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“Do you know how much you have to lie to be known as ‘the lying congressman?’” Jones asked.
“He didn’t just steal from a service dog. He didn’t just steal from a dying service dog. He stole from a disabled homeless veteran’s dying service dog!” Jones said in disbelief.
Santos, she said, is both “evil and stupid.”
“You’re gonna mess with somebody’s dog? Have you not heard of John Wick?” Jones asked. “Your ass is in trouble.”
See more in her Wednesday night monologue:
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Despite growing calls to resign, Rep. George Santos has secured seats on two congressional committees and the backing of House Republican leadership. But calls from CBS News to his office in New York’s 3rd congressional district — which still has his predecessor’s name on the building — were forwarded to a neighboring congressman.
“He hasn’t shown his face since the election and I don’t think we’re ever going to see him,” said Grant Lally, a Republican lawyer who runs the GOP-leaning newspaper The North Shore Leader.
Meanwhile, extraordinary stories about Santos continue to surface.
The latest involves accusations that he stole money from a veteran with disabilities who was trying to get lifesaving surgery for his dying service dog.
As first reported by Patch, Rich Osthoff, who is homeless, said Santos helped him raise $3,000 for his dying dog through Santos’ pet charity. But Osthoff said he never got the money from Santos, and his dog died six months later.
In a text message allegedly between the two, Osthoff told Santos: “My dog is going to die because of god knows what. That … fatty deposit is benign. It needs removal, and I’m sick of being jerked around. I’ll take her to another vet, but the cash was raised on her behalf. It’s … 3x the size it was in April.”
“It diminished my faith in humanity,” Osthoff told CBS News.
Santos denied the story to Semafor.
“Fake,” Santos texted the news outlet. “No clue who this is.”
CBS News also spoke with Santos’ former roommate, Gregory Morey, who claims Santos stole his Burberry scarf — which he later wore to a “Stop the Steal” rally.
There’s also the falsehood on his campaign website in which Santos claimed his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Yet a source told CBS News that his mother’s immigration documents show she was in Brazil at the time of the attack.
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For over a month now, we’ve been treated to a torrent of evidence that newly elected congressman George Santos is a serial liar. From supposedly being a star volleyball player at a college he never attended to having grandparents who fled Hitler, almost every day has brought a new lie. And now, we can add flagrant hypocrisy to the mix.
On Wednesday, journalist Marisa Kabas reported that as a teen living in Brazil, Santos “enjoyed” drag, participated in at least one drag show, and went by the name “Kitara Ravache.”
Unlike Santos’s very large dossier of lies, there is absolutely nothing wrong with dressing in drag or expressing oneself however one sees fit. The problem, of course, is that Santos apparently does not think other people should be afforded such rights. As The New York Times notes, Santos has “embraced right-wing policies that many LGBTQ activists have decried as discriminatory.” For example, Florida’s bigoted “Don’t Say Gay” law, which the then candidate “voiced support for” in an April 2022 Facebook video, saying, “Hey, everyone. George Santos here…. As a gay man, I stand proudly behind not teaching our children sex or sexual orientation.” (The law prohibits teachers in grades K–3 from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in any way whatsoever, and has led to educators being warned to not to wear clothing with rainbows on them and to get rid of “safe space” stickers and photos of their same-sex spouses out of fear of being prosecuted.) In the accompanying caption, Santos claimed Democrats want to “groom our kids.”
In his first weeks in Congress, Santos has also aligned himself with the far right, whose members have demonized drag shows and introduced appalling anti-trans legislation.
Prior to being elected, Santos worked as a spokesman for Carl Paladino, an elected official who, per the Times, has “a track record of racist and homophobic comments.”
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Embattled freshman Rep. George Santos has been awarded seats on two low-level committees after House Republicans debated where to put the New York congressman, who is facing mounting legal issues and growing calls to resign for extensively lying about his resume.
Several GOP sources told CNN that the House Republican Steering Committee, controlled by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his top allies, tapped Santos to serve on two House panels: the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Santos had privately lobbied GOP leaders to serve on two more high-profile committees, one overseeing the financial sector and another on foreign policy, but top Republicans rejected that pitch as some chairmen balked at adding him to their panels.
Still, Republican leaders for now have decided to treat Santos like any other member of the House, even as questions grow over his past and as some have raised security concerns about allowing him to have access to classified briefings.
Rep. Roger Williams, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Small Business Committee for the 118th Congress, defended the decision to name Santos to his committee.
“I don’t condone what he said, what he’s done. I don’t think anybody does. But that’s not my role. He was elected,” Williams told CNN.
The controversy surrounding Santos presents an early test of McCarthy’s leadership as speaker, creating a distraction as the new GOP majority attempts to roll out its agenda. But McCarthy and GOP leaders know full well that if Santos were to resign, he’d vacate a seat in a district that President Joe Biden carried by eight points, giving Democrats a real shot at further tightening the Republicans’ razor-thin House majority.
Despite refusing to call on Santos to resign, McCarthy told reporters he didn’t know about Santos embellishing his resume but he “always had a few questions about it.” McCarthy said that Santos should be subjected to a House ethics probe and that it’s up to voters in his district – not lawmakers – to decide his fate.
Watch McCarthy acknowledge apprehension he had about George Santos’ resume
Other top Republicans also aligned themselves with McCarthy’s position.
