Since Monday, the newly elected George Santos has been at the center of a great political controversy in the United States. It is said that the Republican lied about his entire biography, even going so far as to invent grandparents who fled Nazism during World War II. A possible web of lies that, however, might not prevent him from taking a seat in Congress.
Who is it? Where does it come from? That makes? Questions about George Santos have been mounting since the US media ‘The New York Times’ made scandalous revelations about the profile of this newly elected Republican in the House of Representatives.
At the moment, the only certainties are that “this 34-year-old, the son of Brazilian immigrants, won a New York district that was considered Democratic in November 2022,” says the news site ‘Vox’. A victory that also allows George Santos to become the first openly gay conservative to enter Congress without having previously held elected office.
A 100% fake CV?
Otherwise, George Santos would be a blank slate. In fact, he “built his candidacy on the idea that he embodied the quintessential American dream,” when in fact he made it all up, says the ‘New York Times.’
The story he sold to New York voters was that of a young man who had risen from a disadvantaged background – a poor family, a public school education – to become a successful financier with millions of dollars.
The biography she wrote for her campaign website – now only available at web-archive.org– mentioned jobs at Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
George Santos also claims to have become “one of the youngest VPs in the (financial) industry.” This success story has allowed him to become rich and dedicate part of his fortune to various charities, such as supporting children suffering from epidermolysis bullosa -a very rare skin disorder- and animal welfare through his NGO ‘Friends for Pet’.
This Republican would thus be the ideal son-in-law of an America that still wants to believe in its “dream” of the self-made man. Except that the ‘New York Times’ contacted Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, who denied having any knowledge of a former employee named George Santos.
The public university Baruch College, from which George Santos is said to have graduated, has also found no record of a former student with that last name. There is also an inconsistency in the dates. George Santos claims to have graduated in Finance in 2010, while the ‘New York Times’ says that at that time he was in Brazil, where he was in trouble with the law over a shady plot of check fraud.
But the newly elected Republican is not only suspected of having falsified his professional resume. The animal rights organization that he claims to have led was never registered as a non-profit organization, contrary to what George Santos has claimed.
But ‘Friends for Pet’ existed, notes the ‘New York Times’. The newspaper found traces of a fundraising act that this association organized for a project to help abandoned animals… but the beneficiary of this action -who preferred to remain anonymous- assured the ‘New York Times’ that he had never seen the color of the money raised by ‘Friends for Pet’.
Since these revelations, George Santos has remained silent. Only his lawyer has spoken out, assuring that “it is not surprising that (his client) has enemies in ‘The New York Times’ who try to stain his good name with defamatory accusations.”
A financial mystery
The ‘New York Times’ is no longer alone in claiming that George Santos is a “serial liar.” Other media outlets have discovered that he also lied about his family history. Officially, his mother was born in Brazil to Jewish parents who fled persecution in the Ukraine and settled in Belgium before moving to South America during World War II.
This family history has allowed George Santos to present himself as a “Latino Jew,” a politically charged label in a city as cosmopolitan as New York.
However, there is no record of this exodus, says ‘The Forward’, an American Jewish newspaper that requested genealogical information from the Brazilian authorities. A new statement confirmed by ”, which specifies that George Santos’ grandparents were born in Brazil before World War II.
Finally, there is the mystery of your finances. George Santos has been on a roll in recent months, claiming that his latest job – as head of financial consultancy ‘Devolder Organization’ – has made him a billionaire, reports the ‘North Shore Leader’, a local Long Island newspaper. , NY.
He has loaned his campaign team more than $700,000 and claims to own several buildings valued at more than $10 million. Again, there is no record of him owning any house and as of 2020 he was still renting a small apartment. In addition, his company does not declare any customers and no one knows where the money that is later paid to his CEO comes from.
Republican support despite everything?
“Congress has had its share of scandals, but with George Santos it is a totally new case that shakes this institution,” says ‘Vox’. How can this Republican think he can get away with so much invention? “Part of the ‘genius’ of George Santos is that these ‘lies’ tend to be about quite mundane things. For example, who would come up with a degree from Baruch College instead of Harvard?” says Thomas Gift, director of the Center on American Politics from University College London.
It is also possible that he was comforted in his approach by the general political context of the United States. Following Donald Trump’s excesses in the White House, “it is no longer clear what is an unacceptable scandal in the United States,” says Richard Johnson, a specialist in American politics at Queen Mary University of London.
It may seem equally astonishing that such crude lies were able to slip from his unsuccessful opponent in the November 2022 election. George Santos was probably lucky: “The Democratic incumbent had decided not to run for re-election, and the party did not validate another candidate until very late, so he didn’t have much time to fully investigate his rival,” says Richard Johnson.
These lies could get you into legal trouble. False statements, especially financial ones, during the campaign can carry a heavy fine and up to five years in jail. But “it is very difficult to demonstrate fraud in this type of case,” says the ‘New York Times’.
The icing on the cake is that, despite the spate of revelations, “the Republican Party could support him for as long as possible,” says Jon Herbert, a political scientist at Keele University. In this sense, the George Santos affair is “a perfect example of the intensification in the United States of ‘negative political bias’, a concept according to which a party agrees to defend positions that may seem unacceptable because this prevents the opposition from winning points,” he says. Richard Johnson.
George Santos won a district that was far from Republican. If they no longer want him in Congress, a new vote will be held “and there is a good chance that the Republican Party will lose a seat when the balance of power is already very tense,” sums up Jon Herbert.
For now, George Santos can also count on the very opportunistic support of Kevin McCarthy, who is running for Speaker of the House of Representatives. In fact, he is the leader of a group of Republicans who are very divided on his candidacy for the presidency of the House of Representatives, say the experts interviewed by France 24. George Santos had the very good idea of announcing his support for the candidacy of Kevin McCarthy … the day the ‘New York Times’ published its revelations about the highly fictionalized biography of the “serial liar”.
*Adapted from its original French version
