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 the 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.
Though the North Shore Leader, a small paper on Long Island, had broken the story before Santos’s election to Congress, it was only after the New York Times reported on Santos’s litany of fabrications in December 2022 that 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.
Santos 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.
• This article was amended on 27 November 2023 to add text clarifying that the North Shore Leader newspaper reported on concerns about George Santos’ public statements before the New York Times.
