Keeping track of all of NY Rep.-elect George Santos’ lies, from his education to charity falsehoods
The gusher of lies told by George Santos has him in hot water that could end his career as a congressman soon after it begins — and maybe even put him behind bars.
The Long Island Republican faces a probable probe by the House Ethics Committee, whose incoming chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), last week told Fox News he’s “pretty confident” it will open an investigation because “what Santos has done is a disgrace.”
Santos, 34, is also reportedly under scrutiny by federal, state and local authorities who are looking into potential criminal wrongdoing, including where he got the $700,000 he loaned his winning campaign against Democrat Robert Zimmerman.
Here’s a list of Santos’ whoppers, which cover virtually every phase of his life to date:
Attended Horace Mann private school
During his failed, 2019 campaign for Congress, Santos claimed that after attending PS 122 in Astoria, he went to the elite “Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, however, did not graduate from Horace Mann due to financial difficulties for his family.”
The following year, Santos elaborated on that assertion, saying that “in my senior year of prep school, unfortunately, my parents fell on hard times, which was something that would later become known as the depression of 2008.”
But a school spokesperson told CNN, “We’ve searched the records and there is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended Horace Mann.”
Earned degrees from New York University and Baruch College
In a biographical profile posted last year on the Republican National Congressional Committee’s website, Santos claimed to have “attended Baruch College and NYU where he got degrees in finance and economics.”
But after The New York Times — which first exposed many of Santos’ lies last month — reported that neither school could find his name in their records, Santos came clean to The Post.
“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he said.
Worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs
Santos has claimed that his first job after college was at Citigroup, where he worked his way up to becoming an “associate asset manager” in its real estate division.
He also said he worked briefly at Goldman Sachs and boasted in June that he criticized the Wall Street giant while he was an “employee” during “the largest private equity conference in the world…run by Anthony Scaramucci.”
“And I did it in the fashion of renewable energy and global warming. This was the panel I was on. And they’re all talking about solar, wind, and this was back, what, seven years ago now? And I said, ‘You know what? This is a scam. It’s taxpayer money that gets subsidized,'” he said on “This Week’s Long Island News” podcast.
Both financial firms told the Times they couldn’t confirm his employment claims, with a Citi spokeswoman noting that the company sold off its asset management operations in 2005.
Scaramucci also told CNN that there was no record of Santos taking part in the panel discussion or even having attended the conference.
Owned 13 rental properties
In February 2021, Santos wrote on Twitter that he and his family owned 13 properties but hadn’t been paid any rent for nearly a year due to a pandemic-related ban on evictions.
“Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property?” he tweeted. “The state is collecting their tax, yet we get 0 help from the government. We worked hard to acquire these assets…Now it almost feels like we are being punished.”
In his interview with The Post, Santos confessed that he “does not own any properties” and acknowledged that he lived in his sister’s home in Huntington on Long Island, but was looking to buy a place of his own.
‘Proud American Jew’ whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust
In a 2021 video to launch his campaign, Santos said, “I’ve seen how socialism destroys people’s lives because my grandparents survived the Holocaust.”
He later elaborated on that claim, telling Fox News in February that his maternal grandfather migrated “in the late ’20s” from Ukraine to Belgium, “where he met my grandmother.”
“For a lot of people who are descendants of World War II, refugees or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names and paperwork were changed in the name of survival so I don’t carry the family last name,” he added.
Santos — who said on his campaign website that his mother was Jewish — also called himself a “proud American Jew” who’d “been to Israel numerous times” in a two-page position paper obtained by The Forward, which said it found no documentation to back up those trips.
The Forward also revealed that Santos’ maternal grandparents were both born in Brazil before the Nazis took over Germany and that his late mom routinely posted Catholic images on social media and followed several accounts about Catholicism.
In his interview with The Post, Santos said his ties to Judaism were based on stories his grandmother told about being Jewish before converting to Catholicism.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
His mom was a ground-breaking executive who died as a result of the Sept. 11 terror attacks
Santos claimed on his campaign website that his mother, Fatima A.C.H. Devolder, “came from nothing, but worked her way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution.”
