| Claims reportedly made by and about George Santos and other issues(1) | Status |
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| Education | |
| Claimed he attended elite Horace Mann School | False Statement – “We’ve searched the records and there is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended Horace Mann,” Ed Adler, a spokesman for the Horace Mann school, told CNN. |
| Claimed “They sent me to a good prep school, which was Horace Mann Prep in the Bronx. And, in my senior year of prep school, unfortunately my parents fell on hard times, which was something that would later become known as the depression of 2008. But we were hit a little earlier on with the overleveraging of real estate. And the market started to implode. Um, and the first thing to go was the prep school. You know, you, you can’t afford a $2,500 tuition at that point, right? So anyway, um, I left school, uh, four months to graduation.” | False Statement – Since he did not attend Horace Mann, then he could not have left four months before graduation due to his mother’s sickness |
| Claimed he graduated from Baruch College summa cum laude with a 3.89 GPA in the top 1% of his class and as awarded a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance | False Statement – when challenged, he admitted – “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. He is a high school drop-out, who earned a High School equivalency diploma in 2006 He is a high school dropout who earned an equivalency diploma |
| Claimed he graduated from New York University Stern Business School with an MBA in international business | False statement – when challenged, he admitted – “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. |
| Lists is GMAT score at 710 | |
| Reported said “I’m into sports a little, that he was a striker and a star on the Baruch (College) volleyball team and that they won the league championship.” Claimed he had a volleyball scholarship “I actually went to school on a volleyball school. When I was in Baruch (College) … we went to play against Harvard and Yale, and we slayed them. We were champions across the Northeast corridor. Every school that came up against us—they were shaking at the time. “… Look, I sacrificed both my knees and got very nice knee replacements from playing volleyball.” | Reported by Chairman Joseph G. Cairo Jr. of the Nassau County Republican Committee Santos never attended Baruch. |
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| Prior Employment | |
| Claimed after graduating from college, he began working at Citigroup, eventually becoming “an associate asset manager” in the company’s real estate division Claimed – he worked in areas as “consumer education of new opportunities” and “investment orientation on LP base.” | False Statement – When challenged, admitted that he had “never worked directly” for Citigroup A spokeswoman for Citigroup, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, said the company could not confirm Mr. Santos’s employment. She also said she was unfamiliar with Mr. Santos’s self-described job title and noted that Citi had sold off its asset management operations in 2005. This fictitious Citigroup employment overlapped with him working as a Dish Network customer service agent earning approximately $16 per hour |
| Claimed that he was told he would not make it up the ladder at Citi Group because of his sexuality. “I started my career at Citi Group and worked my way up,” Santos said. “It’s funny, the first thing I heard when I started in my career, and I started in my late mother’s footsteps, ‘You’re a nice guy, you’re very smart but you won’t make it far in this career, you know, it is a very homophobic industry.’ I actually heard that my first six months at work and I proved them wrong.” | October 2020 interview with News 12 |
| Reported – his 2017 résumé says that Mr. Santos was a bilingual customer service representative for Citigroup in 2011 and 2012, when he was actually working at a call center for Dish Network, and also worked as a financial adviser. In the 2019 résumé, Mr. Santos said he was “asset manager associate” at the firm, which sold off its asset management business in 2005. | |
| Claimed he was employed by Goldman Sachs Claimed during an 8-month stint as a project manager at Goldman where he brags about doubling revenue growth from $300 million to $600 million and developing a “new sales strategy” for his department. | False Statement – Admitted when found out that he had “never worked directly” for Goldman Sachs |
| Stated – “Have you ever heard of a Goldman Sachs employee take the stage at the largest private equity conference in the world — SALT, run by Anthony Scaramucci — and berate their employer? Well, I did that,” Santos said on the podcast. “And I did it in the fashion of renewable energy and global warming. This was the panel I was on. And they’re all talking about solar, wind, and this was back, what, seven years ago now? And I said, you know what, this is a scam. It’s taxpayer money that gets subsidized.” | False Statement – he never worked for Goldman Sachs, and Anthony Scaramucci, who runs the conference, said there is no record of Santos having sat on a panel or even having attended any SALT conference |
| Reported – Portrayed himself as a man with family money when he worked for MetGlobal, a travel technology company or a subsidiary | Two former co-workers said that the pay was modest, and the work didn’t square with Mr. Santos’s depiction of himself as a financier passing time after bad bets left him on the outs on Wall Street. |
| Reported – he worked for Harbor City a company that was involved in a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme shut down by the SEC “When we had the opportunity to welcome him to our team, I was delighted,” the company’s founder and chief executive said in a news release. “He’s a perfect fit.” | The SEC took no action taken on Santos Scott Silver, a Florida attorney who has represented Harbor City investors allegedly bilked, said there should have been many red flags for Santos and other employees. “Any person from the financial services industry, who went to work for a company like Harbor City, should immediately have recognized that Harbor City wasn’t properly registered as a financial services company,” Silver told Mother Jones. “Even if you didn’t know the company was operating as a fraud or a Ponzi scheme, a sophisticated person affiliated with the company should have known they weren’t licensed to do what they claimed to be doing.” |
