundering. These charges stemmed from not only the same effort to deceive the RNC that Marks had admitted to, but the unauthorized use of donor credit cards, the money raised by RedStone by lying about its political status and the purpose of the spending, much of which Santos allegedly converted to personal spending on clothing and other luxury items. In an October 27 court appearance, Santos pleaded not guilty to the new charges.[190][291]
Santos learned of the additional charges when questioned by reporters after leaving a House Republican Conference meeting where he said he had not had access to his phone. He called them "bullshit" and explained that he had not handled any of his campaign finance reports. "I didn't even know what the hell the FEC was" when he first ran for office, Santos said.[292] Later he attributed them to Marks's mistakes and malfeasance.[175][x]
In May 2024, Santos moved to have some of the charges dismissed. The dismissal relied on the Supreme Court ruling in the Dubin case that narrowed the applicability of the identity theft statute to cases where the act was at the crux of a predicate offense. His attorneys therefore argued that even if Santos had used the names of others in his FEC filings and credit card charges, as alleged in the indictment, that would not constitute an aggravated identity theft.[294]
Guilty plea
On August 19, 2024, Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft as part of a plea deal in which he also admitted to committing the other crimes with which he was charged in the superseding indictment. "I accept full responsibility for my actions", he told the judge. "I allowed my ambition to cloud my judgment, leading me to make decisions that were unethical and—guilty."[2][295]
Santos is scheduled for sentencing on February 7, 2025. Federal sentencing guidelines call for 6–8 years for the charges he pleaded to,[2] with a possible maximum of 22 years.[296] He will also be required to pay nearly $375,000 in restitution to victims and forfeit an additional $205,000; if he cannot pay the latter amount his property may be seized.[2]
According to Breon Peace, United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, the plea agreement was secured when Santos agreed to serve at least the two-year minimum required under law for the identity theft charges. While Santos only agreed to plead to two of the 23 counts in the indictment, his admission to the other charges means they can be considered in his sentencing. Peace said Santos also agreed not to appeal any sentence less than eight years.[296]
Post-congressional career
Within three days after his expulsion from Congress, Santos started offering personalized videos on the website Cameo. Steven Galanis, one of the co-founders of the website, said that Santos's videos represented one of "the best launches that [the website] ever had". It was noted that the videos could potentially earn him well over "the $174,000 salary he earned as a member of Congress".[297] Senator John Fetterman spent $343 for a Cameo video from George Santos, as a prank against his colleague, Bob Menendez.[298]
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel paid for videos to see if "there's a line [that Santos] wouldn't cross". Kimmel aired some of the videos on his show, after which Santos demanded $20,000 for the right to broadcast, which Kimmel refused to pay.[299] In response, Santos filed suit in February 2024 against Kimmel, ABC (Kimmel's employer), and the Walt Disney Company (ABC's owner) for $750,000, claiming that Kimmel intended to "ridicule" Santos.[300] On August 19, 2024, a judge dismissed the suit, saying that Kimmel's actions constituted "political commentary and criticism," which is protected under the fair use doctrine.[301][302]
Santos announced in April 2024 that he would revive his Kitara drag persona for Cameo videos, promising to donate to charity 20% of the proceeds.[304] The Tunnel to Towers Foundation, one of the charities Santos said proceeds from the Cameos would be donated to, said he had not informed them of his plans prior to making his announcement.[305] Two months later, Santos announced that he had started an OnlyFans account,[306] though it was mentioned, however, that the account would not feature any sexual content, but would rather be a "behind-the-scenes" look on his life and work.[307]
In December, Santos launched a podcast, "Pants on Fire", with liberal cohost Naja Hall and him discussing various issues. The weekend before the first episode, a video was uploaded showing someone throwing coffee on Santos as he walked through Times Square. Santos later admitted the incident was staged to promote the podcast and that he had not intended for it to be uploaded.[308]
Personal life
