George Santos

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      Republican fabulist George Santos compares himself to Rosa Parks

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      George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds, stoked outrage by comparing himself to the great civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks.“Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back, and neither am I gonna sit in the back,” Santos told Mike Crispi Unafraid, a rightwing podcast.Santos also said he will run for re-election in his New York seat, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens.A prospective opponent, the Democratic former state senator Anna M Kaplan, said: “George Santos is an absolute disgrace who continues to embarrass New Yorkers.”Now honoured by a statue in the US Capitol, Parks was a seamstress and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People secretary who carved her place in history when on a bus in Alabama in 1955 she refused to move to make way for a white passenger and was arrested and jailed.According to the Architect of the Capitol, Parks “remained an icon of the civil rights movement to the end of her life. In 1999, the United States Congress honored her with a Congressional Gold Medal. Following her death on 24 October 2005, she was accorded the rare tribute of having her remains lie in honor in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in recognition of her contribution to advancing civil and human rights.”The Parks statue is the first full-length representation of an African American person in the US Capitol. Made of bronze and granite, it is close to 9ft tall and, according to its official description, “suggests inner strength, dignity, resolve and determination, all characteristic of her long-time commitment to working for civil rights”.Santos, 34, compared himself to Parks while sitting in what appeared to be a parked car, wearing a powder blue zip-up hoodie.Since being elected last year, he has consistently attracted controversy over reports of behavior ranging from the bizarre to the picaresque and allegedly criminal. Charged in New York, his bail was guaranteed by relatives. No trial date has been set.Republican House leaders, governing with a small majority, have not seriously moved against him. A motion to expel, and make Santos only the sixth House member ever ejected, failed after Republicans refused to back it.Speaking to Crispi, a former Republican congressional candidate in New Jersey, Santos said of critics in his own party: “They come for me, I go right back for them … So, you know, it’s not gonna stay that way any more. I’m gonna call them out. You want to call me a liar? I’ll call you a sellout.”In February, at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Santos was confronted by Mitt Romney, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee.Romney called Santos a “sick puppy”. Among Santos’s many controversies is a dropped charge of theft in Pennsylvania in 2017, over a purchase of puppies.Santos told Crispi: “The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin and tells me, a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back. Well, guess what, Rosa Parks but didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back.“That’s just the reality of our work. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him.” More

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      George Santos: father and aunt revealed to have guaranteed $500,000 bail

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      The two people who guaranteed George Santos’s $500,000 bail after the Republican congressman was charged with 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds have been revealed to be his father and an aunt.The revelation that Gercino dos Santos Jr and Elma Preven were behind Santos’s bail solves a running mystery that fascinated Washington-watchers and also an American public obsessed with the travails of a politician famous for playing fast and loose with the truth.Santos tried to stop his guarantors being named, arguing disclosure could threaten their safety amid a “media frenzy” and “hateful attacks”.Santos’s lawyer said that his client would rather go to jail himself than have his guarantors unmasked. But Santos seemed to have backed off that wish, by not asking to change the conditions of his bail after a federal judge in New York dismissed his appeal to keep the names sealed.Media organisations and the House ethics committee asked that the names be revealed.Santos, 34, won election in New York last year, in a district covering parts of Long Island and Queens. His résumé has been shown to be largely made-up and past behavior – sometimes allegedly criminal, other times bizarrely picaresque – widely reported.Santos has admitted to embellishing his résumé but denies wrongdoing. In court in May, he pleaded not guilty to all charges. If found guilty, he could face up to 20 years in prison.He has been dogged by controversy and calls to resign. House Republicans, however, deflected a motion to censure Santos while party leaders have chosen not to move against him.In January, Santos backed Kevin McCarthy of California through 15 votes for speaker, in the face of a rightwing rebellion. McCarthy must govern with an extremely narrow majority. Santos has said he intends to run for re-election next year. He is next due in court on 30 June.Neither Santos nor his lawyers immediately commented on the identification of his guarantors.In Washington on Wednesday, Santos was among Republicans who voted to censure Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who led impeachment efforts against Donald Trump.The motion passed. On the House floor, Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, told Republicans: “One of my colleagues says, ‘We will hold members accountable.’ You are the party of George Santos. Who are you holding accountable?“The guy is an alleged and acknowledged liar and indicted, and you protect him every day. Don’t lecture us with your projection and your defense of Donald Trump. It’s pathetic, and it’s beneath you and it’s beneath this body.” More

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      George Santos mystery bail guarantors to be revealed on Thursday

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      The two people who guaranteed bail for George Santos will have their names publicly revealed, a federal judge ruled, rejecting the indicted Republican congressman’s claim that the disclosure could threaten the guarantors’ safety.Joanna Seybert, a US district judge in Central Islip, New York, said the names would be made public on Thursday at 12pm ET.Seybert said Santos could in the meantime try to modify the terms of his release if his guarantors, who he has suggested are family members, withdraw their $500,000 guarantee.Santos, 34, has expressed a willingness to go to jail rather than release the names.The first-term congressman has pleaded not guilty to a 13-count indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Following his election, Santos drew huge criticism, including bipartisan calls that he resign, after reports that he had lied about much of his personal and professional background.Amid numerous stories detailing a picaresque political rise, Santos has denied wrongdoing but admitted to fabricating large parts of his résumé.Republican leaders in the House have not pushed Santos to quit. As he took his seat in Congress in January, he supported Kevin McCarthy of California through 15 votes for the position of speaker. McCarthy must rely on a narrow majority, prey to the far right of the party.Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the order to reveal the identities of the guarantors.Santos appealed a 6 June ruling by a federal magistrate judge to identify the guarantors.At least 11 media organizations sought the names, citing public interest. According to a court filing, the House ethics committee also wants the names, to determine whether Santos violated rules on gifts.Murray has said Santos and his staff have been subjected to a “media frenzy and hateful attacks” since the congressman’s indictment became public on 9 May, and it was “reasonable” to believe his bail guarantors might face the same treatment. More

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      George Santos ordered to reveal identities of mystery bond guarantors

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      The Republican congressman and serial fabulist George Santos has until Friday to appeal an order to reveal the identities of three people who guaranteed his $500,000 bond on fraud charges, a New York judge said on Tuesday.A lawyer for Santos had said identification of the guarantors would imperil their “health, safety and wellbeing”, and claimed the New York congressman would rather go to prison than reveal the names.“My client would rather surrender to pre-trial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come,” the lawyer, Joseph Murray, wrote to the judge on Monday.At his arraignment in Long Island last month, Santos, 34, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements.After entering his plea, Santos told reporters: “It’s a witch-hunt. I’m going to fight my battle, I’m going to fight the witch-hunt, I’m going to take care of clearing my name.”The New York Times sought the identification of Santos’s bail guarantors, arguing they should be identified as they had a chance to exert political influence over a congressman. Other news outlets joined the Times in its effort.On Tuesday, Santos did not immediately comment.Last month, House Republicans deflected a Democratic motion to expel Santos from Congress, referring his case to the ethics committee.Only five members of Congress have ever been expelled from the House: three for fighting against the Union in the civil war and two over convictions for fraud.Santos has admitted “embellishing” a résumé that was ripped apart after he won his seat in Congress last November, even his real name being brought into question.He has denied accusations of wrongdoing including alleged schemes involving stolen cheques and puppies and allegations of sexual harassment from a former aide.After winning a New York district previously held by a Democrat, Santos became a key figure in Republicans’ slim House majority. In January, he backed the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, through 15 rounds of voting to secure the position.Santos has repeatedly said he will not resign, and is running for re-election next year. More

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      George Santos: aide who alleged sexual harassment details payments to staffer

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      A man who was briefly an aide to the New York congressman and fabulist George Santos said he got his job after sending payments to a top deputy of the scandal-embroiled Republican.Derek Myers, 31, told House ethics committee staff on Wednesday that in January, while he was trying to get a job in Santos’s Washington office, he sent at least seven $150 payments to Vish Burra, its director of operations.Myers shared details including receipts and text messages with the Associated Press. His account raises questions about potential ethical improprieties.Myers said he began sending the money unsolicited because he believed Burra, a rightwing operative, was not getting paid and could not afford food. Myers said he also hoped the payments might help secure a job.“Burra was a powerful person,” Myers said. “I wanted him to advocate on my behalf.”Burra, who helped escort Santos away from journalists after his arraignment in federal court in New York last month, declined to comment.House staffers questioned Myers as part of an investigation of workplace sexual harassment allegations Myers made after being dismissed by Santos in February.A former journalist, Myers became a legislative assistant but lasted less than a week. Santos told Myers he was concerned by a background check that showed Myers had been charged with wiretapping in Ohio after publishing a recording of a trial.In a February letter to the House ethics committee, Myers said he was ousted after he spurned Santos’s sexual advances, alleging the congressman ran his hand along his inner leg and touched his groin. Santos denied the allegation, calling it “comical”.The ethics committee is investigating several allegations of improper behavior by Santos, who has admitted to fabricating much of his biography and faces federal charges including fraud and money laundering.Last month, Republicans sidestepped a vote to expel Santos, referring the matter to the ethics committee. The committee has not divulged who it is interviewing or when a decision might be reached.On Wednesday, staffers spent two hours questioning Myers about his sexual harassment allegation, his relationship with Burra and whether he witnessed illegal behavior. He described finding Burra online, then pushing for a job.Myers provided documentation, including emails and texts and receipts showing Venmo payments to Burra. Myers said Burra did not ask for money but once requested he “send more pizza”, which he took to be a reference to a pizza emoji used in Venmo subject lines.Investigators asked Myers about a text exchange after he was offered the job.Myers asked: “Did you get payroll yet.”“No. You didn’t have to do that man,” Burra replied, adding: “I’m gonna pay you back for sure.”Myers acknowledged that he secretly recorded at least one conversation with Santos and shared it with a journalist. He also said he went to the FBI, with the intention of being an informant. He decided to speak out about alleged harassment, he said, after he was forced to leave the job. More

