Has George Santos’ political career been over before it even started? The 34-year-old Republican was elected to the House of Representatives and will be sworn in this week, but became entangled in a self-spun web of lies about his origins, education and work experience.
For Republicans, too, there seems to be a limit to the amount of lies you can spread without consequences. George Santos, a Republican politician who was elected in November as a member of the House of Representatives for a district of New York, is experiencing this.
Not only Democratic politicians, but also some party members have called on Santos to reconsider his place in the House of Representatives. The new members will be sworn in this week. “This is problematic in so many ways,” said outgoing Texan Representative Kevin Brady: “He has lied repeatedly.” To regain confidence, Santos must “take huge steps”.
What is going on? During the campaign, Santos presented himself as a proud gay Jew with a university education, experience at large banks and a substantial real estate portfolio. In addition, his Ukrainian grandparents had fled the Holocaust and his mother had been a victim of the 9/11 attacks.
It’s a biography to impress voters: George Santos, the immigrant son who rose to be a banker, who belongs to multiple minorities by his heritage and sexuality and against all odds reached the top. And who, through his mother, is also closely linked to a trauma that fuels patriotic American feelings. In his constituency, he defeated his Democratic opponent with 55 percent of the vote.
Problem: Santos is a Catholic whose Brazilian parents have neither Jewish nor Ukrainian roots, with no education, real estate or a roaring resume on Wall Street. His mother died in 2016. And he was married to a woman for many years.
Sort of Jewish
After journalistic revelations, Santos was reluctant to admit that he had lied or tried to contort himself to show that his entire lie was actually a half-truth.
Yes, he was “of course Catholic”, but he never claimed to be Jewish used to be. He was Jew-ish: kind of Jewish. “I said that because I had discovered that my maternal family has a Jewish background.” There is no evidence for this, by the way.
That he claimed to have studied at Baruch College was “an embellishment” of his resume: “I take responsibility for that, we do stupid things in life.”
His marriage to a woman? “I have dated women in the past, I have been married to a woman. Those are personal matters. I am very homosexual and have no problem with my sexuality. People change; I am one of those people who change.”
Okay, he might not have worked for banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but he would have worked with them, as a customer of a company he was employed by: “Bad choice of words.”
And well, his mother had not died on 9/11, she had been present in the South Tower of the WTC. She died of cancer “several years later,” Santos corrected himself, suggesting that the polluted air she had breathed in the Twin Towers had led to her illness, as had many others.
Those are just the big lies that Santos has told. He also spread untruths about a robbery that would have been committed against him, his involvement with a charity and problems with the Brazilian judiciary.
To research
Despite Santos’ flexible approach to the truth, he has said he will simply take his seat. The highest echelons of the Republican Party are keeping quiet for now. The party is already facing internal strife, making it uncertain whether party leader Kevin McCarthy will win enough votes for the presidency of the House of Representatives. They therefore cannot use a dissident Santos.
That does not mean that there are no consequences for Santos. Brazilian justice has said it will reopen a case against him from 2008. At the time, when he lived in Brazil, he paid in a shop with stolen checks and under an assumed name. The case was closed because the authorities no longer had a place of residence and abode for him. But now that he’s in the US House of Representatives, the Brazilians can track him down again.
In the US, criminal investigations have also been launched into Santos’ lies, both at the federal level and in Nassau County, which includes his constituency. It is unknown what exactly is being investigated, but it may also be about the financing of his campaign. It is unclear where Santos got his money from.
Impeachment procedure
There was no way to deny Santos his seat, but once in the House of Representatives his colleagues can start proceedings against him. Some fellow New York Republicans are calling for the House Ethics Committee to investigate him.
That could eventually lead to impeachment proceedings, requiring a two-thirds majority to vote him out. However, such a majority is not likely. A Delegate has been impeached only five times before: three times in 1861 for supporting the rebel Confederacy, and then in 1980 and 2010 for bribery.