Santos is openly gay.[309][310] He was married to a woman from 2012 to 2019,[311] despite previously being out, but lived with men he was involved with from 2013 on.[309] Santos did not widely acknowledge his marriage to the woman, a Brazilian national,[312] until it was reported in December 2022.[313] In statements acknowledging the marriage, Santos said that he loved his then wife; however, he also said that he had been comfortably and openly gay for at least the preceding decade, an assertion broadly supported by friends, former coworkers, and roommates.[78][312][314] Morey-Parker said that in 2014, the pair were on friendly terms and often socialized with him and others. Santos did not deny the marriage, but Santos was also open about his romance with his then boyfriend and told friends about it.[315]
Santos's coworkers at Dish, who understood him to be gay, speculated in 2012 that perhaps he got married to access his claimed familial wealth, to appease his family's concerns about his sexuality, or to help his wife with her immigration status.[316] Adriana Parizzi, who was a close friend of Santos from Brazil and roommate of his early on in the marriage, says the marriage was purely for immigration purposes and that Santos was paid $20,000 for it. The Washington Post reported that three of Santos's former roommates confirmed this. Santos has denied the allegation.[28] Records show that a filing to dissolve the marriage in May 2013 was withdrawn in December of the same year. Four months later, Santos filed a family-based immigration petition on his wife's behalf; it was approved in July 2014, typically seen as a sign that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services believed the marriage was valid.[312] According to Santos's biographer, the woman has steadfastly refused to talk to the media about her relationship with Santos.[317]
In 2020, Santos said he was living with a partner named Matheus Gerard,[318] whom he has subsequently called his husband.[145][319] Santos says the couple wed in November 2021.[318]
In popular culture
On January 21, 2023, Saturday Night Live featured Bowen Yang as Santos in its cold open and Weekend Update segments.[320] Yang reprised the role on the March 11, 2023, cold open that parodied the red carpet at the 2023 Oscars, where Santos would claim to be Tom Cruise.[321] He returned on October 21, holding a baby during the cold open built around Rep. Jim Jordan's failed bid to become Speaker of the House,[322] and again on December 3 in the cold open about Santos's expulsion from Congress.[323]
He told Piers Morgan that his parents could not agree on what his first name should be, so they gave him both. His mother preferred Anthony, and always used it.[5] He used different combinations of his names at different times, settling on George Santos shortly before his first run for Congress at the suggestion of a local Republican activist, who liked the sound of it.[6]
↑ Santos later claimed, in support of his opposition to abortion, that his birth was premature, at 24 weeks of gestation. It could not be determined if this was true.[8]
↑ Fatima reportedly left one of the latter positions, in the home of Charles Goodman, son of Marvel Comics founder Martin, abruptly after questions were raised about missing items.[13]
↑ His mother's U.S. immigration records do not indicate that she ever became naturalized.[16]
"It's always a pebble of truth and a mountain of lies" with him, one relative said.[20]
Fátima responded with "Oh God, Anthony and his stories" when asked to confirm one of them by a former roommate of Santos, after which she advised her interlocutor not to believe George's accounts of his past.[21]
He reportedly kept money his aunt gave him to pay some of her bills; she did not find out until she received notice that they were overdue (She has never spoken on the record about her nephew).[22]
On two separate occasions, including one where he stopped someone from taking a bag of his own important papers at George's behest, Gercino advised people to be careful regarding their dealings with him.[23]
↑ "Shy and effeminate" as a child, a relative says, Santos was bullied by cousins; his family was not comfortable with his sexuality [29]
↑ Other evidence of Santos performing as a drag queen in Brazil includes:
A journalist, João Fragah, has said he interviewed Santos on video performing as Kitara Ravache.[32]
The Brazilian news program Fantástico published a video purportedly of Santos dancing in drag at Niterói's 2007 gay parade; Fantástico cited digital crimes expert Wanderson Castilho confirming that this person was Santos.[33][34]
A Wikipedia user called "Anthonydevolder" (one of Santos's aliases) wrote about himself on the site in 2011, giving Santos's birth date, describing a similar family background, stating that at 17, he had been a drag queen in a gay nightclub and had won several gay beauty pageants, and identifying three supposed television and movie acting credits.[35][36]
↑ At the time Santos took the regional director position, Harbor City had been banned from doing business in Alabama by that state's Securities Commission, which alleged that the firm was "out to deceive Alabamians and profit off unsuspecting investors by using dazzling marketing tactics to sell unregistered bonds."[49]
↑ According to Mother Jones, Santos' reported personal income increased from $55,000 in 2020 to between $3.5 million and $11.5 million in 2022 and 2023.[54]
↑ A person or entity with an ownership interest in a limited liability company is called a member.
