Fabulist Republican Rep. George Santos, who faced outrage over a litany of fabrications about his heritage, education and his career, has claimed he is unaware of any federal criminal charges made against him.
‘This is news to me,’ the Long Island lawmaker said on Tuesday after he was asked about federal prosecutors filing criminal charges against him.
Santos, who has admitted to lying about his past and fabricating his resume, is expected to be arrested and then appear in court today.
The nature of the charges against Santos, filed in the Eastern District of New York, remain unclear as they are under seal. They will be unsealed when the Republican appears in court, two people familiar with the matter told AP.
Prosecutors in New York and Washington have been looking into a variety of false statements Santos made during his campaign for Congress in 2022.
Among a litany of lies, he has been accused of breaking campaign finance laws, stealing money meant for a dying Iraq War veteran’s dog and being behind a credit card fraud. It is a crime to make false statements on a federal financial disclosure form.
Fabulist Republican Rep. George Santos (pictured), who faced outrage over a litany of fabrications about his heritage, education and his career, has claimed he is unaware of any federal criminal charges made against him
Santos, who has admitted to lying about his past and fabricating his resume, is expected to be arrested and then appear in court today
Santos has admitted to lying about having Jewish ancestry, a Wall Street background, college degrees and a history as a star volleyball player.
Serious questions about his finances also surfaced – not least over the source of what he claimed was a quickly amassed fortune despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands of dollars in back rent.
Democrats and some Republican colleagues have called for him to resign, but he has refused and instead announced his run for reelection in 2024.
He said his lies about his life story, which included telling people he had jobs at several global financial firms and a lavish real estate portfolio, were harmless embellishments of his resume.
Nassau County prosecutors and the New York attorney general’s office had previously said they were looking into possible violations of the law.
Besides questions about his life story, Santos’ campaign spending stoked scrutiny because of unusual payments for travel, lodging and other items.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center lodged a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and urged regulators to investigate Santos.
The ‘mountain of lies’ Santos propagated during the campaign about his life story and qualifications, the center said, should prompt the commission to ‘thoroughly investigate what appear to be equally brazen lies about how his campaign raised and spent money.’
The move came after Santos filed a new campaign financial disclosure report listing a new treasurer.
Santos’ longtime treasurer resigned in late January. The campaign finance reports that Nancy Marks oversaw were already the subject of a Federal Elections Commission complaint.
People hold banners on the day of a news conference calling for the resignation of Representative George Santos at the U.S., Capitol in Washington on February 7
In his filings with the FEC, Santos initially said he loaned his campaign and related political action committees more than $750,000 – money he claimed came from a family company.
Yet, the wealth necessary to make those loans seems to have emerged from nowhere. In a financial disclosure statement filed with the clerk of the U.S. House in 2020, Santos said he had no assets and an annual income of $55,000.
His latest report shows more refunds to donors this year than money coming in.
Investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission have interviewed sources familiar with Santos’ work for Harbor City Capital, which is accused of running a Ponzi scheme.
He was charged in 2017 with writing bad checks relating to a pet adoption event. But the charges ultimately got expunged after Santos said his checkbook had been stolen.
Meanwhile, Santos’ company, the Devolder Organization, wasn’t incorporated until spring 2021.
Yet last September, Santos filed another financial disclosure form reporting that this new company, incorporated in Florida, had paid him a $750,000 salary in each of the last two years, plus another $1 million to $5 million in dividends.
In one interview, Santos described the Devolder Organization as a business that helped rich people buy things like yachts and aircraft.
Court records indicate Santos was the subject of three eviction proceedings in Queens between 2014 and 2017 because of unpaid rent.
Some Republicans, including those in his district, have sharply castigated Santos for his dishonesty. The Nassau County Republican Committee, which had supported his candidacy, said it would not support Santos for reelection.
Santos has admitted to fabricating some of his background, but has rejected the claims that could amount to criminal charges.
Santos voluntarily came forward to say he would not seek to serve on congressional committees after his pending appointment held the prospect of posing a political problem.
Despite his role as a lightning rod and opposition even within New York Republican circles, Santos provided critical support to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy when he was scrounging for votes to secure the post.
Among a litany of lies, he has been accused of breaking campaign finance laws, stealing money meant for a dying Iraq War veteran’s dog and being behind a credit card fraud
Santos was revealed to be a pathological liar after he won the 2022 midterm elections to represent New York’s 3rd congressional district.
His lies and fabricated stories span almost every topic from his education background to his family’s heritage.
Santos flipped the New York seat red and is on track to make history by being sworn in as the first openly gay Republican member of Congress.
The New York Times originally broke the story of Santos’ resume embellishments on December 19. It reported that companies where Santos claimed to have worked, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, had no record of him having been an employee.
Baruch College, where Santos claimed to have gotten a degree in finance and economics, said he hadn’t been a student.
Beyond his resume, Santos invented a life story that has also come under question, including claims that his grandparents ‘fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.’
During his campaign, he referred to himself as ‘a proud American Jew.’
Confronted with questions about that story, Santos, a Roman Catholic, said he never intended to claim Jewish heritage.
The Times also uncovered records in Brazil that show Santos, when he was 19, was the subject of a criminal investigation there in 2008 over allegations he used stolen checks to buy items at a clothing shop in the city of Niteroi, which is near Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian authorities said they have reopened the case.
Some of the lies he has been caught in so far include:
Santos says he is of Ukrainian Jewish descent
In one interview, Santos said his family name on his mother’s side was the historically Jewish name ‘Zabrovsky.’
