The talented George Santos, a serial liar

BETTING À DAY

George Santos is America's most captivating politician. In a world where everyone has their little secrets, Santos stands apart. There are those who enhance, embellish what they have accomplished, then there are the liars who end up admitting their fault. Finally, there is George Santos.

The few acquaintances who do not speak ill of him remember that George Santos was ambitious. The 34-year-old New Yorker realized, in 2020, after failing to be elected to Congress, that he needed to make adjustments to his biography.

The reality of a modest life with his mother and sister, going from one apartment to another without being able to pay the rent, was not enough. He invented an impressive secondary education, then university, without having done any of this.

He created professional accomplishments in the most renowned firms on Wall Street, without anyone seeing him there. “Son of Brazilian immigrants” did not command enough respect, he built a family history made up of Stalinist persecutions and subterfuges to escape the Holocaust.

THE ELECTION OF A IMPOSTER

Thus twisting the facts, George Santos – whom many, for years, knew only under the name of Anthony Devolder – managed to get elected last November Republican representative for New York's 3rd District, a district covering Long Island and part of the borough of Queens.

He may also have benefited from dissatisfaction with Democrats, who are seen as indifferent to crime-inspired fears. In fact, even traditionally left-leaning voters allowed themselves to be cajoled by the charlatan, Jody Kass Finkel confessing to the Washington Post, for example, that “if he had been what he claimed to be – Jewish , educated, versed in finance and real estate – I could have lived with that.”

Because indeed, the excess of self-esteem made the young fabulist commit a series of real sins for New Yorkers. He introduced himself as a Jew, without being one. He falsely associated himself with the Holocaust. He conceived a non-existent link to the attacks on the World Trade Center. He even went so far as to scam the owner of a sick dog, a veteran into the bargain.

IF HE DIDN'T EXIST…< /p>

If Santos hoped to escape the checks, it failed. Newsrooms are now working to dissect his imposture, including bringing him closer to the central character of Steven Spielberg's film, Catch Me If You Can (Catch Me If You Can). >).

The real Frank William Abagnale was a forger and forger, a stunning trickster. George Santos is much more like an odious “Forrest Gump”, always, as if by chance, in the right place and at the right time, but without the simplicity and benevolence of the character played by Tom Hanks.

Santos embodies the model politician of this populist and anti-establishment era. Like so many candidates from the Tea Party and Donald Trump's MAGA movement, he appeared out of nowhere, escaped normal scrutiny and ran a campaign steeped in demagoguery. In his case, however, he simply overdid it.

Action figures of George Santos, with and without a Pinnochio nose, will soon go on sale at the National Bobblehead Hall Of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee.

 

FALSE, FALSE AND ARCHIVEL!

1) His grandparents – Ukrainian Jews – fled Stalinist and then Nazi persecution and escaped the Holocaust.

FALSE

< p>There is no Jewish or Ukrainian reference in his genealogy. Different documents prove that his maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, where the name Santos is common among Catholic families.

2) His mother died of cancer in 2016 as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

FALSE

No document proves that his mother was affected by the toxic dust caused by the attacks. There is no indication that she was at the World Trade Center on that fateful September 11. The only job NBC News has found for her is as an employee of an importer who went bankrupt in 1994.

3) Having done most of his secondary education at Horace Mann School in the Bronx district of New York, George Santos admits having had to leave the prestigious institution in 2008 – before the end of his last year – because of the financial difficulties that the Great Depression imposed on his parents.

FALSE

He never attended Horace Mann School and later only earned a vague high school equivalency diploma.

4) Santos claims to have received a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College, a renowned New York university in 2010, where he finished among the top 1% of his class.

TRIPLY FALSE

First, he would have managed to complete four years of university studies in two years, if we accept his lie that he left Horace Mann High School in 2008.

Either way, Baruch College doesn't have a 2010 entry to its name, nor does the college volleyball team that George Santos said he was a “star” on.

He also claims to have earned an MBA in international business from New York University, but NYU has been unable to find his name anywhere among its graduates.

5) He achieved phenomenal success working on Wall Street with Citigroup and then Goldman Sachs.

FALSE AND FALSE

The Division of Citigroup where he claims to have worked had been dissolved five years before his arrival. At Goldman Sachs, his resume says he doubled his unit's revenue — from $300 million to $600 million — in seven months. Nor does Citigroup or Goldman Sachs have any trace of his presence there.

6)He “lost four employees” in the gay bar Pulse shooting in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016, where 49 people were killed.

FALSE  

The New York Times could not associate any of the victims with the companies Santos says he worked for.

7) He founded an organization, Friends of Pets United, which rescued 2,500 dogs and cats between 2013 and 2018.

FALSE 

The activities of the organization are nowhere to be found on social media. The IRS, the federal tax agency, has no record of its existence and no such nonprofit has been registered in New York or New Jersey where George Santos claims to have been active. /p>

 

A FEW MORE IMPLIABILITIES…

• He campaigned as an openly gay Republican, although he was married to a woman from 2012 to 2019.
• He spoke of a long background in real estate, but his biography in his online campaign site alleges that he and his family managed a portfolio of thirteen properties. In reality, he and his mother and his sister rather led a modest life in various lodgings from which they were repeatedly expelled, unable to pay their rent.
• Between 2005 and 2008, he said he performed as a “drag queen” in Rio de Janeiro. After initially denying the story, he eventually clarified, “I had fun at a festival. Take me to court to have a life!”

AN ESSENTIAL MYTHOMANE

What is can -being even more remarkable than all the inventions and reinventions of George Santos is that he still sits in the United States House of Representatives. 

Since the revelations about the fabrications of the chief smokerin Congress, Kevin McCarthy, the “Speaker of the House”, chained the contortions so as not to have to drive him out of the Republican delegation.

With a majority of barely four seats in the House, McCarthy cannot afford to squander the slightest vote: a few absences, a sick elected official and it is the whole furious agenda of the Republicans with regard to the Biden administration which will find itself emasculated.

< strong>“FOLLOW THE MONEY”

Ultimately, it is the financing of his election campaign that risks sinking George Santos. 

In his first attempt to run for Congress in 2020, he declared a salary of $55,000 as vice president of a business development company.

As with everything with him, he must be wary. In a parallel trial, the company's founder swore under oath that Santos was just a “freelancer” who sold event sponsorships and worked on commission.

That said , as noted by the North Shore Leader, the local publication behind this tidal wave of disclosures, his holdings have made an “unexplainable jump” from zero to eleven million dollars in two years.

Santos claims he in 2020 managed a billion and a half dollar investment fund at Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm. It then boasted of “record returns” of 12 to 26%.

A year later, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission – the US Securities and Exchange Authority – accused Harbor City of being a “ Ponzi scheme,” having stolen $17 million from investors.

Congress is now being investigated as to the origin of the $700,000 he lent to his campaign last year. “I only embellished my CV; nothing criminal!” Not so sure, George… Or is it Anthony instead? We get lost in his lies.