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      ‘George Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump’ – biographer Mark Chiusano

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      “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” So says Matt Damon in the title role of The Talented Mr Ripley, the Oscar-winning film from 1999. The line would make a fitting political epitaph for George Santos, the New York Republican facing imminent expulsion from Congress after a scathing House ethics committee report cited “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking.Santos, 35, also faces federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud, in a 23-count indictment in his home state. If convicted, he is likely to spend years in prison.“This story is a tragedy,” says Mark Chiusano, author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, a book published this week. “He is someone who is clearly very ambitious and wants to live a kind of wealthy life, a life of fame and notoriety, and he is trying to attain essentially a version of the American dream, which so many people have sought over the years.“The sad thing is that he realises pretty early on that he’s not going to get there, he’s not going to be able to make a ton of money on Wall Street, he’s not going to be as famous as The Real Housewives, for example. Because of the difficulty and grittiness of the usual road to the American dream, he decides to go a different route.“He starts making everything up, rather than [be like] members of his family who just kept their heads down and worked hard and tried to build a life. He tries to take this shortcut and the shortcut eventually catches up with him and it’s a real tragedy. He has no one to blame but himself but he is in a very difficult place now.”Chiusano, 33, covered Santos at Newsday, a newspaper serving Long Island. He first spoke to Santos by phone in 2019, when he was announcing a run for Congress. When Chiusano asked where the launch would happen, he was surprised to hear Santos say right now – even though the candidate was in Florida.The author recalls: “That was the first strangeness of him and then I kept writing about other strange things he was doing. It was unclear where he lived, whether he even really lived in the district, his QAnon slogan promoting – all sorts of strange things for the next two cycles.”Like Ripley, Chiusano discovered that Santos can be charming. “One of the things that almost everyone I talked to who knew him said is he’s very charismatic and it’s true. He has a big personality. He’s a tall man. He makes friends easily. He’s a fun guy to hang out with.“I got a little bit of that sense in our phone calls but the flip side is that he can turn nasty and cutting very quickly, which he certainly did with his financial victims and to a lesser extent with me, just starting to get more critical and angry, and I’m sure there’s more of that to come once the book comes out.”Santos did not cooperate for the book.‘This hustling, grifting lifestyle’In 2020, up against an incumbent, Santos lost the election by more than 12 points. But two years later the incumbent was gone, redistricting worked in Republicans’ favour and there was local frustration over Covid and crime. Santos won New York’s third congressional district, which encompasses parts of Nassau county and Queens.His biography came under intense scrutiny – and began to fall apart. Among his most spectacular lies: his grandparents fled the Holocaust; his mother was caught up in the 9/11 attacks in New York; he was the “star” of the Baruch College volleyball team; he worked for the Wall Street firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; he was a producer on the failed Broadway show Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark; he “lost four employees” in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Furthermore, it emerged that in 2008 Santos, who has deployed an array of pseudonyms, was charged by Brazilian prosecutors for using a fake name and a stolen chequebook to buy goods including tennis shoes. Also, in 2016 he allegedly took $3,000 from an online fundraiser intended to help save the life of a dog owned by a disabled military veteran.It seems there was no “loss of innocence” or “turning point” for Santos. Raised in New York by Brazilian migrants, he was always a fabulist leaving a trail of victims.“One thing that struck me in reporting the book is how committed he was to this hustling, grifting lifestyle from a very early age,” Chiusano says.When Santos was in high school, he cheated his sister’s 16-year-old friend, who spoke little English, out of video game equipment and technology worth hundreds of dollars.“This kid saw Santos as a kind of older brother figure, a mentor looking out for him, which is a through line with Santos: he’ll befriend you and be very charming and charismatic before he turns. He did turn on this kid and the kid ended up going back to Brazil pretty empty-handed.”Not even Santos’s family was safe. Chiusano adds: “I write in the book about how he mooches off his very elderly and religiously devout grandmother, who’s living in Brazil. He gets money off her to fund his fun lifestyle in Brazil as a late adolescent teenager.“In New York he is stealing from his Aunt Elma, who again is this woman who worked very hard to build a life in New York and seems to have doted on Santos and he used that to his benefit. This commitment to doing whatever he can to make a couple of bucks is a through line in his life up to the present.”Interviewees agreed that this goes beyond everyday grifting. “A story that I heard many times was a version of: ‘Santos was talking to me and told me X and not only was it fake but he really believed it.’ The idea that he believed the lies he was telling was something that many people thought was the case.”Chiusano spent weeks in Brazil tracking down people who remember Santos as a drag queen and beauty pageant hopeful.“The Brazil piece of his story was important to the book because it shows Santos at this major moment of his development, which is that he’s in Brazil away from the New York life he knew. No one knows who he is that well so he can pretend to be this other person.“He pretends to be a very wealthy person, someone who’s on his way up in the world, using his American background to seem more impressive than he actually is. I talked to a lot of people down there who knew him and this, of course, is when he is experimenting with dressing in drag.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This has been a controversial part of Santos’s story. There’s a couple of famous pictures and videos of him dancing in drag but he claims that these pictures are all that there was. That was not what I found when I went down there and talked to people who remembered him as a drag queen.”Santos is married to a man named Matt. Yet he has endorsed Florida’s hardline “don’t say gay” bill and aligned himself with far-right Republicans who scaremonger about drag queens in schools and advocate book bans. Does he have any true political convictions or are these, too, just an act?Chiusano finds it hard to say. “He has flipped on so many things. He’s flip-flopped on abortion. He claims that he was no rightwinger and now he is very much associated with the far right of the Republican party. He’s definitely flipped and he’ll definitely say whatever he needs to satisfy an audience.“But there do seem to be some core conservative beliefs. Many members of his family are pretty conservative. They’re pretty pro-[Jair] Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who’s very conservative. I don’t think that he is secretly a super-lefty guy who is making this up. He’s conservative but he takes any opportunity that is laid in his path.”Santos belongs to what Chiusano dubs “the shamelessness caucus” in Congress, along with provocateurs such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. “They are there mostly to get more attention for themselves,” Chiusano says. “They don’t seem to have so much interest in governing and he has joined them, sometimes voting in concert with them, co-sponsoring bills with them. Obviously a lot of people are very angry at him in Congress and are not giving him the time of day but he does have these friends on the far right.”Long obsessed with celebrity – his old tweets betray a fascination with Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and The Real Housewives – Santos got rich in a political era in which fame is the ultimate currency.“Some of these more shameless members feel a sense of impunity, that it doesn’t matter what they say,” Chiusano says. “In fact, the crazier that they sound, the more social media clout they have.“This is the result of breakdown of all these American institutions including the media and the party system, which used to be gatekeepers that helped give voters a better sense of here’s who this person is, but also weeding out candidates who should not have gotten to higher office. This is a very modern thing and he is a symptom of the disease. He’s not the disease itself.”‘A scary idea’There is not much doubt about Santos’s political mentor: Donald Trump.Chiusano continues: “Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump. Trump is this almost sui generis figure who is kind of shaping the Republican party and he himself is the result of all these other political forces outside himself. But Trump is a person who was already famous and already had at least a perception of being very rich and certainly had more resources that Santos did.“You can see how someone like that was able to harness these crazy political forces and become president. What’s interesting to me is the Santos story shows that even a regular person can be lying and shameless and get to office and that is, in some senses, almost scarier than someone like Trump being able to do it. If there can be many Trumps who aren’t as rich and powerful as Trump and still lie their way to office, that’s a scary idea.”But it does not appear that Santos could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. The House ethics committee detailed extravagant – and possibly illegal – spending of campaign money, including thousands of dollars on Botox, luxury brands such as Hermès, and “smaller purchases” from OnlyFans, an online platform known for sexual content.Consequently, Santos looks set to be expelled from Congress, as even Republicans run out of patience, and has said he will not run again. He has no Trump-style option to pardon himself. But Chiusano does not believe this is the last the world will hear of George Santos.“These charges are very significant and he’s facing an uphill battle but he wouldn’t be in jail for a hundred years, like Sam Bankman-Fried seems likely to be. As far as we know now, if he’s convicted, he’ll get out as a relatively young man. I definitely see a second act for him, maybe not in elected politics but certainly in the Dancing with the Stars/rightwing podcast game. It would be back to his original love of celebrity.”
      The Fabulist is published in the US by One Signal/Atria More