| Claimed 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 standby 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. | 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. |
| Reported Santos persuaded at least one person to make a six-figure investment in a Harbor City that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later said was a Ponzi scheme And sought to reassure the investor by saying he had personally raised nearly $100 million and had invested his own family’s money in Harbor City. Mr. Santos didn’t disclose any income from Harbor City on the financial disclosure forms that federal candidates are required to file when running for office, as earlier reported by the Washington Post. | |
| Claimed on Cowboy Logic Radio podcast, he did not name Harbor City but said he was managing “$1.5 billion” with the average investor putting in “about $50,000 to $175,000.” (If the average investor put in $175,000, more than 8,500 clients would be required to reach $1.5 billion.) “We just give them a better return than a traditional 401(k),” he said on the podcast. “In my private sector job, I am actually helping mainly retirees secure their future. So that’s what I’m about. I’m about helping people.” | |
| Claimed during his tenure as Vice President at LinkBridge Investors the firm grew 24X (from 450K to $11M) | No proof offered by Santos |
| Claimed – extensive work in capital introduction, real estate, capital markets, bio-tech and M&A. | No proof offered by Santos |
| Claimed – that he had been a journalist at a famous news organization in Brazil | Researched by friends and could find his name on its website. |
| Claimed – “I’ve been to Moscow many times in my career.” | No proof offered by Santos |
| Claimed – “carbon capture technology” as something “that I’ve helped develop and fundraised for in my career. I’ve had a very extensive role in gas and oil in this country.” | No proof offered by Santos |
| Claimed – he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” | No proof offered by Santos |
| Claimed on his resume he was skilled at real estate, budget oversight, public speaking, investor relations, proposals and presentations and even added he was experienced as a “currency and coin counter.” | No proof |
| Claimed – I did work with firms on the GP side of things like Blackstone, and Deloitte, and Robbins, Geller, Dowd and so many other big firms in the industry of private equity.” | A spokesman for Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a law firmthat sues corporations, told The Post, “We cannot verify this claim. We have no record of Mr. Santos or his business having any business relationship with our firm.” |
| Reported – Santos was a manager of Red Strategies a political consulting firm along with Jayson Benoit and other Harbor City alumni weeks after the SEC exposed an alleged $17 million Ponzi scheme at Harbor City. – see Criminal History, Investigations, Possible Violations below | No comment by Santos |
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| Campaigning and In Office | |
| Reported he encouraged Tina Forte, the Republican who ran unsuccessfully in New York’s 14th Congressional District last year against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to sign with Red Strategies and to enlist Dames and Marks for her campaign. Santos made his pitch without disclosing that he had a stake in the company, the operatives said. The Forte campaign paid more than $100,000 in 2021 to Red Strategies for fundraising and digital consulting, among other fees, federal records show. Forte split with the firm when she learned about its ownership, one of the operatives said. | |
| Claimed – in a 2021 interview with Lara Trump: “I went to business school because of Donald Trump.” “I’m a business guy. I’ve done private equity for 11 years in New York.” He added that he “I’ve had the privilege of doing business with you guys in the past” (the Trump Organization.” He told another interviewer: “I’ve gone up the chains of Wall Street. I’ve developed many companies. I’ve opened my own business.” | |
| Reported claimed to have secured the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump | He had not – claim made to Kristin Bianco |
| Reported -Throughout history, the greatest grifters have understood that dressing the part is half the game. And so, it has been with George Santos, the Republican congressman representing parts of Long Island and Queens… he just looked so darn convincing | |
| As Santos ran for Congress in 2020, he touted what he said were his 11 years of experience in the finance sector, including his work at Harbor City. “We are top, we’re within the Fortune 500 private-equity firms globally,” he told the Metropolitan Republican Club interviewer in October 2020. | The media reporting this could find no evidence that Harbor City was ever named on a Fortune 500 list, and Santos did not respond to a question about the statement. |
| Reported – Despite on paper Santos has raised over $2 million at the time, he had no visible campaign until a few weeks ago – no offices, no signs, no mailings, no significant “voter contact.” | |
| Reported he bragged about his gonzo (political) fundraising numbers, saying that he was bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars. “And then I would look in his filings and see that he had raised almost no money,” Eisen recalled. “Everybody in politics exaggerates a little bit, but this was saying he had a six-figure quarter and it would turn out that it was a four-figure quarter.” | |
| Stated in a November 2022 interview, regarding the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, saying: “I happened to, at the time, have people that worked for me in the club … My company at the time, we lost four employees that were at Pulse.” | False Statement – In a December 2022 interview, Santos changed his account, saying: “We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando”. An individual familiar with the families of all the victims stated that she knew of no victim who planned to join Santos’s company. |
| News 12 has been at Santo’s district office for over a week with the doors locked during office hours. Despite a previous staffer’s comment about the safety issue and News 12’s presence at the office, the Santos employee said they have been open for “approximately a week and a half.” | It might have been open during non-business hours which does not properly serve constituents |
