Despite lying about much of his personal and work history, out gay Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) will be sworn into Congress on Tuesday. Nevertheless, his old friends have told the media about his other likely lies, and a gay Congressman has introduced legislation that would prevent other politicians like Santos from fabricating their own backstories.
Last week, Santos admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and living at a fake address in his congressional district. He provided no additional proof to back up claims that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets, that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, and that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.
He also seemingly lied about his mother dying in connection to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become ‘the first female executive at a major financial institution,'” The New York Times recently reported. However, Santos’s friends say they remember her as a woman who spoke only Portuguese and worked cooking food and cleaning house for others.
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In a July 12, 2021 tweet, Santos wrote, “9/11 claimed my mother’s life.” He had previously said that his mother was working in the World Trade Center during terrorist attacks. The now-deleted bio on his campaign website said, “She survived the horrific events of that day, but unfortunately passed away a few years later.”
Apparently, “a few years later” meant 15 years later, and it’s unclear if her death was caused by any factors related to the attacks.
Santos also seemingly lied about having attended the Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, New York. He claimed that he attended the school but had to drop out in 2008, with only four months left until his graduation, because of his family’s financial difficulties.
“We’ve searched the records and there is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended Horace Mann,” Ed Adler, a spokesman for the school, told CNN.
Half a dozen of Santos’s former friends and colleagues told the Times that even though he bragged about working on Wall Street, he never seemed to go into the office and always seemed short on cash. His ex-boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, said that, while they lived together, he paid many bills for Santos. He suspects that Santos stole and pawned his phone for cash.
“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Vilarva said. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work.”
After finding online proof that Santos had faced legal charges in Brazil for forging checks belonging to his mother’s client, Vilarva packed all of his belongings into trash bags and moved out. Santos has since denied any wrongdoing, though Brazilian records show he admitted to the check forging at the time.
Vilarva told the Times that he worries about Santos being sworn into Congress. “I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands,” he said.
To stop liars like Santos ever getting into office, out gay Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said he’ll introduce the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker (SANTOS) Act. The act would require House candidates to provide details of their backgrounds under oath.
Reps. Nick LaLota (R-NY) and James Comer (R-Ky.) have both called for the House Ethics Committee to investigate Santos. On December 28, Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly (R) announced that she had opened an investigation to examine whether he had broken any campaign finance rules or other laws.
“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning,” Donnelly said in a statement. “The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress. No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”
