Since it first emerged last month that newly elected representative George Santos is a serial liar who fabricated large parts of his campaign biography—and that’s to say nothing of the lies he’s told to journalists, boyfriends, and roommates alike—the New York Republican has steadfastly refused to resign, effectively telling his legion of critics to f–k off. On Tuesday, though, the GOP lawmaker decided, quite uncharacteristically, to back away from the limelight, a move that suggests…well, a lot of things, but we’ll get to those later.
After meeting privately with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night, Santos told colleagues the next morning that he would temporarily remove himself from his assignments on the House’s small business and science, space, and technology committees. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McCarthy said that the decision to step down was made by Santos. Why the sudden about-face? Considering whom we are dealing with here, it’s very difficult to know what to believe—but we do have a few theories.
He thinks he’s going to find a way to “clear” his name
This isn’t so much a theory; rather, it’s apparently what Santos has said. According to McCarthy, Santos will sit out the committee assignments “until he [can] clear everything up.” This makes perfect sense given the many lies he’s already admitted to as well as the even greater number of lies the media has comprehensively disproved.
He thinks recusing himself from the committee assignments will take the heat off of the various investigations into his lies
Santos is under investigation by multiple offices, including those of the Nassau County and Queens County district attorneys, federal prosecutors in New York, and the New York attorney general. (There’s also a call for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, among other things.) The probes are looking into not only lies about his résumé, like that he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but also potential campaign finance violations. “No one is above the law, and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it,” Nassau County district attorney Anne Donnelly previously said in a statement. It’s not at all unreasonable to think that Santos believes he can get prosecutors and other investigators to back off by stepping back.
He’s aware that something even more damning than all the stuff we already know is about to come out
We’ve only known that Santos is a pathological liar for a little over a month, but he has presumably been spinning a web of lies for many years. It’s safe to assume that many, many more falsehoods will surface, and it’s possible they could be even worse than the ones we already know about. Maybe they have to do with the Ponzi scheme. Maybe, similar to how he said his maternal grandparents fled Hitler, he told people his paternal grandparents fled a North Korean prison camp—and that, oh yeah, he’s Korean. The potential list is truly endless, and maybe he thinks people will lose interest in revealing these lies if he takes a lower profile.
He’s grown tired of the drama
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said of Santos: “He just felt like there was so much drama, really, over the situation.”
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no indication that Santos isn’t loving all of this; in fact, it seems that he most certainly is (see: leaving coffee and doughnuts for reporters outside his office).
McCarthy told him he had to do it
Bess Levin
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