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      in US Politics

      ‘A bit of a clown’: a look at Congressman George Santos’s endless fabrications

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      In a way, George Santos is one of the great success stories of American politics.The New York congressman is not responsible for exceptional legislative achievements. His brief tenure in Congress will not be held up as a success story for students of political history.Santos’s accomplishment has instead been to win election by weaving a staggering, barely believable web of lies, deception and deceit that is surely unmatched in the modern age.That wave of fabrication helped Santos win election in November 2022. But a year later, the 35-year-old has been charged with 23 federal crimes, and while he has managed to cling on to his seat in the House of Representatives, he could find himself booted out of there when Congress returns to DC next week.The list of Santos’s lies bears digging into.While he was running for Congress, Santos lied about almost everything that had ever happened to him. Sometimes it was to embellish his résumé and make himself appear more electable, but frequently, and fascinatingly, he lied for no reason at all, about things of zero consequence to his political career.Santos claimed he was privately educated at an elite New York City high school. He wasn’t. He said he went to Baruch College, where – according to Santos – he graduated in the top 1% of his class. Baruch, based in Manhattan, said it has no record of him going there, and Santos later confessed he “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning”.While running for election, he said his mother was working in the south tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Her immigration history shows that she wasn’t even in the country.Santos said he was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Holocaust. That wasn’t true. He claimed he owned 13 properties. That was also a lie; in fact, in 2022, he was living at his sister’s home.He said he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which he didn’t, and said he ran a pet charity, only for the New York Times to discover that a) it wasn’t a registered charity and b) there were serious questions about how the charity had spent the money it raised.Some of Santos’s lies were so banal it is unclear what the benefit was in telling them. Santos claimed he had been a “star” on Baruch’s volleyball team. (He hadn’t, obviously, but what was the point of making it up? Is the college sports vote that crucial in Nassau county?)Santos also told a roommate that he had worked as a model, and said he produced a Spider-Man musical on Broadway. Neither of those things happened.But, over a period of two years, the lies worked.Santos was an unknown when he ran against Thomas Suozzi, the Democratic incumbent in New York’s third district, in 2020. After a stronger-than-expected showing, Santos ran again in 2022. Suozzi, who had been in office for six years, had stepped down, and Santos defeated Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman by seven points, winning a seat to represent the majority of Nassau county, just east of New York City.“I ran, I lost and from defeat I grabbed the power and harnessed the energy to run again,” Santos said at a Republican Jewish Coalition event, 11 days after his win last year.“Many said I couldn’t win. Pundits across the nation, insiders, DC people [said]: ‘George Santos can’t win, let’s not pay attention to him.’“Well baby, you got that wrong.”Santos might now be wishing people had paid even less attention to him.After the New York Times reported on Santos’s litany of fabrications in December 2022, the web of lies began to fall apart. More seriously for Santos, alleged crimes were soon catching up with him, too.In October federal prosecutors charged Santos with 10 new crimes, including an allegation that he stole donors’ identities and used their credit cards without their knowledge. Santos had previously been charged with applying for and receiving unemployment benefits, even though he had a job, and misusing campaign contributions, and the total number of crimes Santos is now charged with is 23.Despite mounting evidence, the House has twice voted against expelling him. But on 17 November, when the ethics committee issued a damning report on Santos, the tide seemingly began to turn.The Republican-led committee found “substantial evidence” that Santos had used campaign funds for personal purposes, with the report detailing extravagant – and possibly illegal – spending of campaign money.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSantos allegedly spent almost $3,000 of campaign money on Botox treatments, while the committee also found that $4,127.80 had been spent at the luxury brand Hermès.Other expenditures by Santos allegedly include payments to OnlyFans, an online platform known for sexual content, and purchases at Sephora, a cosmetics store.Given what we now know about Santos, it’s barely believable that he got this far. Political campaigns normally conduct extensive opposition research on candidates, but Jay Jacobs, chair of the Nassau County Democrats, said that Santos “wasn’t considered a serious candidate by Republicans or Democrats”, and so slipped through the cracks.“He had run before, he was looked upon as kind of a joke, so nobody took it seriously,” Jacobs said.“Had they taken him seriously, had they felt that he had the slightest chance, I think the [Democratic] congressional campaign committee [DCCC], which does the research on this, would have dug a lot deeper.The DCCC, Jacobs said, has “435 contests across the country” that it needs to monitor. It has to choose where best to invest money and time in opposition research and background checking.“With George Santos being – and I’m sorry, but this is how I’d refer to him – a bit of a clown, they just didn’t give it that kind of attention,” Jacobs said.There was arguably a failure among the media too. The New York Times did great work in breaking the extraordinary story on Santos’s deceit, but it only did so on 19 December 2022 – more than a month after Santos had been voted into office. Santos slipped by other New York-focused newspapers and TV news channels, and slid into office.For almost a year Republicans, who have a slim majority in the House, have been willing to hold their nose regarding Santos. The damning ethics committee report, however, may prove the final nail in the coffin.After the report was published Santos said he would not run for re-election, but he is expected to face a third expulsion vote, likely to come next week. Two-thirds of the House would need to vote to remove Santos, and reports suggest that there are enough members ready to oust him, bringing an end to one of the great political con jobs of our age.“We did it! #NY03 has spoken!” Santos declared after his victory in 2022.“I promised one thing throughout this entire campaign: to be your champion in DC. Thank you for this opportunity to be your voice!”Instead, Santos has spent almost the entirety of his time in DC fending off accusations of criminal behavior and apologizing for a vast array of deceptions and mistruths.In retrospect, that promise to champion the residents of New York’s third congressional district was just another lie, in a political career defined by dishonesty. More

