A news report on Monday questioned whether the career résumé of the incoming Republican congressman George Santos – who was elected last month to serve a typically Democrat suburban district north-east of New York City – may be largely fictional.
According to an analysis by the New York Times, the biographical sketch offered by the 34-year-old, first-generation Brazilian-American, who ran as a member of a “new generation of Republican leadership” as the “full embodiment of the American dream”, may not have worked at Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, graduated from a New York college, or run a pet rescue charity, as he has claimed.
Moreover, Santos said that his family owned a portfolio of 13 properties, but the Times found only one – an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. And his claims that he is owner of a corporation earning him an annual salary of $750,000 (£616,000) and millions in dividends do not appear to hold up.
What the paper did find in Santos’s name were records of a 2010 charge in his native Brazil for using a stolen checkbook to buy shoes, and two eviction proceedings against him in New York over the past seven years.
Claims that the incoming US House representative’s career may not be as stated go further. He asserted in an interview that his company, the Devolder Organization, had “lost four employees” at the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. But a check over the victims found that none of the 49 victims were connected to the company.
In statement to the Times, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs said they had no record of Santos ever working there. Nor did Baruch College find any record of Santos studying there, as he purported. The Internal Revenue Service said it was unable to locate a record for an animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, that he said he’d run for five years beginning in 2013.
The Daily Beast reported in April that Santos, who has identified as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and presented himself as a “walking, living, breathing contradiction”, had served as a director of a Florida investment firm, Harbor City Capital, that the SEC accused of running a $17m (£14m) Ponzi – or pyramid – scheme.
Santos was not named in the lawsuit and has denied knowledge of the alleged fraud.
During his campaign for Congress, in which he successfully ran to replace the retiring Democrat Tom Suozzi, Santos spoke often of draining the swamp. He appeared to be all in on Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again candidate, benefiting during the midterm elections from suburban voters’ fear of a city-focused crime wave.
Santos’s campaign spending disclosures show that he spent lavishly as a candidate, including buying shirts for his staff from Brooks Brothers, spent about $40,000 (£32,864) on flights and more than $17,000 (£13,967) in Florida, including on a stay at the Breakers, a luxury hotel and resort close to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Santos, who predicted over the summer that “we are going to be remembered as the most barbaric generation to ever live” because of abortion’s legality in many states, appeared at a conservative gala in Manhattan earlier this month alongside white nationalists, rightwing conspiracy theorists and European representatives of far-right parties, according to the Times.
The event included an appearance by Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican representative from Georgia, who recently said she would have made sure the January 6 Capitol rioters were all armed. He has also insisted that the failure of an earlier campaign for office was the result of election fraud.
In a statement to the Times about the latest questions to confront him, his lawyer, Joe Murray, said in a statement that it was “no surprise that congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations”.
A statement to the Washington Post from the Democratic opponent Santos defeated, Robert Zimmerman, said the Times piece was “not a shock”.
“We always knew he was running a scam against the voters, and we raised many of these issues but were drowned out” by a simultaneous election for governor, among other things, Zimmerman’s statement said.
