Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, speaks to members of the media exterior prison courtroom in New York, on April 4, 2023. Credit score – Stephanie Keith—Bloomberg/Getty Pictures
It is no shock that federal prosecutors have filed prison fees towards Rep. George Santos, as CNN first reported Tuesday evening. It is solely a shock that it took this lengthy.
Ever for the reason that New York Republican hit the nationwide scene final yr by successful a congressional seat on Lengthy Island, the lies he informed about his life have been unraveling. His resume was shortly blown to bits, beginning with a New York Occasions investigation that unearthed prison fees for examine fraud in Brazil, a phony Baruch diploma (he did not attend), a pretend job on Wall Avenue, and a bogus pet nonprofit. That was only for starters.
Quickly the world knew all types of different issues Santos had made up or embellished: a Jewish background, a volleyball championship, the 9/11-related demise of his mom, a producer function within the catatonic Broadway manufacturing of Spider-Man. A stream of acquaintances emerged to element a staggering array of grifts: how he ran off with cash meant to save lots of a disabled Navy veteran’s pit bull; how he nabbed checks and a Burberry scarf; how he siphoned marketing campaign cash to pay for what appears like a roof over his head and meal after meal on the red-sauce joint Il Bacco, to say nothing of the a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} he claims to have mysteriously loaned to his marketing campaign. Santos’s lifetime of hustling rivals the pretend heiress Anna Delvey, with the worldwide swagger of Frank Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can.
Learn Extra: All of the Investigations Into George Santos.
I began reporting on Santos in 2019, after I referred to as him for a routine introductory merchandise for Newsday, Lengthy Island’s paper of data. He was supposedly launching his first run for Congress, however mentioned he was at a piece convention in Miami, some 1,300 miles from the district he wished to symbolize. That was the primary trace of weirdness. Within the years that adopted, I wrote about his lack of a set tackle, his vagueness on biographical particulars, his marketing campaign finance irregularities, and his (unverified) suggestion that he was paying authorized payments for Jan. 6 rioters. For the previous few months, I’ve delved deeper into his actions and background for my forthcoming e book, “The Fabulist: The Mendacity, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.”
Sorting info from fiction for Santos was an journey that took me so far as Brazil. After journalist Marisa Kabas discovered an image there of Santos, wearing drag on the daybreak of the Obama period, the congressman informed reporters that he was not a drag queen, however merely a younger man who “had enjoyable at a pageant.” That was not the recollection of a number of individuals I spoke to in and round Niteroi, the town subsequent to Rio the place Santos lived on and off as he got here of age. There was a household good friend who mentioned Santos was often known as a drag queen. There was the drag mentor Eula Rochard, who confirmed Santos methods to brush wigs and select earrings, and who remembered Santos saying he wished to marry wealthy sometime. There was the younger woman who as soon as thought-about Santos an uncle determine, and who cannot overlook him dancing along with her, carrying a bra and a towel on his head, to the tune of Woman Gaga’s “Unhealthy Romance.”
“Anthony is moved by cash,” that woman’s mom, Adriana Parizzi, informed me in April. (She knew Santos as Anthony Devolder, a portion of his full identify he used earlier than his life in politics.) As we spoke, Parizzi handed her telephone throughout a desk to point out me texts in Portuguese through which she blamed Santos for absconding along with her jewellery , whereas Santos referred to as her a whale and worse.
The general public accusations towards Santos are simply the tip of the iceberg. I’ve discovered three individuals on two continents to whom he raised the prospect of immigration-related marriages—to himself or others. Relations say he has run off with cash from shut kinfolk, even mooching off his grandmother. “He was making an attempt to get any kind of cash at no cost as quick as doable,” one among his ex-roommates informed me, recalling his time residing with Santos in New York within the 2010s.
The embattled congressman is a wierd character to work together with, as if all his form shifting has deformed his sense of how an individual ought to or wants to maneuver on the planet. He may be charming, and he is aware of methods to flash the impression of getting cash, whether or not it is the Cartier watch he claims is a household heirloom or the way in which he’d ostentatiously pay for an additional bottle of wine at dinner. One transient previous boyfriend, who was a dishwasher at a Florida surf-and-turf restaurant when he met Santos on Grindr, informed me that this new good friend appeared charming and excessive class: “I used to be principally McDonald’s and Taco Bell. He was principally caviar and fancy meals.”
Santos appears to lie with out having the ability to assist himself—whether or not it is telling fellow call-center employees in a dusty Faculty Level cubicle farm that his household has property in Nantucket, or his weird public declare that former Democratic congressman Steve Israel, the one-time chief of the Home Democrats’ marketing campaign arm, was going to vote for Santos, the primary Republican that Israel would have backed in his life.
Learn Extra: Why a Drag Queen Previous Will not Loosen the GOP Grip of George Santos.
The fees towards Santos stay beneath seal. It is not identified what crimes he’s alleged to have dedicated. The congressman didn’t return a request for remark Tuesday evening, however he has hardly been hiding in latest days. Simply final week he requested me on the telephone about my makes an attempt to report on his background and speak to individuals who knew him, calling again to say extra, and eventually texting threats. (“I’ll transfer ahead with authorized ramifications when you do not cease,” and so forth.). He has filed to run for re-election, placing Home Republican leaders in a bind—compelled to again an alleged serial grifter, or throw one among their very own overboard, decreasing their already slim majority.
I have been informed that Santos’s mom—whose funeral-home prices had been by no means paid regardless of the household’s church elevating cash for that objective, and giving that cash to Santos—was identified to sigh with exasperation when confronted with one among her son’s larger lies: “Oh, Anthony and his tales.”
These tales could now be coming again to hang-out Santos in a courtroom of legislation. However his personal story is simply starting.