George Santos, the freshman representative for New York’s third congressional district, has recently had multiple lies exposed to the public. The most alarming of these revelations regarded his congressional resume, which contained a shocking amount of lies, including where he attended school and how he made his alleged wealth. Although Santos has only been in the House for a month, an overwhelming 78 percent of the voters in his district want Santos to resign. Here’s how the disgraced congressman has deceived the public so far.

Consistent Dishonesty: 

On his resume, Santos had many impressive accomplishments including attending a prestigious prep school, working for noteworthy banking companies, and making a sizable income in the past couple of years. However, after further investigation, it was found that he completely fabricated these claims. 

A representative from Horace Mann, the prep school Santos claimed to have attended for years but never graduated from, told The New York Times that the school has no record of him ever enrolling in the program. Similarly, Santos also claimed he holds degrees from both Baruch College and New York University. Not only did he claim that he graduated from these schools at the top of his class with a 3.89 GPA, but he also stated that he was the Captain and star of the Baruch Men’s Volleyball team. According to both Baruch and NYU, they also have no record of his enrollment or involvement in athletics. Santos later admitted to The New York Post that he has a high school diploma equivalent, but has never graduated from college. 

Santos also proudly stated on his resume that he was a “Proactive Business Development Professional”, to have worked for banking companies Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The first page of his resume shows that he worked at Goldman Sachs as a project manager for eight months, in which he boasts that he doubled the company’s revenue growth by hundreds of millions of dollars by simply developing a “new sales strategy”. Once again, contrary to Santos’ claims, each company revealed that they had no record of Santos’ employment. Santos confessed to The New York Post that the lies came about due to “a poor choice of words”, instead clarifying that he worked with the companies during his time at another investment company and did not directly work for either company. The New York Rep. He did, however, work at Harbor City, which was a firm shutdown after being revealed to be a Ponzi scheme. Harbor City was reportedly stealing $17,000,000 from their investors, as well as creating and circulating fraudulent documents.

This is not the first time Santos has stolen money from others who are unaware of it. Santos claimed he ran a charity called “Friends of Pets United” under the name Anthony Devolder. However, IRS has no record of a charity under this name ever existing. Lying to the IRS was not the end of the damage caused by “Friends of Pets United” because, in May of 2016, the charity was recommended to Richard Osthoff, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran, who needed $3,000 to get his beloved service dog, Sapphire, a life-saving tumor removal. Santos personally got involved, even going as far as to create a GoFundMe for Osthoff and raising the $3,000 so desperately needed, before taking the money and disappearing. In a Facebook update post from November 2016, Osthoff said “… I’m sorry to say that we were scammed by Anthony Devolder and Friends of Pets United FOPU Through a series of bad veterinary contacts, and subterfuge regarding payment.” Osthoff was never able to get in contact with Santos after he disappeared, and his service dog passed not soon after in January of 2017. 

Questionable Personal Claims

Since the exposure of the professional lies, Santos’ details regarding himself and his personal life have come under scrutiny. Under his biography page on his campaign website, Santos briefly described his family history, saying that he is of Jewish-Ukrainian descent and his grandparents survived the Holocaust by fleeing Ukraine. However, genealogists have found that he and his family have “no sign of Jewish and/or Ukrainian heritage” and that his grandparents are Brazilian. Santos himself admitted this to be a lie to The New York Post in a later interview, going on to say that he is not Jewish, but he does, however, identify as “Jew-ish”. 

His campaign website was found to hold more fabrications, including claims about ties to 9/11. When Santos discussed the impact his mother, Fatima Devoulder had on him he states that she had been present for 9/11, claiming that she was “in the South Tower” when the tragedy unfolded but was lucky enough to escape the situation. This statement was debunked by immigration records, as his mother applied for a green card in 2003 and told officers that she had not been in the U.S. since 1999. Many people, including 9/11 victims’ families, were outraged that Santos would publicly lie about having ties to a national tragedy that took the lives of many and changed the way the U.S. operated. 9/11 is not the only tragedy Santos has claimed to have connections to, as he has previously said that he “lost four employees” to the devastating Pulse nightclub shooting that occurred in 2016, but it has been proved that none of the 49 victims ever worked for any company that Santos has worked for. 

Santos’ domestic life has also been called into question, as the lavish life that he claimed to have is seemingly fake. According to him, his family owns a $1,000,000 home in Brazil, as well as 13 separate real estate properties, and he lives in Long Island, New York with his husband and their four dogs. Contrary to his claims, there is no record of him ever being married to a man. There is, however, a record of him being married to a woman, whom he reportedly divorced just a few weeks before he launched his 2020 congressional campaign. Santos once again eventually admitted that he currently lives with his sister in Queens, New York, where the two of them are allegedly facing eviction due to $40,000 in unpaid rent. 

On January 12th, 2023, Brazilian drag performer Eula Rochards posted a photo of a newspaper clipping from 2008. The image depicted her next to another queen, whom she alleged to be Santos, or ‘Kltara Revache’ while performing at a Rio de Janeiro parade. In an interview with CNN, Rochards said that it was Santos in the pictures she provided, continuing to say that she knew Santos because he was big in the LGBTQ community in that area. She said she recognized the representative in a recent news report she saw, and dug up old pictures to compare. She also said she was shocked to learn that Santos was a Republican, going on to say “I don’t know him now, I only knew him then”. She then said she wishes Santos would own up to his past. “It’s marvelous work [being a queen]. He can’t discriminate against what he did, and if he does he is discriminating against me.” Santos has adamantly denied these claims, saying in a tweet from January 19th, 2023 that “The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag queen or “performed” as a drag queen is categorically false.”

What’s Happening Now?

Most recently, Santos’ longtime campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, resigned. This resignation has brought questions regarding how he financed his campaign to the forefront. Following this, people are waiting to see whether Marks will make a comment on Santos’ finances or if she will stay silent. Wednesday, January 25th, while reporting to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Santos said that his campaign has hired a new treasurer, Thomas Datwyler. The paperwork had been signed under Datwyler’s name. Santos did offer the position to Datwler, however, two days previously, On Monday, January 23rd, Datwyler and his team informed the Santos campaign that he would not be serving as the team’s treasurer. Datwyler’s lawyers have told multiple different news outlets that he does not work for the campaign and has had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Datwyler says that the reports were filed under his name without his consent. 

Santos received a warning letter from the FEC stating that he is potentially facing federal felony charges for the forgery he has had on his filings. Many people are calling for his arrest to make an example and set a precedent for future politicians.