Indeed, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise stopped short of calling on Santos to resign, saying on Tuesday he’s been “answering some very serious questions” and now he has “to focus on the things that he promised he would do.”
Scalise added: “He ran on an agenda and he’s got to follow through – as well as answering questions that have been raised.”
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, who sits on the Steering Committee that names members to their spots, defended the plan to install Santos on a committees.
“In this country you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Donalds said. “There have been members who issues have come up (for) in the past. They were allowed to be on their committees, be sat on committees. And then the legal process takes hold and we make adjustments. So that’s probably what’s going to happen.”
Senior House Republicans have privately acknowledged there’s no easy way to handle the controversy surrounding Santos as they faced the decision of which committee assignments to give him. Their concern: If they were to deny him a spot now, it would set a precedent for other members who are facing intense scrutiny from the press, but have not been charged with a crime, two GOP sources said. Instead, they said, Republicans will follow the normal GOP conference procedures that would lead him to be booted from committees if he’s indicted. Yet in 2019, then-House Minority Leader McCarthy and his allies on the Steering Committee booted then-Rep. Steve King off of his committees after his racist comments came to light.
But Republicans know that Santos’ problems could get worse and force them to take stronger action against him.
Santos is already facing a federal probe led by prosecutors in New York who are investigating his finances.
In a separate matter, CNN reported that law enforcement officials in Brazil will reinstate fraud charges against Santos. Prosecutors said they will seek a “formal response” from Santos related to a stolen checkbook in 2008, after police suspended an investigation into him because they were unable to find him for nearly a decade.
In an interview last month with the New York Post, Santos denied being charged with any crime in Brazil, saying “I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”
Santos admitted to stealing a man’s checkbook that was in his mother’s possession to purchase clothing and shoes in 2008, according to documents obtained by CNN.
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More House Republicans on Sunday stopped short of calling on embattled New York Rep. George Santos to resign, while two Democrats made a fresh push for more information from GOP leaders.
Republicans back home in the GOP freshman’s Long Island district, however, doubled down Sunday on calls for him to step down.
Santos is facing growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. He also faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances. Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called Santos “a bad guy” in an interview Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“He’s not the first politician, unfortunately, to make it to Congress to lie,” the Kentucky Republican said. “But, look, George Santos was duly elected by the people. He’s going to be under strict ethics investigation, not necessarily for lying, but for his campaign finance potential violations. So I think that Santos is being examined thoroughly.”
“It’s his decision whether or not he should resign. It’s not my decision. But, certainly, I don’t approve of how he made his way to Congress,” Comer said.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said Sunday he would resign if he were in Santos’ position but said that was a decision for the New York Republican’s constituents.
“If it was me, I would resign. I wouldn’t be able to face my voters after having gone through that,” Bacon told “This Week” on ABC. “But this is between him and his constituents, largely. They elected him in, and he’s going to have to deal with them on that. I don’t think his reelection chances will be that promising, depending on how he handles this.”
Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican, also declined to say if Santos should resign from his Long Island seat.
“He clearly lied to his constituents, and … it’s going to be very, very difficult for him to gain the trust of his colleagues,” Stewart said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “The reality is you can’t expel a member of Congress. At the end of the day, it really is up to the voters in Nassau County. I can tell you this – if I were in that situation, I don’t know how I could continue to serve and I suppose he needs to ask that same question.”
Several House Republicans have called for Santos to resign, including five of his fellow New York Republican colleagues in the House. Leaders of the Nassau County GOP have also called for the congressman to step down.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Thursday that Santos has “a long way to go to earn trust” and that concerns could be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, but he emphasized that the congresman is a part of the House GOP Conference. Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, who chairs the House GOP Conference, told CNN on Thursday that the process “will play itself out.”
“He’s a duly elected member of Congress. There have been members of Congress on the Democrat side who have faced investigations before,” she said.
Meanwhile, two Democrats are calling on McCarthy and Stefanik to cooperate with any House Ethics Committee investigation into Santos.
In a letter sent to the two Republican leaders and to Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund – the super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership – New York Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres cite new reporting “indicating that each of you had at least some knowledge of lies used by Congressman George Santos to deceive his voters long before they became public.”
“We urge you to inform the American people about your knowledge of Mr. Santos’s web of deceit prior to the election so that the public understands whether and to what extent you were complicit in Mr. Santos’s fraud on his voters,” Goldman and Torres said in the letter.
CNN has reported that Conston expressed concerns about Santos’ background prior to the election and contacted lawmakers and donors about those concerns. Goldman and Torres cite reporting by The New York Times in their letter, which also indicated that associates of Stefanik were made aware of issues regarding Santos’ background ahead of the election.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Goldman called Santos a “complete and total fraud” and pushed back on attempts by some Republicans to equate the allegations against him to ethics complaints against some Democrats.
“This is a scheme to defraud the voters of the 3rd District in New York, and this needs to be investigated intensively,” he said.
Goldman and Ritchie said last week that they were filing a formal complaint with the House Ethics Committee requesting an investigation related to Santos’s financial disclosure reports. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of concealing the source of more than $700,000 that he put into his successful 2022 bid.
CNN’s KFILE also reported that Santos had said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in an email that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at that company.