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      in US Politics

      New York City mayor Eric Adams accused of sexual assault in 1993

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      The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has been accused of sexual assault in a court filing submitted on late Wednesday.The summons against Adams alleges that the plaintiff “was sexually assaulted by Defendant Eric Adams in New York, New York in 1993 while they both worked for the City of New York”.It was filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York state law which provided a one-year “look-back” window for adult sexual misconduct accusers to file civil lawsuits that previously would have been barred due to the statute of limitations.The window expires on 24 November.The summons adds that the concerns “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination on the basis of Plaintiff’s gender and sex, retaliation, hostile work environment and intentional infliction of emotional distress”.Asked about the allegation, a city hall spokesperson said: “The mayor does not know who this person is. If they ever met, he doesn’t recall it. But he would never do anything to physically harm another person and vigorously denies any such claim.”The three-page summons does not detail the alleged sexual assault. The Guardian is withholding the name of Adams’ accuser as the allegation involves sexual assault.The summons also names the New York City police department’s transit bureau, and the New York City police department Guardians Association social organization, as defendants.The accuser’s attorney, Megan Goddard, said: “Goddard Law is thankful for the Adult Survivors Act, which has given so many women the opportunity to seek justice. We are immensely proud of our clients and all the women who are seeking justice under the ASA. We are also thankful that the legislature may be considering reopening the window because so many victims of sexual assault are only finding out about the ASA now.”The Messenger first reported the summons.The summons comes as Adams, who was elected in 2021, faces scrutiny from the FBI, which is reportedly investigating his campaign. Its inquiry reportedly focuses on whether Adams’ campaign unlawfully accepted money from the Turkish government in exchange for favors, such as pressuring the New York City fire department to speed up the opening of a Turkish consulate.On 2 November, federal agents raided the home of Adams’ top fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, seizing electronic devices and documents. The FBI also reportedly searched a Turkish Airlines executive’s home, as well as Brooklyn construction company owned by Turkish immigrants; the executive and company had both fundraised for Adams.This is a developing story and will be updated … More

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      in Elections

      January 6 rioter found guilty after judge calls defence argument ‘gobbledegook’

