New York Republican Congressman George Santos’ incessant extensive résumé fabrications were recently uncovered by The New York Times.
Santos appears to be ardently averse to truth telling. His often sloppily invented fictions range from minute to egregious. Santos claimed that he was a Baruch College summa cum laude graduate and volleyball star with a 3.89 G.P.A., he worked at Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, he ran a the foundation Friends of Pets United which rescued 2,500 dogs and cats between 2013 and 2018, he worked for his family’s consulting firm, the Devolder Organization, his mother was in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, four of his employees died in the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, he is Jewish, and possibly even that his name is George Santos.
Baruch officials told the The Times that there was no record of Santos’ 2010 graduation, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup told the The Times that they had no record of his employment, The Internal Revenue Service found no rescued of a registered charity group under the name Friends of Pets United, Santos’ congressional financial disclosure did not report any clients, public employment records obtained by NBC News do not list Santos’ mother as working in the World Trade Center, The Times found that none of the Pulse shooting victims were employed by any of Santos’ companies, according to genealogy records reviewed by CNN Santos has no Jewish heritage and is in fact Catholic, and finally, Santos’ former roommate Gregory Morey told CBS News that he “knew him as Anthony Devolder.”
In addition to heinous falsehoods and exploitation of tragedies, police records show that Santos stole a checkbook to make fraudulent purchases in 2008, which he later confessed to. Santos told the New York Post that he is “not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.” He was also regional director of Harbor City Capital, which promised investors double-digit returns, and which the Securities and Exchange Commision filed a lawsuit accusing the company’s owner of using to run a $17 million Ponzi scheme that Santos denied being aware of. Santos also allegedly pocketed money raised for disabled veteran Richard Ostoff’s dog’s life-saving $3,000 surgery. Ostoff’s dog died less than a year later. Santos has denied this allegation.
Santos’ obstinance in his decision to maintain his position as U.S. Representative faltered the morning of January 31, when he informed his colleagues that he will temporarily recuse himself from the Science, Space and Technology Committee and the Small Business Committee following a Monday night meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In a press conference earlier this month McCarthy said “the voters have elected George Santos.” 78 percent of voters in Santos’ congressional district want the congressman to resign, a Newsday/Siena College poll found. McCarthy will continue to ignore calls for Santos’ resignation, because Santos is instrumental in maintaining a Republican majority in the House. In this way party control continues to take precedence over the competence and reliability of the members of said party.