Out Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has been in Congress for only about a month and he has already been accused of sexual harassment by a former aide.
The former aide, Derek Myers, published a letter on Twitter that he sent to Reps. Michael Guest (R-MS) and Susan Wild (D-PA) – who head the bipartisan House Ethics Committee – detailing his accusations while working as a staff assistant at Santos’s D.C. office starting on January 23.
He wrote that he was alone with Santos in his office on January 25 and was going over letters the Congress member received when Santos asked Myers if he had a profile on Grindr. Santos allegedly told Myers that he had a Grindr profile.
“He called me ‘buddy’ and insisted I sit next to him on a small sofa,” Myers wrote. “I proceeded to move forward with the discussion about the mail, but the Congressman stopped me by placing his hand on my left leg, near my knee and saying, ‘Hey buddy, we’re going to karaoke tonight. Would you like to go?’ I kindly declined the invitation by telling the Congressman I was not a fan of clubs and bars and that I was not a good singer.”
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“The Congressman proceeded to take his hand and move it down my leg to my inner-thigh and proceeded to touch my groin.”
“He proceeded to look at me and say, ‘My husband is out of town tonight if you want to come over’ and went on to tell me where the Congressman lived. I quickly pushed the Congressman’s hand away and grabbed the mail from the table and proceeded to discuss the topic of constituent correspondence.”
Myers said that he was called into a meeting the following Monday to talk about the fact that he used to work as a journalist, something he said he had already discussed in his job interviews. On Wednesday, February 1, he said that he was fired.
In the letter, Myers also accused Santos’s office of mismanaging his status as an employee. He was told that he was being labeled a “volunteer” until “the payroll department” could process his paperwork. He said that this is a violation of House ethics rules. He is also asking the House Ethics Committee to investigate Santos’s hiring practices.
“Today, I filed a police report with Capitol police and a complaint with the House ethics committee regarding ethical violations and sexual harassment by Congressman George Santos during my time working in his office,” Myers wrote on Twitter.
Santos’s lawyer is not commenting on the letter. Santos said last week that his office didn’t hire Myers because he is facing wiretapping charges for publishing recorded court testimony in Ohio when he worked as a journalist. Santos said that the charges were “concerning to this institution.”
Myers said that when he heard Santos say that he was “thinking to myself, ‘I’m a threat and concern to this institution – George Santos, you’re George Santos!’”
Myers also recently released secret recordings in which Santos admits that he “f**ked up” by lying to voters and his own congressional staff about his personal history.
These matters will not be litigated on social media or through news media. They are serious offenses and the evidence and facts will speak for themselves if the committee takes up the matter. This tweet is being made public in light of transparency. pic.twitter.com/oSs4F3xyqc
— Derek Myers (@DerekMyers) February 3, 2023
Since he was elected this past November, Santos’s entire life story has been found to contain many lies, including the colleges he claimed he attended and his work history. He has also been accused of breaking many laws, including campaign finance rule violations, writing fraudulent checks, and stealing expensive clothes and phones from friends and former roommates.
He has also been accused of using coercion in relationships, dating teenagers while in his mid-20s, and using other people’s pictures on dating apps.
“The way that he is, is that he lies and then he tries to cover up that lie with another lie,” Pedro Vilarva, who was 18 when he dated 26-year-old Santos, told ABC News.
Leandro Bis, who dated 25-year-old Santos when he was 19, said that Santos was “manipulative” and that their relationship was “toxic.” He said that Santos claimed to have dated supermodels and went by the name “Anthony Zabrovski” when they dated, one of several aliases Santos used in the past.
Bis, who is Brazilian and was in the U.S. on a tourist visa at the time, said that Santos offered to marry him so that he could get a green card.
Bis said he told himself, “If you get a green card from him, you will be in his hands forever…. It was an illusion… now I realize he just wanted to get people under his hand.”