↑ The House Ethics Committee noted that Santos's frequent claims of wealth stood in stark contrast to his own financial reality: "[He] was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits."[59]
1 2 Members of the U.S. House are not required to live within the boundaries of their respective districts, but are required to reside in the same state in which they hold office.[78]
↑ The House Ethics Committee found that many of the reported expenses in the $190–200 range were overstated. It was unable to determine why the higher amounts were reported.[196]
↑ The witness's actions are consistent with those the Times has attributed to DeMauro.[226][233]
↑ Santos's lawyer submitted to the Ethics Committee a 1099 tax form reporting RedStone paid Santos $176,000 in nonemployee compensation during 2022.[234]
↑ In December 2021, Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall took note of a Santos tweet (since deleted) about having to pay over $200 every week for three tankfuls of gas. Based on where Santos lived and worked, and assuming he bought the most expensive grade of fuel, drove a fuel-inefficient vehicle, and refilled only when near empty, Marshall calculated that if Santos was indeed spending that much on gas, he had to be driving over a thousand miles (1,600 km) a week. His commute to and from work (which Marshall estimated based on LinkBridge's location since the minimal information he could find on the Devolder Organization — the family business Santos claimed employed him at the time — did not give an address) and assumed possible weekend trips to the Hamptons still, according to Marshall, left more than 700 miles unaccounted for. Marshall noted how poor this math was, given Santos's stated background in finance.[238]
↑ According to the House Ethics Committee, the lawyer for Santos's campaign advised him to shut Rise down while he was seeking election, advice he disregarded.[239] Another witness the committee interviewed recalled having concerns about Santos's involvement with Rise while a candidate and even the entity's legality.[241]
↑ Two weeks after Politico reported this allegation, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that Trelha was himself a fugitive from justice, believed to be hiding in France after having been charged by Brazilian prosecutors in 2022 with torture over a 2019 incident in which he is accused of beating his girlfriend's 2-year-old son severely enough to fracture the boy's skull and require hospitalization. Trelha is also reported to have misrepresented his past, claiming to have worked as a pilot when he in fact never finished the training course.[273][274]
↑ The House Ethics Committee's report, by contrast, cites former staffers and documentary evidence to show that Santos and Marks had a close personal and work relationship, to the point that the other staffers considered the campaign's finances a "black box" accessible only to the two of them; he was involved enough, his later protestations to the contrary, that he would have been aware of any mistakes she made at the time she made them. Some staffers did bring issues with Marks's competence to Santos's attention. He told them that he would discuss them with her personally, but appeared to do little, if anything, to address the staffers' concerns. He reportedly told some that Marks was "untouchable". The committee also reviewed records from other campaigns Marks had served as treasurer and noted that they had a much lower rate of putative errors than Santos's.[293]
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↑ Davis O'Brien, Rebecca; Gold, Michael (May 10, 2023). "Indictment". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 10, 2023. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
↑ "SANTOS, George". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Archived from the original on January 13, 2023. Retrieved January 15, 2023. SANTOS, George, a Representative from New York; born on July 22, 1988; unsuccessful candidate for election to the One Hundred Seventeenth Congress in 2020; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress (January 3, 2023–present).
