A New York politician who built his 2022 campaign on false claims about his biography is set to take his seat next week in Congress.
And for the first time since those claims were spotlighted last week by the New York Times, Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) is explaining himself. In interviews with City & State New York, WABC radio and the New York Post, Santos cops to what he labeled “résumé embellishment” while saying that he’s not a criminal and intends to serve.
But his explanations don’t answer all the questions raised by the Times and in other reporting, and they spur some additional questions. Below is a rundown of his past claims and his explanations for them, along with the unresolved and most problematic questions for him going forward.
Santos will in all likelihood be seated Jan. 3, because the Supreme Court has set out limited criteria for declining to seat someone. But he could face ethics and other investigations, and the House could technically expel him if two-thirds of members agree to do so. That prospect seems unlikely, given that Republicans will control the chamber with a narrow majority and the district Santos will represent leans blue.
What he claimed: In early 2021, he claimed he and his family owned 13 rental properties. “We worked hard to acquire these assets,” he said, and the following day he complained about how his “tenants” were taking advantage of state law.
Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property? My family and I nearing a 1 year anniversary of not receiving rent on 13 properties!!! The state is collecting their tax, yet we get 0 help from the government. We worked hard to acquire these assets…
— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) February 9, 2021
But the New York Times reported, “Property records databases in New York City and Nassau County did not show any documents or deeds associated with him, immediate family members or the Devolder Organization.”
What he says now: “George Santos does not own any properties,” he told the New York Post. In fact, he said he currently resides outside the district that elected him, at his sister’s home, and is looking to purchase his own home.
Parse: Despite Santos’s claim that he doesn’t own any properties, the financial disclosure that he filed with the House in September claimed that he did own an “apartment in Rio de Janeiro” valued at between $500,001 and $1 million. (The asset did not appear on the same form he filed for his 2020 campaign, nor did millions of other dollars of assets he would later claim, as we’ll get to.)
What he claimed: His campaign website said that he “went on to attend Baruch College and in 2010 graduated with a bachelor’s in economics and finance.” And as recently as Monday, his bio on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s website claimed said that he had attended Baruch and New York University, obtaining “degrees” in those same fields. (That claim no longer appears on the website and doesn’t appear to be repeated elsewhere.)
What he says now: “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé.”
Parse: What remains unclear is whether Santos ever attended Baruch College. (Officials there told the Times that they could find no record of anyone with his name or date of birth graduating in 2010.) The claim that he graduated is a lie regardless — and a blatant one given that he cited a specific degree. But if he never attended, it’s certainly far more than an embellishment.
What he claimed: His campaign website said he “began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.” It adds that he “was then offered an exciting opportunity with Goldman Sachs but what he thought would be the pinnacle of his career was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated.” The Times reported that neither firm had a record of Santos working there.
What he says now: He said he “never worked directly” for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs but made “capital introductions” involving the big Wall Street firms while working at LinkBridge Investors, which had “limited partnerships” with them.
Parse: Santos suggests this is a matter of careless phrasing. He said that “the way it’s stated on the résumé, doing work for — I have worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in.’” But that’s difficult to square with his campaign website, which suggested that his time at LinkBridge came after he decided Goldman Sachs wasn’t for him.
What he claimed: Santos claimed he “lost four employees” in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
What he says now: He says that these people didn’t actually work for him at the time but that they were in the process of being hired. “We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando,” he told the Times.
Parse: As the Times notes, Santos doesn’t say what company he was referring to. And this claim will surely be worth delving into given that it might involve exploiting a tragedy for personal gain. A mother of one of the Pulse victims who is close to the other families involved told a Florida news outlet that no company employed more than two of the victims. Santos’s claim is now that his company happened to be hiring four of them and that all four happened to be in the midst of the hiring process.
What he claimed: Despite claiming no assets or earned income on his 2020 financial disclosure, he lent his 2022 campaign and political action committee at least $600,000. His 2022 form featured millions’ worth of assets, with more than $1 million in income coming from one of them: the Devolder Organization. His campaign website once said that the company managed $80 million in assets.
What he says now: Of the loan to his campaign, he said, in a radio interview, “That is the money of — that I’ve paid myself through my company, Devolder Organization.”
Parse: As The Washington Post reported Monday, the question of where this money came from might be the biggest one — and perhaps the most troubling for Santos, given the legal implications, including for knowingly filing false financial disclosures. The Devolder Organization was organized in May 2021, according to documents filed with the Florida secretary of state, and Santos reported an annual salary of $750,000 in 2021 and 2022, so $600,000 to his campaign would have been a large chunk of that money. In addition, The Post reported that the financial data company Dun & Bradstreet estimated that, based on its data modeling, Devolder as of July 2022 had revenue of only $43,688.
What was reported: The New York Times reported last week that court records in Brazil show that Santos faced criminal charges in 2008 for check fraud and that he confessed to the crime. The records state that he stole the checkbook of a man under the care of his mother when he was 19 but that officials could not locate him, so the case remains unresolved.
What he says now: “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” he told the New York Post. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”
Parse: Santos’s explanation appears to lean on the fact that he was never officially convicted, but it doesn’t address whether he was charged or whether he confessed, as court records state. And those records suggest the reason he wasn’t convicted was that he didn’t appear in court.
What he claimed: The first line of his campaign bio stated that “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.” He has also claimed that they “survived the Holocaust” and changed their surname to survive. But the Forward and Jewish Insider called that into question, noting that it appears his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil. CNN added that Santos’s claims are “contradicted by sources … including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogists.”
What he says now: “I never claimed to be Jewish,” he said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” He also said he was “clearly Catholic” and said of his grandparents being born in Brazil, “To the best of my knowledge, to the best of my understanding, no, they were not.” He said his grandmother told him stories about having converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
Parse: This is also a big one, given it would again involve exploiting tragedy — the Holocaust — for personal gain. But despite Santos saying that he never claimed to be Jewish, he tweeted Nov. 3, “It was an honor to address fellow members of the Jewish community in #NY03.” And Jewish Insider reports that he described himself last month as a nonobservant Jew.