It was a year of spectacular implosions, and it turns out 2022 had one more in store. Days after a New York Times report revealed major inconsistencies and falsehoods in his resume and purported backstory, Republican Representative-elect George Santos admitted to lying about his college and employment history—though he appeared to remain somewhat defiant and insisted that the revelations “will not deter me from having good legislative success.”
“I will be effective,” Santos told the New York Post on Monday. “I will be good.”
Santos, a New York Republican whose victory in the 2022 midterms helped give the GOP a narrow House majority in the next Congress, claimed, among other things, to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010 before going on to a career as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” for firms like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. But those firms told the Times that they had no record of his employment there, and Baruch found no record of his enrollment; the Internal Revenue Service also told the Times that it found no record of the tax-exempt animal rescue group he claimed to have operated.
After about a week of silence, Santos emerged Monday, acknowledging in interviews with the Post and other outlets that he had made up some of his credentials. He had not graduated from any college, he had “never worked directly” for Goldman and Citigroup, and he is not a landlord, as he had claimed on the campaign trail to be.
“My sins here are embellishing my resume,” the incoming Republican said. “I’m sorry.”
Santos, who is openly gay, also acknowledged some recent reporting about aspects of his personal life, including his five-year marriage to a woman (“I’m very much gay…People change. I’m one of those people who change”), questions about his purported Jewish ancestry (“I never claimed to be Jewish…I said I was ‘Jew-ish’”), and some of his financial troubles (“I am not embarrassed by it”). But Santos still seemed defensive, dismissing some of his lies as stemming from a “poor choice of words” rather than an intent to mislead voters, and appeared to brush off any suggestion that he was unfit to serve. “The people elected me to fight for them,” Santos told the Post.
But major questions linger, including details around a past criminal charge reported by the Times that Santos denied, and especially about the abrupt change in his financial circumstances. After reporting a $55,000 salary in 2020, in September the incoming congressman reported a salary of $750,000 and dividends of over a million dollars from his company, according to the Times. The company, according to the filings, has no public-facing assets and no reported clients. “I had the relationships and I started making a lot of money,” Santos told City & State Monday by way of explanation. “And I fundamentally started building wealth, and I decided I’d invest in my race for Congress.”
That explanation leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s unclear whether the puzzling disclosures will lead to any investigation or consequences. As the Times notes, omissions on his financial disclosure forms could leave him legally vulnerable. But he seems unlikely to face political consequences from the incoming Republican majority. A senior House Republican aide indicated to the Post that party brass was aware of the inconsistencies in Santos’ resume and personal life, and considered it a “running joke.” Republican officials—including Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to assume the speakership next month—have mostly remained mum, and have shown little willingness to discipline loyal members in the past. And, it goes without saying, the party of Donald Trump is hardly one to turn its back on liars and scammers. In Santos, the GOP may have found an even clumsier liar than the former president. “I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign,” the fabulist Santos told the Post, citing issues like crime and inflation. “I came to D.C. to bring results on those issues and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Eric Lutz
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