‘My grandfather was born in Kyiv and left in the late 20s and migrated to Belgium where he met my grandmother and then started a family,’ Santos told Fox Digital in February. ‘We don’t carry the Ukrainian last name, for a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refuges or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names or paperwork were changed in the name of survival.’
George Santos was revealed to be a pathological liar after he won the 2022 midterm elections to represent New York’s 3rd congressional district. His lies and fabricated stories span almost every topic from his education background to his family’s heritage
Reports indicate that there have been no successful efforts to find any Jewish or Ukrainian heritage in his family tree according to the Forward.
Santos said in a separate interview in 2020 that he was raised by ‘a white Caucasian mother, an immigrant from Belgium. But Santos’ mother, Fatima Devolder, was born in Brazil, according to her obituary in 2016.
Additionally, newly resurfaced tweets show that Santos, who is Brazilian-American, claimed in July 2020 on Twitter that he was biracial, meaning ‘Caucasian and black.’
Santos’ claims his mother died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks
Santos wrote in a July 2021 tweet that he was ‘blocking’ an account with the handle ‘9/11 was a victimless crime’ because his mother was a victim of the terrorist attack.
He wrote, ‘9/11 claimed my mother’s life… so I’m blocking so I don’t ever have to read this again,’ after the user responded to a tweet from Santos regarding immigration.
An obituary for Santos’ mother, however, states that she died in December 2016, which is more than 15 years after the attack took place.
He also confirmed the real date in a December 2021 tweet where he said: ‘December 23rd this year marks 5 years I lost my best friend and mentor. Mom you will live forever in my heart.’
Santos’ campaign website said his mother ‘survived the tragic events of September 11th’ in the South Tower office of the World Trade Center and died ‘a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.’
A New York Times report had described Santos’ mother as a ‘domestic worker’ or ‘housekeeper.’
His campaign website described his mother as a top executive.
‘George’s work ethic comes from his mother, who came from nothing, but worked her way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution,’ the website states.
The congressman-elect said in a 2021 tweet that, ‘9/11 claimed my mother’s life,’ however Fatima Devolder died in 2016 of cancer and it’s unclear if it was 9/11-related. It’s also unclear if she was an executive or a housekeeper
Santos said he attended a prestigious New York prep school
The Representative-elect said that he attended Horace Mann School – an elite private school in the Brox where tuition costs $59,800 per year.
‘He began Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, however, did not graduate from Horace Mann due to financial difficulties for his family,’ read a 2019 biography during his first campaign for Congress, which Santos lost.
‘He obtained a GED during his senior year,’ it added.
The school said, according to CNN, that he never attended.
‘We’ve searched the records and there is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended Horace Mann,’ spokesperson for Horace Mann Prep School Ed Adler said.
CNN reported late Wednesday that the New York Republican never attended Horace Mann School (pictured), an elite private school in the Bronx
Former call center worker Santos’ resume includes time at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup
Santos said that he worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup but now says he used a ‘poor choice of words’ when describing his relationship with the two firms.
The incoming congressman worked at a DISH Satellite call center from October 2011 to July 2012.
He also worked for LinkBridge, where, in an attempt to justify his lie, Santos said that he did business with Goldman and Citi and made ‘capital introductions’ between clients and investors.
Santos said he ‘never worked directly’ for either firm.
George Santos (right) poses with his then fiancé at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve
Santos’ claim his family-owned real estate portfolio of 10+ properties
Santos posted on Twitter in February 2021 that ‘my family and I’ had not received any rent on 13 properties allegedly owned by him.
A review property taxes owed or paid for in New York state shows no evidence of ownership.
He claimed to have a brain tumor
On March 30, 2020, at the start of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, an interview with Santos was published on YouTube titled ‘George Santos: A Corona Story.’ The video has since been set to private
In the video, according to Newsweek, Santos tells two men, one wearing a ‘Guns and Freedom’ hat and the other seated by a ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag, that he had ‘battled a brain tumor.’
Discussing his health Santos said: ‘I have an immunodeficiency and I also have acute chronic bronchitis. I also battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago and I had radiation done which really lowers your immunity in general.’
Claimed that he lost four employees in Pulse nightclub massacre
During an interview with WNYC, Santos alleged that four ‘people that work for me’ were killed during the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which left 49 dead.
No connection has yet to be establish between any of the victims and Santos.
Said he was the founder of a charitable foundation
Santos said he founded a tax-exempt animal rights group, Friends of Pets United, which rescued more than 2,500 cats and dogs.
But no records relating to the group’s charitable status could be found by the IRS, nor could either the New York or New Jersey attorney general’s offices uncover documentation confirming Friends of Pets United had been registered as a charity.
Public records, however, show that Santos was previously married to a woman named Uadla Vieira, a native of Brazil, until 2019
In 2016, he claimed $2,250 was stolen in a mugging on his way to pay rent – but cops have no record of the incident
Santos claimed that in 2016 he was mugged on his way to pay his apartment rent in Queens.
In a sworn statement battling eviction, he said $2,250 was stolen. According to Gothamist, he wrote: ‘I have been mugged at approx 1:15 p.m. on 01/15/16 on Queens Boro Plaza, as I was on my way to pay the lawyer.
‘I have gone to the checks cash location located on 31st and 23rd Ave in Astoria to request a stop payment.
‘I am unable to provide a police report today as I was requested to go back Tuesday to pick it up.’
The NYPD, however, have no record of the incident, the outlet reported.
Santos eventually moved out of the apartment as a result of the case and paid the rest of what he owed in rent.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk