Politics

George Santos may have even lied about having a pet fish

George Santos, Piers Morgan, liar, interview
Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) Photo: Video screenshot

Recently unearthed eviction court recordings of disgraced Rep. George Santos (R-NY) reveal an even more tangled web of lies as he tries to explain months of unpaid rent.

The recordings, obtained by Gothamist, reportedly show Santos begging for clemency on more than one occasion after struggling to pay rent.

In 2014, the publication said a then 26-year-old Santos stood in Queens Housing Court after being evicted from his Jackson Heights apartment for failing to pay rent and told the judge he had a big fish tank and needed to get back into the apartment to feed his fish.

But Santos’s former roommate, who shared the apartment with him, said there was no fish tank.

“That’s a lie, too,” said Rabello. “He’s a pathological liar.”

His landlord’s attorney, Peter Wolf, told the Judge that Santos also lied about mailing a check. At the time, Santos owed the landlord over $5000.

Santos reportedly appeared in eviction court thrice between 2014 and 2017 after being evicted from three different apartments in Queens.

Despite continuing to promise he would pay what he owed, the report says he always found a way out of it once it was time to pay.

In one instance, he claimed he was robbed of the $2,250 he owed his landlord while on his way to give it to her. Gothamist says the NYPD has no record of the robbery.

At the time, he told a judge he had used all his sick days at work to care for his ailing mother and eventually had to take unpaid time off. He then told a judge that he would soon have money “due to business loans.”

At one point, Santos was in court for owing over $12,000 to his landlord. Santos said he had taken a break from work after his mother died and would be working again soon.

On two occasions, Santos told a judge he would try to apply for emergency rental assistance, though it is unclear if he ever did. Doing so requires proof of income, and whether and when Santos was working is unclear.

“He used to lie to everyone that he was working, but actually he was not,” said Rabello. “He was home just browsing the web, just sitting on the computer all day.”

Despite this, Santos spoke out against pandemic eviction moratoriums in 2021.

Earlier this month, the House Ethics Committee announced it is officially investigating Santos after he was accused of violating campaign finance laws. The Committee voted to establish an investigative subcommittee to investigate whether Santos committed unlawful activities related to his 2022 congressional campaign.

Santos’s office said, in a tweet, that he would fully cooperate with the investigation and then offered no additional comment.

After being elected to represent New York’s Third Congressional District and becoming the first out gay Republican elected to Congress, Santos’ life story came crumbling down as several newspapers reported he never went to the colleges he said he attended, never worked for the major banks he said he worked for, and that he had been lying about his family history as well. He has admitted to many of these lies, calling them “a little bit of fluff” on his resume.

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 support claims that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust and that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

He has been accused of stealing from roommates, lying about his marital status, stealing funds raised for a dog’s surgery, and faking a man’s signature on campaign finance forms.

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