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      A January 6 rioter who represented himself using “sovereign citizen” arguments – which a judge called “bullshit” and “gobbledegook” – was found guilty on Tuesday.Taylor James Johnatakis, 39 and from Kingston, Washington, will be sentenced later.On 6 January 2021, Donald Trump sent supporters to Congress to try to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden, telling them to “fight like hell” in his cause.According to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Johnatakis “came to the Capitol with a megaphone strapped to his back [and] joined the riot at the base of the south-west staircase when the mob was overwhelming police officers, who were forced to retreat toward the Capitol.“Johnatakis followed right behind those retreating police officers [and] was one of the first rioters to reach the top of the south-west staircase, where he was confronted with a line of police barricades and police officers protecting the Capitol.“Johnatakis organised and coordinated other rioters to assault the police line … Specifically, using his megaphone, Johnatakis directed rioters to move up to the police line”, then orchestrated an attack using bike racks …“As a result of this attack, at least one police officer was injured.”Johnatakis was arrested in February 2021 and became one of more than 1,200 people charged over the riot. More than 400 have been sentenced to jail, some after being convicted of seditious conspiracy.Trump was impeached (for a second time) over the riot but acquitted when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. He now faces 13 state and four federal charges over his attempted election subversion, among 91 criminal charges in total, but nonetheless leads Republican primary polling by vast margins.In court last week, Johnatakis mounted his own defence, attempting to cite “sovereign citizen” ideology. As defined by the Anti-Defamation League, sovereign citizens form “an extreme anti-government movement whose members believe the government has no authority over them”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJohnatakis also said he had “repented all [his] sins” and the case should be “discharged”, but the judge, Royce C Lamberth, was not buying.Telling Johnatakis his arguments were “bullshit” and “gobbledegook”, Lamberth said: “When they find you guilty, you’re going to jail. You could get a lesser sentence if you weren’t so hard-headed.”On Tuesday, the jury found Johnatakis guilty on seven charges, three of them felonies.The charges were: obstruction of an official proceeding; assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings. More

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      in US Politics

      David DePape found guilty in hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband

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      David DePape, the rightwing conspiracy theorist who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home, has been convicted of attempted kidnapping and assault.The federal jury’s decision on Thursday comes after a dramatic trial in which Paul Pelosi testified about the “traumatic” hammer attack he suffered on 28 October 2022, days before the midterm elections. DePape also took the stand in his defense, saying he had planned to interrogate the former House speaker and post footage of her online.The jury deliberated for about eight hours before finding DePape guilty of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official. DePape, who faces up to 50 years in prison, did not react as the verdict was read in court.Defense attorneys for DePape argued that he was caught up in conspiracy theories that influenced him to commit the crimes. DePape admitted in his own testimony during the trial that he broke into the Pelosis’ house with a plan to hold the former House speaker hostage, and that he bludgeoned Paul Pelosi with a hammer after police officers showed up at the home.DePape, 43, echoed rightwing conspiracy theories and told jurors he had planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and record his interrogation of Nancy Pelosi to upload to the internet. Prosecutors say he had rope and zip ties with him. Detectives also found body cameras, a computer and a tablet.A sentencing date has not yet been set.At a news conference outside the federal courthouse where the verdict was read, the US attorney Ismail Ramsey told reporters: “People can believe what they want and engage in passionate debate. But this guilty verdict on all counts sends a clear message that regardless of what your beliefs are, what you cannot do is physically attack a member of Congress or their immediate family for the performance of their job.”Prosecutors said that at the start of the attack at around 2am, DePape smashed through a door in the back of the Pelosis’ house and encountered Paul Pelosi, then 82. He had been sleeping. DePape allegedly said: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” as he stood over Paul Pelosi with zip ties and a hammer in his hands. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington DC during the break-in.Paul Pelosi managed to call police, and when two officers arrived, the officers saw DePape hit the speaker’s husband in the head, which knocked him unconscious. Paul Pelosi was hospitalized with a skull fracture and injuries to his hands and arm. Part of the incident was captured on body-camera footage of police, and an FBI agent testified that the video indicated DePape hit him at least three times.“It was a tremendous shock to recognize that somebody had broken into the house and looking at him and looking at the hammer and the ties, I recognized that I was in serious danger, so I tried to stay as calm as possible,” Paul Pelosi recounted to jurors.More than a year after the attack, Paul Pelosi said he still hadn’t fully recovered. A neurosurgeon who operated on him testified that Pelosi had two wounds on his head, including a fracture to his skull that had to be mended with plates and screws he will have for the rest of his life. Pelosi also needed stitches on injuries to his right arm and hand, the surgeon said.DePape has a documented history of promoting conspiracy theories and far-right messages. On Facebook, he shared videos that falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and misinformation about the January 6 insurrection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn court, DePape cried when he talked about his political beliefs, explaining how he came to support baseless narratives that a cabal of pedophiles were behind the US government. He also said he had wanted to talk to Nancy Pelosi about the 2016 election, and that he intended to question her while wearing an inflatable unicorn costume.“He was never my target and I’m sorry that he got hurt,” DePape said of Paul Pelosi.DePape and his attorneys did not deny he committed the attack. His lawyer, Jodi Linker, argued that he was not targeting Nancy Pelosi as retaliation for her official duties, but rather due to the conspiracy theories he believed “with every ounce of his body”. In opening remarks, she said he was trying to stop the abuse of children and corruption: “This is not a whodunnit. But what the government fails to acknowledge is the ‘whydunnit’ – and the ‘why’ matters in this case.”DePape is facing separate charges in state court, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, residential burglary and elderly abuse. He faces a potential life sentence in the state case and has pleaded not guilty, but that trial has not been set.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      George Santos: the four strands of the Republican congressman’s web of lies

