What Has Santos NOT Lied About?

At this point in the saga of Rep.-elect George Santos, it might be easier to list the things he has claimed that are actually true rather than all the lies. It’s getting more bizarre by the day. The list of lies and inconsistencies includes his name, his sexual identity, his race, his ethnicity, his education, his professional life, his charitable work, the cause of his mother’s death and how many times she died, and his proximity to some of the nation’s deepest traumas.

He has also claimed he graduated from a college he didn’t graduate from, worked for two financial behemoths he hadn’t actually worked for, and was a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors. When asked to clarify the latter claim, 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.'"

When he's called on any of his lies, he just lies some more—it's pathological. But that same reckless behavior is also why the new Republican congressman-to-be is in serious legal jeopardy, at the local, state, federal, and, amazingly, international levels. And because of that, he's exceedingly unlikely to serve out a full term.

After The New York Times decided to pay attention to Santos' many bizarre stories, they’re really digging in. It would have been helpful if they’d been paying attention before the election, while local New York papers like the North Shore Leader were raising the alarm about Santos’ finances. That paper concluded he was too “bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy” to hold office. But those concerns didn’t rise far enough for the other local paper, the Times, to take note in time to help stop his election.

Now that he has been elected, and the many, many discrepancies in his financial history have emerged, Santos is under investigation by county, state, and federal prosecutors. Everyone wants to know how he went from earning $55,000—his income report from his first run for congress in 2020—to between $1 and $5 million as he reported in 2022 campaign filings. And where did the $700,000 he loaned his campaign come from?

Santos also has more than 30 expenses claimed for office supplies, meals, transportation, etc. that were exactly $199.99, one cent below the threshold requiring receipts to be filed with reports.  Very suspicious.  Santos also spent huge amounts on travel expense—$30,000 for hotels, $40,000 for airfare, and $14,000 on car services—for a candidate running in an urban district measuring only 254.8 square miles.

This story is going to have legs, for sure.