Murray also previously defended the Santos campaign’s actions, saying in a statement, “The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”
Nassau County Republicans were ready Sunday in case Santos showed up at a morning fundraiser on Long Island.
“Had he shown up, we were ready to greet him,” Nassau County GOP Chair Joseph Cairo said. “We would have said, ‘You’re really not welcome. You deceived us, you lied to us.’”
Over 900 people turned out for the annual “kickoff brunch” featuring a who’s-who of Nassau County Republicans, with most wanting to distance themselves from the freshman lawmaker.
“People say he should serve out his term,” Cairo said. “He didn’t get elected. The fictional character he created got elected.”
Cairo said the topic of Santos came up at times during public speeches made by various Republicans at the fundraiser but not in a supportive way.
“Virtually everyone is done with George Santos,” said Cairo. “We’ve told him he’s not welcome at our events. We don’t invite him to our meetings.”
Former New York Rep. Peter King, who represented a different Long Island seat in Congress for nearly three decades, said no one had anything positive to say about Santos.
“I made it a point to sort of mingle in the crowd beforehand. Everyone says we’ve got to get rid of this guy,” said King, a onetime chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “He’s dangerous to the party and dangerous to the country.”
King said local Republicans would now move to ostracize Santos as much as possible.
“That’s not to punish him but to send the signal to everyone, including Washington, that he has to go,” the former congressman said. “They can’t be slow-walking it in Washington, waiting for something to happen in Washington.”
Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a freshman lawmaker from a neighboring Long Island district, said Santos won’t have support from the party if he opts to stay put and run for reelection next year.
“We’ve all called for George Santos’ resignation. If that’s not something that’s going to happen, then I think it’s clear … that we are ready to do what we need to do when it comes to the polls in two years,” he said.
“One of the things that I think is really bothering people the most is the fact that he claimed he was of the Jewish faith and that his grandparents survived the Holocaust,” D’Esposito said. “In the district that I run in, we have a very large population of Orthodox and a large Jewish population. It’s not something that we could stand for.”
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CNN
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Concerns over Rep. George Santos’ backstory became louder over the summer and into the fall campaign season, and issues surrounding the recently elected Republican congressman from New York had not been a secret, a GOP source told CNN on Friday.
When it became clearer that Santos had a chance at winning his New York district, people talked more about how his backstory didn’t add up, the source said.
There was trepidation among consultants, donors and other Republicans – including those in Washington – that what Santos was saying about himself wasn’t accurate and that his biography didn’t line up, the source said. There had also been an expectation that some kind of major story would drop in the press before the election, the source said. But that story never came.
Among those who expressed concerns, according to a source, was Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund PAC and a close associate of now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Conston contacted lawmakers and donors, sharing his concerns about Santos, the source said.
A representative for the Congressional Leadership Fund declined to comment.
Among potential donors, one person who went to a Santos fundraising event in March 2022 told CNN that he immediately could tell Santos was not being truthful. Santos, he said, boasted about his time at Goldman Sachs, promised to pressure China and planned to require the US to default on its debt to not pay China – something that anyone who worked in finance would know to be a catastrophic mistake.
A separate donor who now feels conned said he gave substantial amounts of money to Santos, who he felt came across as “maybe” an embellisher. “He seemed like a novice but I believed his heart was in the right place,” the source said.
The revelations come as the freshman congressman faces growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history. CNN’s KFILE also reported that Santos had said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in an email that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at that company.
Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume, but maintains he is “not a criminal.”
The New York Times first reported details of what Republicans knew about Santos before the election.
According to the Times, some of the GOP associates assisting Santos’ campaign were alarmed by the findings of a background study on Santos conducted by a Washington research firm, prompting them to advise him to end his bid. Santos had permitted his campaign to run the study in late 2021 as he prepped his run for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, the Times reported Friday.
According to the Times, it remains unclear who else – if anyone – learned about the background study’s findings at the time, or whether party leaders were made aware of the information.
Earlier this week, Nassau County GOP leaders insisted they had no indication that Santos had misled them before The New York Times broke the story after the election.
CNN has reached out to Santos’ lawyer for comment on the Times reporting. Murray told the Times that “it would be inappropriate to respond due to ongoing investigations.”
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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said Saturday that fellow Republican Rep. George Santos, the embattled New York congressman who has admitted to lying about parts of his biography and faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances, “will have to go through the congressional ethics process” but shouldn’t be shunned by his colleagues as it plays out.
“George Santos will have to go through the congressional ethics process. I don’t want to prejudge that process, but I think he deserves the chance to at least make his case. There are requirements members of Congress have to meet when it comes to the money that they donate to their own campaigns,” Gaetz said in an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish.
“But until then, I don’t think that George Santos should be subject to shunning because the Americans he serves deserve representation, and they have real challenges, and we ought to work together to solve their challenges and meet their needs,” he said.
Gaetz interviewed Santos on Thursday when the Florida Republican sat in for Steve Bannon on the latter’s podcast “War Room.” In the interview, Santos declined to divulge the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars he gave his campaign for his Long Island seat. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint earlier this week with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of concealing the source of more than $700,000 that he put into his successful 2022 bid.
Santos’ personal lawyer, Joe Murray, has defended the campaign’s activity, saying in a previous statement, “The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”
Santos is facing backlash from Democrats and within his own party with a growing number of House Republicans calling for him to resign or saying he can’t serve effectively. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has stood by Santos, while also saying that he has “a long way to go to earn trust.”
Santos has pushed back on calls for his resignation, insisting he has “done nothing unethical” while brushing off concerns about the ethics complaint.
Meanwhile, in his interview Saturday, Gaetz reiterated his call for giving C-SPAN cameras greater access in the House chamber, saying that “if we had cameras on the floor, my suspicion is we would have far better attendance during debates that impact the lives of our fellow Americans.”
“The public value of being able to see the human interactions in frustration, in warmth, in all of those things far outweighs the risk that people will play to the cameras. I mean, we have that during debate one way or the other,” he told Smerconish. “I think some of the old guard in Congress opposes this because they want to continue to maintain the fiction that when four or five people are on the floor spending millions of dollars, that that is actually the action of the whole legislative body when the reality is far different.”
C-SPAN sent a letter to McCarthy earlier this week asking for permission to operate its own independent cameras in the House chamber.
The House normally forbids independent media coverage of proceedings. But during special events, such as during last week’s election of the House speaker, independent cameras from outlets such as C-SPAN are permitted.
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Republican Rep. George Santos, said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Once the company, where he worked, came under federal scrutiny, Santos claimed publicly that he was unaware of accusations of fraud at the firm, a CNN KFile review of Santos’ social media and statements found.
Santos, the embattled freshman Republican, faces growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. Santos admitted to “embellishing” his resume, but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”
Santos worked at Harbor City Capital Corp. in 2020 and 2021, a company the SEC said was a “classic Ponzi scheme” in an April 2021 complaint against the firm. A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud where existing investors are paid with funds from new investors, often promising artificially high rates of return with little risk. Santos was not named in the SEC complaint.
Joseph Murray, an attorney for Rep. Santos, told CNN in an email on Thursday that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at the company.
“As to any questions about Harbor City Capital, in light of the ongoing investigation, and for the benefit of the victims, it would be inappropriate to respond other than to say that Congressman Santos was completely unaware of any illegal activity going on at Harbor City Capital,” Murray told CNN.
Santos told The Daily Beast in 2022 that he was “as distraught and disturbed as everyone else” to learn of allegations against Harbor City. But in a since-removed tweet on his since-deleted personal Twitter account, a potential customer questioned claims the company had a 100% bank guarantee on their investment in the form of a stand by line of credit (SBLC).
“The market instability is leading to sever (sic) capital erosion. @HarborCityCap offers you a strategy that mitigates loss and risk while creating cash flow, meanwhile your principle is 100% secured by an SBLC held by various major institutions. #fixedincome #alternativeinvestment #win,” Santos tweeted in April 2020 under the name George Devolder, using his mother’s family name.
In June, a potential customer responded to that tweet from Santos saying he looked into a SBLC from Harbor City and found it to be fraudulent.
“George, this SBLC I received from Harbor City was looked into, and Deutsche Bank claims is a complete fraud and not signed by the bank officer on the document. How do you explain this?,” the user said.
“I’m sorry I’m not following you. Could you please send me an email at George.devolder@harborcity.com and we can go over this together. Our SBLC is 100% legitimate and issued by their institution. I look forward to hearing from you,” responded Santos.
In fact, according to the SEC complaint, “at no point” was Harbor City Capital “ever issued a SBLC,” despite claims from the company.
Dylan Riddle, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, told CNN on Monday that they had no affiliation with Harbor City Capital.
“Harbor City Capital was not a client of Deutsche Bank,” he said.
Attorney Katherine C. Donlon, the court-appointed receiver for Harbor City Capital told CNN in an email on Friday Santos was affiliated with Harbor City Capital from mid January 2020 through April 2021.
On Wednesday, the Nassau County GOP and several New York Republican congressmen called on Santos to resign. Santos still has the tacit support of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said it was up to the voters to decide.
In other media reviewed by CNN’s KFile from 2020, Santos called himself “the head guy” at the Harbor City office in New York and the executive at the company. In one 2020 interview, Santos said he managed a $1.5 billion fund for the company with returns of 12% and 26% on investors’ money.
“Currently at Harbor City Capital, I manage a 1.5 billion fund, right?,” said Santos. “And I know how to manage it well. I give record returns to anybody who watches this, they’ll understand. I’m giving, a 12% fixed yield income return a year, which nobody in the market’s giving four and we’re giving 12. We’re also giving up to 20 to 26% in IRR return on our investors’ capital. So if there’s something I know how to do, it’s manage dollars and grow them.”
The SEC filed a complaint in April 2021 against Harbor City Capital and founder Jonathan P. Maroney, alleging that Maroney raised $17.1 million by deceiving more than 100 hundred investors through a series of unregistered fraudulent security offerings and used the money to enrich himself and his family. The SEC claimed that of the investor money collected and deposited into Harbor City Capital bank accounts “at most” only $449,000 were used for business expenses.
Neither Santos nor other Harbor City Capital employees were named in the complaint.
In October, Maroney was granted a stay in federal court for the SEC’s civil lawsuit, after Maroney noted that he “is currently the target in a related criminal investigation.” He is representing himself in the case.
CNN reached out to Maroney for comment but did not receive a response.
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Newly elected Republican Congressman George Santos says he won’t step down amid the chorus of calls for his resignation over lies he’s told about his past, but experts say questions about his campaign finances could ultimately push him to reconsider.
His Long Island constituents say Santos seemed to come out of nowhere when he defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman for the seat previously held by now-retired Rep. Tom Suozzi, flipping a blue district to red. Now, the embattled congressman is facing probes by state and federal prosecutors, as well as complaints to the Federal Election Commission and a congressional ethics committee regarding his financial disclosures.
The questions surrounding Santos’ personal and campaign finances have increased in the wake of his admission in an interview with the New York Post last month that he had “embellished” his work and education history during his congressional campaign. That admission came after The New York Times first reported it was unable to confirm key details about his background.
Alex Brandon / AP
In interviews with CBS News, experts cited concerns about Santos’ campaign finances — from controversial donors to questions about how his campaign handled those funds.
Santos’ major backers include a migrant smuggler, an unlikely Trump donor, the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch and a convicted felon.
A controversial donor, who along with his apparent domestic partner gave a combined $34,500 to Santos, is Andrew Intrater, the CEO of a company which once had ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch Intrater is the CEO of Sparrow Capital — an investment firm formerly known as Columbus Nova. Prior to the imposition of sanctions on the oligarch in 2018, it was listed in regulatory filings as an affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova Group, an aluminum, energy and telecom conglomerate. Intrater, who is Vekselberg’s cousin, also served as a former director of Renova, according to a 2010 filing.
Intrater is a prolific donor to Republican candidates and causes — he paid $250,000 to attend former President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.
Intrater did not respond to a request for comment.
Intrater isn’t the only prolific supporter of Trump-aligned Republican causes to make large donations to Santos. Cheng Gao, an immigrant from China with a Trump Tower apartment who also attended the former president’s 2017 inauguration, gave $11,200 to Santos for his 2022 campaign. Gao could not be reached for comment. CBS News has not learned how either Intrater or Gao came to be Santos supporters.
Meanwhile, Rocco Oppedisano’s family was visibly involved with Santos’s campaign. Reportedly an Italian national, the 54-year-old, donated $500 to a victory committee benefiting Santos’ campaign in September according to FEC records. That donation to the son of Brazilian immigrants who campaigned as tough on immigration, drew attention after the Daily Beast reported that Oppedisano had pleaded guilty to smuggling undocumented migrants into the U.S. in 2019. A further review of Oppedisano’s court records show his criminal record also includes convictions for grand larceny, DWIs, and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.
When Oppedisano was arrested on his 63-foot Sunseeker yacht, the INXS FINALLY, in December 2019 off the coast of Miami, the Coast Guard found he was smuggling over a dozen undocumented migrants from the Bahamas to Florida. They also said they found over $200,000 in U.S. and Bahamian currency hidden behind a panel in a closet on board. He was sentenced to time served and three years of supervised release.
Oppedisano lived in the United States from the age of 5 with his family in New York, but he was deported from the country in January 2019 according to court documents. CBS News was unable to confirm Oppedisano’s current whereabouts, but the donation receipt from Santos’ campaign included a Whitestone, N.Y., address believed to belong to Oppedisano’s parents. CBS made repeated attempts to reach Oppedisano but received no response.
Members of Oppedisano’s family also donated to Santos’s campaign. His brother and niece, who run an Italian restaurant in Queens called Il Bacco, were appointed to Santos’ Small Business coalition. Santos, who posted that he frequented Il Bacco on Instagram, spent more than $25,000 at the establishment on his campaign’s dime since his first failed attempt to win a seat in Congress in 2020, according to FEC records. The disbursements were filed under meeting charges or food and beverage expenses between 2020 and 2022, covering both of Santos’s races for office. The campaign also owed nearly $19,000 to the restaurant for an “Election Night Event.”
Brett Kappel, an attorney with Harmon Curran, told CBS News that accepting donations from foreign nationals who are not legal residents of the U.S. is a crime under the Federal Election Campaign Act.
“These contributions could be especially problematic for Representative Santos if any of the ongoing investigations determine that these funds ultimately came from one or more foreign nationals,” Kappel said.
Santos could face charges including campaign finance violations and other crimes such as mail or wire fraud, and if convicted, according to Kappel, an expert on campaign finance, lobbying and government ethics laws, the congressman could face expulsion from Congress.
According to Kappel, most members of Congress resign after a felony conviction. But some refuse. The late congressman Jim Traficant, Democrat of Ohio, was convicted on charges of corruption in 2002. After resisting calls by Republicans and Democrats to resign, he was expelled by a near-unanimous House vote.
If Santos is charged and convicted for campaign finance crimes, Kappel says, “he, his campaign committee and possibly some of his donors will also be hit with civil penalties by the FEC.” But if he faces a Justice Department investigation, Kappel says Santos’s congressional seat could be a “significant bargaining chip,” since resignation is typically a condition of a plea deal.
Santos had several mechanisms to receive donations for his campaign. He had several joint fundraising partner committees, and a leadership PAC that helped him raise millions of dollars.
The limit on individual donations directly made to candidate committees is $2,900 per election (like a primary, general or special election), while individual contributions made to political action committees are capped at a total of $5,000 a year.
A candidate’s committee is the principal means for a campaign to fundraise for an election, but a political action committee is “a popular term for a political committee organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests,” according to OpenSecrets.