↑ Batista Jr., João (January 19, 2023). "Uma cascada de lorotas". piauí (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on January 20, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
↑ "Página 89 da V – Editais e demais publicações do Diário de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro (DJRJ) de 7 de Outubro de 2013"[Page 89 of V – Notices and other publications of the Rio de Janeiro Justice Gazette (RJJG) of October 7, 2013] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Diário de Justiça do Rio de Janeiro. October 7, 2013. Retrieved January 2, 2023– via jusbrasil.com.br. O MM. Juiz de Direito, Dr.(a) Ricardo Alberto Pereira – Juiz Titular do Cartório da 2ª Vara Criminal da Comarca de Niterói, Estado do Rio de Janeiro, FAZ SABER que o Promotor de Justiça Titular deste juízo, denunciou o nacional George Anthony Devolder Santos -Nacionalidade Americana – Profissão: Professor – Estado Civil: Solteiro – Data de Nascimento: 22/07/1988 Idade: 25 – Filiação: Pai -Gercino Antonio dos Santos Junior Mãe – Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder [The Honorable Judge Ricardo Alberto Pereira, Judge of the 2nd Criminal Court of the City of Niterói, State of Rio de Janeiro, DOES NOTICE that the Prosecutor General of this court, denounced the national George Anthony Devolder Santos – American Nationality – Profession: Teacher – Marital Status: Single – Date of Birth: 22/07/1988 Age: 25 – Parentage: Father -Gercino Antonio dos Santos Junior Mother – Fatima Alzira Caruso Horta Devolder ]
↑ Ellison, Sarah (December 29, 2022). "A tiny paper broke the George Santos scandal, but no one paid attention". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 29, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022. a tiny publication on Long Island [...] The North Shore Leader wrote in September, when few others were covering Santos, about his "inexplicable rise" in reported net worth—from essentially nothing in 2020 to as much as $11million two years later. [...] no one followed its story before Election Day.
↑ "Office of the Third Congressional District of New York; 118th Congress, 1st Session". clerk.house.gov. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Archived from the original on December 5, 2023. Retrieved August 31, 2024. The Washington, DC, office and the district offices of former Representative George Santos will continue to serve the people of the Third Congressional District of New York under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Representative George Santos was expelled from Congress on December 1, 2023, pursuant to H. Res. 878.
↑ Cuza, Bobby; Brosnan, Erica (December 22, 2022). "NY attorney general to review issues raised about Santos". Archived from the original on January 5, 2023. Retrieved January 6, 2023. Republican leaders in Congress have declined to answer questions about the congressman-elect.
↑ Sweet, Jacqueline (January 26, 2023). "George Santos Posted 'Deeply Offensive' Comment About Hitler, Jews". Patch.com. Archived from the original on May 15, 2023. Retrieved May 14, 2023. In March 2011, Santos commented on a photo shared by a Facebook friend which shows someone making what appears to be a military salute with the caption "something like Hitler." In his comment, Santos writes [sic]: "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh hiiiiiiiiiiiitlerrrrrrrrrrr (hight hitler) lolololololololololololol sombody kill her!! the jews and black mostly lolllolol!!! Dum" ~. Patch also verified through another former friend, Gregory Morey-Parker, that the original Facebook post under which Santos wrote the Hitler comment existed.
↑ Stanley-Becker, Isaac; O'Connell, Jonathan; Brown, Emma (January 27, 2023). "Justice Department asks FEC to stand down as prosecutors probe Santos". The Washington Post.
1 2 3 Ashford, Grace; Jordan, Miriam; Gold, Michael (February 15, 2023). "George Santos Married a Brazilian Woman. House Is Asked to Find Out Why". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 15, 2023. Retrieved February 15, 2023. In an interview in December with the political publication City & State, Mr. Santos suggested that he was not openly gay when he first married. 'I did marry young, and I married a young woman at the time, and we pretty much were in love,' he said.
Chiusano, Mark (2023). The Fabulist: The Lying, Grifting, Stealing And Very American Legend of George Santos. New York: One Signal Publishers. ISBN9781668043677.
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