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      George Santos’s extensive lies and financial improprieties have started to catch up to the New York representative, with criminal charges in New York and a newly released House ethics committee report.The congressman built a campaign on a fake résumé, made-up personal stories and a host of complex financial transactions that benefited his personal bank account, the report and other reporting show. His falsehoods ranged from serious to mundane and, at times, bizarre.“Representative Santos’ congressional campaigns were built around his backstory as a successful man of means: a grandson of Holocaust survivors and graduate from Baruch College with a Master’s in Business Administration from New York University, who went on to work at Citi Group and Goldman Sachs, owned multiple properties, and was the beneficiary of a family trust worth millions of dollars left by his mother, who passed years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a result of long-term health effects related to being at one of the towers,” the House ethics report says.“No part of that backstory has been found to be true.”Financial irregularitiesThe House ethics report concluded that Santos used campaign funds and his position to enrich himself. He allegedly claimed to have loaned his campaign money, despite not having done so, then paid himself back. His financial disclosure forms were not accurate, and, the report said, one was “filled with falsehoods designed to make him appear wealthier than he was and furthered the fictional persona he had concocted by falsely reporting more than half a million dollars in loans to the FEC”.He also used campaign funds for personal purposes. Some examples in the House report: purchases at Ferragamo and Hermès, hotel stays in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, ATM withdrawals, paying his personal rent and personal credit card bills, spa services like Botox and “smaller purchases” at OnlyFans, an adult content service.His campaign filed a list of false donors as another way to “artificially inflate” his required financial reports, the House investigation claims. The New York indictment further alleges Santos defrauded donors and charged their credit cards without authorization.The New York criminal charges include allegations that Santos improperly received unemployment insurance despite being employed at a $120,000-per-year job. He received more than $24,000 in unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic, the charges state.Ironically, Santos touted his financial acumen when running for office, claiming he had an “extensive background in money management/growth” and was “good at it”. This background would help the House during budgeting and serve his constituents well, he said.If they’d known about his inaccurate and false financial statements, the House ethics group said, “his constituents may have had cause to question whether he was actually ‘good at’ money management and growth, or balancing costs and budgets – or, indeed, whether he had any experience in finance at all”.Personal historyThe New York Times first detailed lengthy fictions Santos told about himself, his education and his work experience, finding that his résumé was beyond embellished and outright false. He didn’t receive degrees from the schools he claimed he had. He hadn’t worked jobs he included in his work history.He also claimed to be a landlord who owned 13 properties, though no records of any property ownership have been found for him.His background has also come into question. He claimed his grandparents were Jewish and fled Europe because of persecution during the second world war, but genealogical research by Forward contradicted his story.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSantos also said his mother was at the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks, but records show she was not in the US at that time.Stolen election claimsWhile claiming the 2020 election was stolen isn’t rare for congressional Republicans, Santos also boosted election denialism. In a speech on 5 January 2021, Santos claimed his election was stolen, as was Trump’s. He said he had been ahead in the vote count for days until the results changed, which happened because more ballots were counted.“They did to me what they did to Donald J Trump, they stole my election,” Santos said. He then asked the crowd: “Who here is ready to overturn the election for Donald J Trump?”Dog-related storiesA few stories about pets also plague Santos. He claimed to run a charity that rescued more than 2,500 animals, though the group wasn’t registered as a non-profit and it appears Santos’s claims related to its work were greatly exaggerated.In a strange side story, Santos was also charged with writing bad checks to dog breeders with “puppies” in the memo line, though he had the charge dismissed and his record expunged because he claimed someone stole his checkbook and wrote the checks in his name.In a separate fraud case in Brazil, Santos admitted he stole a man’s checkbook and made purchases with it.Yet another dog-related story claims Santos raised thousands of dollars in a GoFundMe to help a veteran who was homeless take care of his pit bull, then pocketed the money instead of helping the dog. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s Georgia election trial could stretch into 2025, says prosecutor