Super PACs, however, can receive an unlimited amount of donations, including from labor organizations and corporations, but cannot donate to individual candidates or even political parties. Instead they work to communicate with the public via messaging, such as running ads and sending mail to homes.
For donors, Robert Maguire, the research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, says at its core, the big dollar donations are really about “proximity to power in America.” The more one donates the more access they receive by means of invitations to events or by establishing connections to those in power, he said.
That philosophy appears not to have been lost on Santos: Newsday reported that four political action committees associated with Santos and his family had donated nearly $185,000 to the Nassau County GOP committees since 2021.
At a press conference calling for Santos’s resignation on Wednesday, Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo said, “[Santos] has no place in the Nassau County Republican Committee nor should he serve in public service nor as an elected official.”
Santos’s leadership PAC, GADS PAC, in particular stood out to Maguire.
“It is really rare for someone who hasn’t been elected to have a leadership PAC,” Maguire said.
The FEC defines a leadership PAC as “a political committee that is directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by a candidate or an individual holding a federal office. The committee is not an authorized committee of the candidate or office holder, and is not affiliated with an authorized committee of a candidate or office holder.”
A review of the statements for both Santos’ campaign committee and leadership PAC show that they share the same treasurer, a practice that Maguire says is common.
Maguire described it as a tool that is normally used by established politicians as a “slush fund.” It’s a campaign finance “gray area,” Maguire explained, or a loophole for personal expenditures.
How Santos personally came into so much money within one election cycle also remains a point of confusion. On Monday, the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center accused Santos in a complaint to the FEC of illegally using campaign funds for personal expenses, including for an apartment rental, and for submitting false information about both the source of his campaign donations and his campaign’s expenses.
On Capitol Hill he faces a complaint from two of his Democratic colleagues from New York, Reps. Ritchie Torres and Daniel Goldman, who requested the House Ethics panel investigate whether Santos broke the Ethics in Government Act by failing to file “timely, accurate and complete financial disclosure reports.” They hand-delivered their ethics complaint to Santos’ office.
In their complaint, Torres and Goldman allege that Santos’s financial disclosure reports for 2020 and 2022 are “sparse and perplexing,” and claim the Republican’s public statements “have contradicted some information included in the 2022 financial disclosure and confirmed that the 2022 financial disclosure failed to disclose other information.”
CBS News has previously reported that federal prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York are looking into Santos’ finances and financial disclosures after he admitted to fabricating significant parts of his resume ahead of his election.
In his May 2020 campaign disclosure filings, he claimed to have no assets and a $55,000 salary from a previous employer. However, in disclosures filed just weeks before election day for his latest campaign, Santos claimed to have earned $750,000 in annual salary for the period between January 2021 and December 2022, as well as millions in dividends from his company, Devolder Organization LLC.
That money is believed to have allowed him to loan $700,000 to his campaign. There is limited information on the company, no visible website to speak of and apparently nothing publicly known about the source of its earnings, and its ability to gather that amount of revenue in a just two years’ time. Santos has claimed that some of his business profits arose from the connections he made at his previous employer, Harbor City Capital Corporation. Harbor City has been accused in an SEC complaint as being a “classic Ponzi scheme.” Santos was not named in that complaint.
The Devolder Organization was created in May of 2021, and is based in Melbourne, Fla., with its original address belonging to a now-defunct OBGYN office. Devolder was dissolved in September of last year after failing to file its annual report, but reactivated just a week ago, following the first reports of gaps in Santos’ biography.
“This member of Congress has flaunted campaign finance laws,” Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause/New York said. “There is no respect for the rules or the voters.”
According to Lerner, the personal financial disclosures made by candidates are critical for voters to have at their disposal prior to casting their vote. She says “porous” campaign finance laws and lack of enforcement from the FEC have allowed this particular situation to devolve.
Amid all this controversy Santos has repeatedly rejected calls to resign. A representative for Santos did not immediately return requests for comment.
Alyssa Spady contributed to this report.
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He admitted to lying about his education and professional career, and now his background and finances are under investigation.
If George Santos, the newly sworn in congressman from New York, worked in business, he’d be fired, outraged voters from his district say.
Those voters have a point.
“If you lie on the application and to me in an interview, what will you do on the job? It’s a big red flag for me,” said Barbara DeMatteo, director of HR Consulting at Portnoy, Messinger, Pearl & Associates in Jericho.
Of Santos, “no one did their due diligence,” said Barbara Frankel, CEO of Coaching Initiatives in East Quogue, who has an HR background in banking and finance.
Experts in human resources, team-building and leadership told Long Island Business News that willfully lying on an application is a terminable offense.
It’s an aspect that should be “covered in the employee handbook’s general standards of conduct,” said Nicole Craveiro, chief HR officer of CraveHRO in Ronkonkoma. “Some handbooks say lying” on an application is a firing offense.
How prevalent is faking credentials? As many as 42.5 million Americans lied their way to a job, according to a recent survey from StandOutCV, a provider of CV resources and services, which in October surveyed 1,785 adults in the United States.
In the business world, willful lying during the job application process can trigger big consequences, from getting “fired, removed from the hiring process, or blacklisted completely,” according to StandOutCV.
And for good reasons, experts say.