“George’s mother was in her office in the South Tower on September 11, 2001, when the horrific events of that day unfolded. She survived the tragic events on September 11th, but she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer,” the website said.
Devolder died on Dec. 23, 2016, at Elmhurst Hospital Hospice, according to an obituary that makes no mention of her career.
The Times, however, reported that Santos’ mom worked as a housekeeper.
Employed four victims the Pulse nightclub massacre
During a Nov. 21 interview with WNYC radio, Santos called the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. a “deja vu moment for me.”
“I condemn what happened in Colorado, just much like at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, which I happened to, at the time, have people that work for me in the club,” he said.
“My company, at the time, we lost four employees that work that were at Pulse nightclub.”
But none of the 49 people killed at the Pulse worked at any of the companies identified in Santos’ largely fabricated resume, according to a review of news coverage and victims’ obituaries conducted by the Times.
Founded a charity
Santos has claimed to have founded and run a tax-exempt charity, Friends of Pets United, that rescued more than 2,500 dogs and cats.
Although Facebook posts show the group existed, neither the IRS nor the New York and New Jersey attorneys general offices could find records showing it was registered as an official charity, according to the Times.
In 2017, Santos reportedly held a $50 per person fundraiser for a New Jersey animal-rescue group whose leader later told the Times it never received any of the proceeds.
Instead, Santos repeatedly offered excuses for not handing over the cash, the Times said.
Sexuality
Santos’ latest campaign made him the first openly gay, non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress.
In October, after coming under fire for supporting Florida’s controversial Parental Rights in Education law — which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay bill” — Santos affirmed his identity to USA Today.
“I am openly gay, have never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade, and I can tell you and assure you, I will always be an advocate for LGBTQ folks.”
But last month, the Daily Beast unearthed court records that show he was previously married to a woman before their relationship ended in a September 2019 divorce less than two weeks before he filed paperwork to run for Congress.
In his interview with The Post, Santos — who’s now married to a man — acknowledged being married to his ex-wife from 2012 to 2017, saying, “I dated women in the past. I married a woman. It’s personal stuff.”
“I’m very much gay,” he added. “I’m OK with my sexuality. People change. I’m one of those people who change.”
‘Not a criminal’
Santos has vehemently pushed back against reporting by the Times about a criminal case filed against him in Brazil over a 2008 incident in which he allegedly stole the checkbook of a man for whom his mother was working as a nurse.
The Times said records that he used the man’s account to fraudulently spend about $700 on a pair of shoes and other items, and that he confessed to the store owner on social media in 2009, saying, I know I screwed up, but I want to pay.”
In 2010, he and his mother also reportedly admitted his alleged actions to the cops and he was charged with fraud.
But the case was never resolved because Santos, who moved back to the US, didn’t answer a summons and a court representative couldn’t find him at his former address in Brazil, the Times said.
Santos adamantly denied those allegations to The Post, saying, “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world.”
But Brazilian prosecutors told the Times on Monday that authorities plan to revive the case and have the US Justice Department formally notify him that the charges will be prosecuted whether or not he appears in court.
Got mugged in 2016
In 2016, Santos filed a sworn statement in Queens Housing Court that said he was mugged while on his way to pay $2,250 in back rent on his apartment, Gothamist reported last week.
Santos also wrote that he was “unable to provide a police report today as I was requested to go back Tuesday to pick it up,” Gothamist said.
But the NYPD told the news outlet there was “nothing on file” regarding the alleged incident, which reportedly came during an eviction proceeding that was resolved when Santos moved out.
Gothamist said Santos’ lawyer referred it to his campaign, which didn’t return a request for comment.
Bought tickets for a Hawaii vacation
A former boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, said he that he and Santos began dating in 2014 but that he was forced to pay many of their bills after Santos suggested they move in together, the Times reported Monday.
“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Vilarva said. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work.”
The relationship fell apart in early 2015 after Santos surprised him by saying they were going to Hawaii — with tickets that didn’t exist, the Times said.
Vilarva also said that his cellphone disappeared around the same time and that he suspected Santos of having pawned it.
The incidents prompted Vilarva to look up Santos on the internet and discover he was wanted by cops in Brazil, after which, “I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.