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      The trial in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and 14 other defendants relating to an alleged conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election could stretch into early 2025, the Fulton county prosecutor, Fani Willis, has said.In an interview at a global women’s summit held on Tuesday by the Washington Post, Willis said that though she expected the case to be on appeal “for years”, the trial itself would probably take “many months”. She envisioned it ending in “the winter or the very early part of 2025”.The timeframe laid out by the Atlanta-area district attorney raises the prospect of Trump remaining on criminal trial through the critical stages of next year’s presidential election, including election day on 5 November 2024. Trump is the current frontrunner in the Republican primary race.The tentative calendar also opens up the prospect, should Trump secure the Republican nomination and go on to win the election, of him still being on trial on his inauguration day, 20 January 2025. The former president faces racketeering charges that carry a sentence under state guidelines of up to 20 years in prison.Willis said that she did not take election timing into account when pursuing cases. “I don’t, when making decisions about cases to bring, consider any election cycle or election season, it does not go into the calculus,” she said.She added that it would be a “really sad day if, when you’re under investigation for this shoplifting charge, you could go run for city council and then the investigation would stop. That’s foolishness.”Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Trump’s co-defendant in the Georgia case Rudy Giuliani, criticized Willis for making the comments. In a statement to Politico, he said that the possibility of stretching out the trial beyond the 2024 election “further demonstrates how this entire fraudulent case is part of the Democrat Party and permanent Washington political class’s attempt to keep Donald Trump out of the White House”.The scheduling of the multiple trials that Trump now faces is likely to pose major challenges for his presidential campaign. He is now on trial in New York for a civil fraud case involving the financial statements of his business, the Trump Organization.He is also facing 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases – the Fulton county election subversion case, a New York criminal indictment over an alleged hush money payment to an adult film actor, and two federal cases. The federal prosecutions involve his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified government documents in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.The two federal trials are scheduled to begin in March and May respectively – in the thick of Republican primary voting.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNineteen defendants were initially included in the sprawling racketeering prosecution in Georgia. That number has been reduced after four defendants accepted plea deals in the case.They include three of Trump’s lawyers during his attempt to avoid defeat in the 2020 election – Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. Videos of interviews conducted with them during the plea agreement were leaked this week to ABC News and the Washington Post.Willis said the source of the leaks was “absolutely not my office”. She said the disclosure of the confidential recordings was “clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial”.Her office has requested an emergency protective order over discovery materials in the Fulton county case. More

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      Trump is facing multiple charges – but there is one that could seriously harm his reputation | Emma Brockes