Trust is a big factor, said Frankel, who works with leaders, teams and organizations.
Employers must “verify someone is who they say they are,” Frankel said. “It’s critical for a leader to build a great team. You can’t build a great team without trust.” Those team members need to trust the people they work with and their leader, she said.
The interview process itself can be an eye-opener.
Barbara DeMatteo
“I take a look at what are their gaps in employment and do they make sense,” DeMatteo said. “Red flags are so important.”
Yet there are plenty of instances where gaps make perfect sense, including caring for relatives, Frankel said.
DeMatteo looks to see if the resume and application match. It also leaves room to spot new insights, including if the person even bothered to fill out the work experience portion of the application, rather than simply say “See resume.” If the person won’t fill out that portion of the application, if hired, “what will they do on the job?” DeMatteo asked.
DeMatteo recommends that at least two people conduct interviews, and coordinate what each person would talk about, and “it shouldn’t be a rinse and repeat,” she said. For example, as an HR expert, DeMatteo spends about an hour speaking with the candidate about the person’s background, work history and what they liked about past job roles.
It’s in these kinds of conversations that DeMatteo can spot discrepancies.
“I’ve seen everything,” she said. For instance, one candidate spoke of her experience in strategic decision-making and negotiations. But when DeMatteo asked, “what did you negotiate,” the candidate “fumbled,” saying, ‘Oh, no, the CEO made the decisions. I was in the room.’”
The secong interviewer would dig into the specifics of the roles and responsibilities of the job.
“This is why the application is so critical,” especially when the applicant has signed it, affirming that the information provided is “true to the best of their knowledge,” DeMatteo said.
The application can serve as a tool if it turned out the person willfully lied on it. If the person has not yet been hired, it’s usually fitting to thank them for coming in and note that the organization has “decided to consider someone else,” DeMatteo said. But the employer should document why in case the candidate files a discrimination claim.
Nicole Craveiro
“All candidates have a right to their background check,” Craveiro said.
These candidates might question if the background check highlighted something that was unrelated to the job role that prevented them from getting hired.
If the employer wants to terminate a recent hire, “the person has to have a darn good reason,” which is why she advises to “document it as if I had to explain to a judge and jury why I let the person go,” DeMatteo said.
Background checks, once an offer is made, are key to a good hiring experience, experts said.
And while larger organizations tend to have the deep pockets to conduct deep dives into a candidate, these steps are worthwhile investments, experts said.
“It’s more cost-effective” when one considers the expense of “hiring, onboarding and training,” Frankel said.
However, when it comes to criminal background checks, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “discourages blanket exclusions of individuals convicted of criminal offenses,” according to the Society for Human Resource Management. To determine the viability of a candidate who has been convicted of criminal offenses, consider “the nature and gravity of the offense; the time passed since the offense; [and] the nature of the job sought,” according to SHRM.
All of this can be a lot to navigate.
“I never recommend to clients that they do it themselves – a third party can guide you,” Craveiro said. That’s because there could be potential risks and liabilities for anyone who is not familiar with all of the nuances of federal, state and local laws.
Had more due diligence about Santos been conducted, and broadcasted, many voters would not have cast their vote for him, according to published reports. And now he is persona non-grata to the people of his local party. On Wednesday, Nassau GOP chairman Joe Cairo, stood with dozens of elected officials and said, “on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for [Santos’] immediate resignation.”
In the House chamber, Santos was often photographed alone, seemingly ostracized. It’s an indicator of what can happen when toxicity is added to the mix. And the outcome is still to be determined.
Though it’s possible in the business world that the person may integrate well with the team, if it’s “not a good person on top of that, it can create a bad culture,” Craveiro said. “If you don’t discipline someone, think about the message it sends to the rest of the team.”
Distrusting behavior can “create an environment where people don’t thrive,” Frankel said. “To do their best work, people need to be fully engaged and be the happiest and most productive. It helps with retention. People feel empowered and thrive, but it only works where there’s trust.”
And while in some instances, people feel they must oversell themselves, saying they have certain skills when they don’t, that’s not necessary, in order to get hired, Frankel said.
“If you don’t have the skills, you can learn them – there are so many online courses you can take,” Frankel said.
“Some are free,” she added. “Start the training and put it on your resume with an expected completion date. Or volunteer somewhere to develop a portfolio.”
But, she said, “it shocks me that some people do not know that you can’t lie and that everything has to be truthful.”
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CNN
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Rep. George Santos, the recently elected GOP congressman from New York who has admitted to lying about parts of his resume, is facing escalating backlash from his own party as a growing number of House Republican lawmakers call for him to resign or say he can’t serve effectively even as Speaker Kevin McCarthy has stood by the embattled congressman.
Santos has so far been defiant, pushing back on calls for his resignation – and House GOP leadership has not called on him to do so. Instead, McCarthy, a Republican from California, has indicated he will not join demands from New York GOP leaders, and others, for Santos’ resignation – and has indicated that Santos is on track to still receive committee assignments.
McCarthy told reporters on Thursday that Santos has “a long way to go to earn trust” and that concerns could be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, but emphasized that Santos is a part of the House GOP conference.
“The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference,” he said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
The controversy surrounding Santos is presenting an early test of McCarthy’s leadership as speaker and has created a major issue for the new GOP majority.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, echoed McCarthy, saying, “Obviously, you know, we’re finding out more, but we also recognize that he was elected by his constituents.”