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      House Republicans sidestep effort to expel George Santos from Congress

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      Republicans successfully sidestepped an effort to force them into a vote to expel George Santos, the New York representative, from Congress, which could have narrowed their already slim four-seat majority.The House voted along party lines, 221-204, to refer a resolution to expel the congressman to the House ethics committee, with Santos himself joining his Republican colleagues in voting to do so.The freshman congressman has been charged with embezzling money from his campaign, falsely receiving unemployment funds and lying to Congress about his finances. He has denied the charges and has pleaded not guilty.Robert Garcia, a California Democratic representative, introduced a resolution in February to expel Santos, something the House has only done twice in recent decades. He sought to force a vote on that resolution under a process that left three options for Republicans: a vote on the resolution, a move to table or a referral to committee.Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, chose the third option, much to the chagrin of Democrats who described it as a “complete copout”. They noted that the ethics panel is already investigating Santos and that it was time for Republican House members who have called for Santos to resign to back their words with action.“It is simply an effort for the Republicans to avoid having to take an up-or-down vote on whether or not George Santos belongs here,” said Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat.Democrats appealed to Republican lawmakers from New York for support. Many have been highly critical of Santos, and face the prospect of Democrats trying to link them to Santos in next year’s general election.“I say to you, if you vote for this motion to refer it to the ethics committee, you are complicit in George Santos’ fraud and you are voting to make sure that he continues to be a member of Congress,” Goldman said.Anthony D’Esposito, a New York Republican, made the motion to refer the expulsion resolution to the ethics panel. He said he was personally in favor of Santos being expelled, but added that “regrettably”, there were not enough votes to meet the two-thirds threshold necessary.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I firmly believe this is the quickest way of ridding the House of Representatives of this scourge on government,” D’Esposito said.Republican leaders have said Santos deserves to have his day in court before Congress weighs in. The position Republican leaders have staked out generally follows the precedent that Congress has set in similar criminal cases over the years. The House has expelled just two members in recent decades, and both votes occurred after the lawmaker had been convicted on federal charges.The Department of Justice often asks the ethics panel to pause its investigations when a member of Congress has been indicted, but there has been no announcement of that kind from the committee regarding Santos. More

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      George Santos: Democrats move to expel indicted Republican from Congress

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      Democrats moved on Tuesday to expel George Santos from Congress.The New York Republican won election in November last year but his résumé has been shown to be largely made up and his campaign finances and past behaviour, some allegedly criminal, have been scrutinised in tremendous detail.Last week, federal prosecutors indicted Santos on multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress. Appearing in court on Long Island, he pleaded not guilty and claimed to be the victim of a political witch hunt.Now, House Democrats have triggered a political manoeuvre designed to force Republicans to either break with Santos or publicly vote to defend him.To succeed, a privileged resolution introduced by Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, must attract two-thirds support in the House. The resolution could come to a vote within two days.On Tuesday, Garcia told reporters: “The Republicans in the House are actually going to have to go on record and make a decision about if they’re actually going to stand for truth and accountability, or if they’re going to stand with someone that’s clearly a liar.”Some Republicans have said Santos should quit but as yet party leaders have not broken with him, saying he has a right to seek acquittal while representing his district.Republicans control the House by just five seats – and Democrats would be favoured to win Santos’s seat should it fall vacant. In January, amid a far-right rebellion, Santos supported Kevin McCarthy through 15 votes for speaker.Garcia also said Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader, was “involved” in the process.McCarthy told reporters he would talk to Jeffries about referring the resolution to the House ethics committee, which he hoped would “move rapidly” despite rarely doing so or imposing heavy punishments.Only five members of the House have ever been expelled. Three were kicked out for fighting for the Confederacy in the civil war. Two were expelled after being convicted of crimes.The last, James Traficant of Ohio, was expelled in 2002. Like Santos, Traficant cut a somewhat picaresque path through the halls of power.Reporting his death in 2014, the New York Times said Traficant was known for his “colorful personality and wardrobe, his legislative theatrics and his wild mop of hair.“So it was something of a surprise when the hair turned out to be fake, a fact that was made clear when he had to remove his toupée during booking after his arrest on bribery and racketeering charges.”Traficant did not let his expulsion stop him running for re-election, as an independent and from federal custody in Pennsylvania. Though unsuccessful, he received more than 28,000 votes.Santos has announced a run for re-election. McCarthy has said he does not support such a move.On Tuesday, Garcia told MSNBC McCarthy had “lost all control of his caucus. He needs Santos for key votes on the on the deficit, on the budget, and so … he’s been working with literally a liar and a huge fraudster in the Congress.“So now McCarthy’s going to actually have to make a choice, if he will support George Santos … or if he’s actually going to listen to the American people.“And so we’re gonna continue to push this as best possible. We think it’s absolutely the right approach. And we’ve given plenty of time to George Santos to resign. We’ve been calling for his resignation for months and for months. It’s time for him to do the right thing.” More