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      We have been here before countless times: prematurely anticipating the end of Donald Trump on the basis of actions or implications that, for anyone else, would have proven fatal long ago. Quick recap: the former president is facing four separate criminal cases, involving 91 felony counts, in four separate states; plus a civil fraud case currently being heard in Manhattan; plus a second defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, whom earlier this year Trump was found guilty of sexually assaulting and defaming and ordered to pay $5m. Plus a clutch of broken gag orders and the resultant fines.The question in all of these cases is less whether Trump will be found guilty than whether there is any outcome whatsoever that would be capable of preventing him from standing for president next year, or – the more depressing calculation, in some ways – of damaging his chances, if not. Trump voters have, historically, proven even more resistant than the rest of us to changing their minds when the evidence changes. And Trump himself has an almost preternatural gift for turning the most unpromising situations to his advantage. Even so, there may, within the detail of these extremely wide-ranging cases, be some aspects that are more harmful to Trump than others.For the former president, the most straightforwardly dangerous criminal trial – that is the one that is, simultaneously, the most serious and also appears to involve the most clear-cut evidence against him – is the so-called classified documents case, brought in Florida by special counsel Jack Smith. This case, which is due to be heard next May, ranges across 40 felony charges, the most serious of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, which perhaps explains why Trump has described Smith variously as “deranged”, a “thug” and a “Trump hater”. Trump’s defence – that he “un-classified” the documents before removing them from the White House – is seemingly contradicted by, for example, audio evidence of Trump saying he could have declassified “secret” documents, but didn’t.And, yet, as a possible end to Trump’s political hopes the case isn’t as open and shut as it seems. For a start, it is slated to come before Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, and to be heard by a jury that will be selected from Florida districts that voted heavily for Trump. It is also a federal prosecution, meaning that should Trump’s lawyers manage to push the start date beyond the November election, and should Trump be returned to office, he could conceivably instruct the justice department to shut the whole thing down until his tenure expires.That principle applies similarly to two of the other criminal cases: the hush money trial brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, which is scheduled for March next year and is in some ways the flimsiest of the four criminal trials, resting as it does on fiddly definitions around improper campaign donations. (Briefly: if Trump paid hush money to Stormy Daniels via his fixer, Michael Cohen, then lied about it, the DA’s office will try to contend that this constitutes not only a misdemeanour crime of cover-up, but a more serious felony entailing “intent to defraud” in the interests of furthering Trump’s election prospects. The $130,000 paid to Daniels may then be framed as an improper campaign donation.)Much more serious for Trump is the four-count indictment for election interference, also being brought by Smith, in relation to Trump’s actions in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021. The most damning of those charges – that Trump tried to subvert democracy and disenfranchise voters – is much harder to prove than anything he will face in the documents case. But, unlike Smith’s Florida case, this one will be heard in the District of Columbia, where the jury will be pulled from a population heaving with Democrats. It is also set for March, presenting the Republican frontrunner with mind-boggling logistical and psychological (where even to begin with this) issues.That leaves what, on the surface, looks like the most local and least impressive case against Trump, which is the Georgia election interference case, alleging a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia via a pressure campaign and for which no date has yet been set. Oddly, of the four criminal cases, it is this case that is the most promising in terms of its potential to scupper Trump, purely because it has been brought under state not federal law, and as such lies beyond the reach of a sitting president.Those are the criminal trials. On the evidence of Trump’s polling numbers, which over the past year have risen undisturbed as the 91 indictments rolled in, there is nothing much on paper to indicate that Trump is in trouble. Indeed, if being described by a judge, as Trump was earlier this year, as guilty of rape isn’t a dealbreaker for his supporters, then the small matter of alleged treason isn’t likely to move the needle either.For my money, it is the current civil trial in New York, brought by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, that threatens Trump’s reputation most acutely and right where it hurts. The suit carries no threat of prison or disruption to Trump’s presidential bid. But in the short term it does threaten to unseat his reputation as a businessman of any standing and strip him of his licence to operate a business in New York.A judge has already found him guilty of fraud and this hearing is purely to assess the level of damages. Unlike all the other legal actions against Trump, which he has apparently successfully been able to pass off as part of some vast conspiracy against him, the fraud case, in which it is alleged that he inflated the value of his businesses to secure better loan rates, lands differently. It makes Trump look shabby, small-time, crooked and crucially, given the nature of his appeal, not nearly as wealthy as he says he is.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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