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who endorsed Santos in his race, would not call on the embattled freshman to resign on Thursday.
“It will play itself out,” she told CNN. “He’s a duly-elected member of Congress. There have been members of Congress on the Democrat side who have faced investigations before.”
But the embattled congressman faces growing condemnation from rank-and-file Republicans as new and damaging revelations come out about his past.
Two New York Republican lawmakers — US Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler — told CNN on Thursday morning they don’t believe Santos can serve his district effectively.
“There’s no way I believe he can fully fulfill his responsibilities,” Molinaro said.
“I think it’s clear, like I said, he has lost the confidence of people in his own community, so I think he needs to seriously consider whether or not he can actually do his job effectively and right now it’s pretty clear he can’t,” Lawler told CNN.
Lawler later said in a statement, “I believe he is unable to fulfill his duties and should resign.”
Santos refused to address any of the allegations of lying about his resume or his colleagues’ calls for his immediate resignation on Thursday morning, saying only “I was elected by the people” before ducking into his office.
Leaders of the Nassau County Republican Party on Wednesday called for Santos to resign from office over his lies to voters and fabrications about his personal life. Santos, however, swiftly rejected the calls to resign.
“Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for his immediate resignation,” chairman Joseph G. Cairo said at a news conference on Long Island, adding that the congressman’s campaign was made up “of deceit, lies and fabrication.”
Cairo was joined by a slate of local party officials and, remotely from Washington, DC, by Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who also called for Santos to step down. D’Esposito was joined later Wednesday in calling for Santos’ resignation by four more in the US House GOP conference: New York Reps. Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy and Brandon Williams, as well as South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace.
Santos has faced growing criticism from congressional Democrats, and a growing number of Republicans, after he admitted to fabricating sections of his resume – including his past work experience and education.
CNN reported last month that federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Santos’s finances. Separately, CNN has reported that Santos’s campaign finances show dozens of expenses just below the FEC’s threshold to keep receipts.
In a separate matter, CNN reported that law enforcement officials in Brazil will reinstate fraud charges against Santos. Prosecutors said they will seek a “formal response” from Santos related to a stolen checkbook in 2008, after police suspended an investigation into him because they were unable to find him for nearly a decade.
Santos admitted to stealing a man’s checkbook that was in his mother’s possession to purchase clothing and shoes in 2008, according to documents obtained by CNN.
CNN’s KFile uncovered even more falsehoods from Santos, including claims he was forced to leave a New York City private school when his family’s real estate assets took a downturn and stating he represented Goldman Sachs at a top financial conference.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
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Washington — Embattled Republican Rep. George Santos of New York said he won’t resign from Congress on Wednesday, rebuffing calls from a growing number of fellow Republicans who have denounced him for lying about his background.
“I will not,” Santos responded when reporters on Capitol Hill asked if he’ll step down. He reiterated his stance on Twitter, where he wrote: “I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.”
Republicans from New York’s Nassau County held a press conference Wednesday morning to call on Santos to resign, a demand that was soon echoed by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a district neighboring Santos’ district.
Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph Cairo derided Santos’ campaign as a “campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication,” and called for his “immediate resignation.”
“He’s not welcome here at Republican headquarters, for meetings or at any of our events,” Cairo said. “As I said, he’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople.”
One by one, local New York Republicans stepped up to the microphone to call on Santos to step down, citing Santos’ misrepresentation of his work history, education and heritage.
Jesse Garcia, the chairman of the GOP in neighboring Suffolk County, later released a statement endorsing Cairo’s rebuke: “George Santos’ lies and deceit have caught up to him, and the public has had enough of Mr. Santos. He is not welcome in our Republican Party and it is time for him to resign from the House of Representatives.”
Alex Brandon / AP
Federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York are looking into Santos’ finances and financial disclosures after he admitted to fabricating significant parts of his resume ahead of his successful bid for Congress, as CBS News has previously reported. Separately, the Republican district attorney for Nassau County is looking into Santos following the revelations of the Long Island congressman’s falsehoods.
Santos also faces a formal ethics complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission, as well as a House Ethics Committee complaint. In the civil complaint filed Monday with the FEC, the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center accused Santos of illegally using campaign funds for personal expenses, including to cover an apartment rental.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy declined to call for Santos’ resignation on Capitol Hill later Wednesday. A vacancy would prompt a special election, jeopardizing a Republican seat in the closely divided House.
“Right now, the voters have a voice in the decision. It’s not where people pick and choose based upon what somebody’s press is. So he will continue to serve,” McCarthy said. When pressed on the fact that Santos had admitted to fabricating parts of his resume, he said, “Yeah, so did a lot of people here, in the Senate and others, but the one thing I think, it’s the voters who made that decision. He has to answer to the voters and the voters can make another decision in two years.”
Asked whether he would put Santos on a House committee, McCarthy said, “As of right now, yeah.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Tuesday that Republicans are handling the Santos matter “internally.”
“Well, you saw him seated last week,” Scalise said during a House GOP press conference. “There were no challenges to that. This is something that’s being handled internally. Obviously there were concerns about what we had heard. And so we’re going to have to sit down and talk to him about it.”
Paige McCarty and Rebecca Kaplan contributed reporting.
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