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      George Santos, liar and fantasist, fits the Republican party just fine | Moira Donegan

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      When news broke on Tuesday afternoon that the justice department was indicting George Santos – the disgraced Republican Long Island congressman whose election to the House of Representatives in 2022 was enabled by a series of lies about his background and elaborate, inventive frauds – it was at first hard to think of just what he was being indicted for. George Santos, after all, is alleged to have been so prolifically criminal in his 34 years that one imagines law enforcement would have a hard time narrowing things down.Would Santos be charged over the fake pet charity he seems to have invented, collecting money for things like surgery for the beloved dog of a veteran, which was never turned over to the animal’s owner? Or would he face charges stemming from his lies about his professional background, like the claim he made during his most recent congressional campaign, wholly false, that he used to work for Goldman Sachs, or his bizarre story, also a fabrication, about having been a college volleyball star?Would it be something like the check fraud he allegedly committed in Brazil as a teenager, or like the bad check he supposedly wrote to, of all people, a set of Amish dog breeders in Pennsylvania?What George Santos has been indicted for is not one of his funnier or more colorful scandals, but something extremely typical in Washington: lying about money. On Wednesday, prosecutors at a federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, charged Santos with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, two counts of making false statements to the House of Representatives, and one count of theft of public funds. He pleaded not guilty, and was released on a half-million dollar bond.The indictment against Santos is sprawling and complicated, reflecting the expansiveness of the congressman’s alleged frauds, but the allegations that federal prosecutors make fall essentially into three columns: first, they charge that Santos set up a fraudulent LLC, where he directed donors to give money that he claimed would be spent on his political campaign. Instead, he used the funds to make car payments, pay off his debts, and notably, to buy expensive clothes.Second, the Department of Justice charges that Santos defrauded the government when he applied for and received special Covid unemployment benefits in New York, despite drawing a salary of approximately $120,000 from an investment firm in Florida. (That firm, Harbor City Capital, is itself alleged to be a “classic Ponzi scheme”.)And third, the indictment claims that Santos falsified financial disclosure forms related to his congressional seat, falsely certifying to Congress that he drew a $750,000 salary and between $1m and $5m in dividends, and had between $100,000 and $250,000 in a checking account and between $1m and $5m in savings. It was often remarked upon with wonder, and not a small amount of alarm, that Santos, who had not long before his election to Congress struggled to pay rent and faced eviction, was suddenly in possession of so much income and such apparent good luck. How, exactly, had Santos come across all that money? Now, a federal indictment alleges that he simply didn’t: he made it up, like so many college volleyball championships.Maybe it’s for the best that Santos is being charged, ultimately, for the most typically white-collar of his crimes: it will help dispel the myth that he is not a typical Republican. Since the revelation of Santos’s seemingly bottomless dishonesty and malfeasance, a number of House Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the congressman. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina congresswoman trying to style herself as a moderate, called for his resignation; so did Max Milner, of Ohio, over Santos’s false claims of Jewish heritage and having lost relatives in the Holocaust. Reportedly, Senator Mitt Romney encountered Santos at the State of the Union address and told him, with his signature air of the put-upon patrician: “You don’t belong here.”But doesn’t George Santos belong in the modern Republican party? After all, how different, really, is Santos’s alleged scheme to defraud donors for his own enrichment from Donald Trump’s insistence, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, that his supports should donate to him to fight the “election fraud” that didn’t exist? How different is Santos’s use of his congressional campaign to raise funds for fancy clothes from Clarence Thomas’s use of his seat on the supreme court to get fancy vacations on Harlan Crow’s dime? How different is George Santos’s alleged falsification of his financial records to Congress from the conspicuous omissions on the financial disclosure forms required of justices of the supreme court?Even where the technicalities of the malfeasance are different, the Republican spirit is the same, in everyone from George Santos to Clarence Thomas to Donald Trump: the use of public office for personal enrichment, the contempt for the public interest, the indignant declarations that any efforts to hold them accountable are partisan, illegitimate and conducted in bad faith. Outside the federal courthouse on Wednesday, George Santos channeled Trump, calling the indictment against him a “witch-hunt”. I’d say he fits in with the Republican party just fine.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More