| Claimed – he “was sworn in as a Member of the United States House of Representatives by the Speaker of the House on January 3rd, 2023,” | Per his website. Likely a technical error as a few other members had a similar statement. |
| Claimed – “If 142 people ask for me to resign, I’ll resign,” Santos told reporters outside his office on Capitol Hill. Santos later clarified that he was in fact referring to the more than 142,000 people who voted to elect him in New York’s Third Congressional District in November. | There are petitions for him to resign. If they get 142,000 votes it remains to be seen if he will. |
| He was in Washington on January 5, 2021 the day before the Capitol riot, when he falsely said his election had been “stolen” and asked the crowd, “Who here is ready to overturn the election for Donald Trump?” | |
| Claimed he will not accept his congressional salary of $174,000 but rather donate it on a quarterly basis to an organization such as a soup kitchen or animal shelter. The donation will be made the during the first week of April. | |
| Santos’ campaign committee told federal regulators Wednesday that it had hired Thomas Datwyler as a new treasurer amid lingering questions about the source of his wealth and irregularities in the committee’s financial reports. Datwyler said through his lawyer that there appears to be some misunderstanding as he turned the job down. Five other political fundraising committees linked to Santos filed similar paperwork with the FEC Wednesday listing Datwyler as the new treasurer. | Under federal regulations, a campaign committee can’t raise or spend money unless it has a treasurer. The treasurer collects all contributions — and only the treasurer, or a person designated by the treasurer, can approve campaign expenses. Devolder Santos for Congress filed a new statement of organization on Wednesday listing Datwyler as treasurer and custodian of records, replacing Marks, who had held both positions since Santos first ran for Congress in 2020. The form included what it said was his electronic signature, along with his email and mailing addresses. |
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| Personal Wealth (Income) | |
| Reported – in 2019 his income was only just over $50,000 derived from a venture fund called “Harbor Hill Capital,” that was closed and seized in 2020 by US federal prosecutors as a “Ponzi Scheme.” Santos was the New York Director of that “fund.” | No comment by Santos |
| Reported – when he ran for a House seat in 2020, Santos listed an income of $55,000 from LinkBridge. In 2020, Santos’ personal financial disclosures claimed that he had no assets over $5,000 – no bank accounts, no stock accounts, no real property. | A net worth barely above “zero”. |
| Stated he earned $750,000 salary two years in row | No proof offered by Santos |
| Reported – In 2022, he listed an income of $750,000 from the Devolder Organization and millions in assets. In a filing dated September 6th, 2022, claimed his assets are now as much as $11 million, including personal bank accounts of between $1 million and $5 million; a Condo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of between $500,000 and $1 million; and business interests of between $1 million and $5 million | He said the $11 million in assets reported in his financial disclosure report filed in September are tied to his Devolder consulting firm He stated – “All of my finances come from the firm. The assets are the contracts with the firm,” he told The Post. |
| His campaign website previously said that his company managed $80 million in assets | The claim on his website has since been removed. The Washington Post reported that financial data company Dun & Bradstreet estimated in July 2022 that Devolder had revenue of only about $43,688. Santos’s disclosures have not revealed any clients. |
| Claimed he owned 13 different properties | No record of George Santos owing any property. Santos told the New York Post this week that he does not personally own any properties and currently lives with his sister. |
| Claimed repeatedly to own “a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove” on Tiffany Road; and “a mansion in the Hamptons” on Dune Road. He recently told several Republicans that he was selling his “Hamptons mansion” for $10 million, because he rarely uses it. | Santos shows no US real property in his financial disclosure, although he has an investigation of Santos’ alleged “Hamptons mansion” showed the house is owned by someone else having nothing to do with Santo and has a market value of less than $2 million. campaign records show that Santos and his husband live in a rented apartment, in an attached rowhouse in Queens.” |
| Reported a local home builder said he had driven Santos around Long Island to look at mansions the candidate claimed to own and wanted to renovate. But Santos wouldn’t let the builder inside any of the homes, Lally said. He claimed he had tenants that prevented them from entering. | Tip to the North Shore Leader from the builder |
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| Charitable Works | |
| Stated that he founded and raised money for Friends of Pets United, a tax-exempt organization animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats. | a charity which helps stray dogs and cats never received the money he claimed to have raised for it. The Internal Revenue Service could not locate a record of a registered charity with that name. |
| Reported – he set up. GoFund Me page for a veteran’s dying dog in need of an operation. He raised $3,000 and did not give the money to the veteran. The dog died. | |
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| Family History | |
| Claimed “My grandfather, Ukrainian descent, my grandmother, Belgian. So that’s the story. He goes from Ukraine to Belgium, they go to Brazil,” Santos said. Claimed grandfather fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again with this grandmother fled persecution during WWII. | A genealogist told CNN Santos’ mother was born in Brazil, where her family had lived since the late 1800s before she moved to America. She never lived in Belgium, as Santos told a radio station in 2020, and his maternal grandparents never ditched their supposedly Jewish last name “Zabrovsky” after fleeing the Holocaust—because the entire backstory appears to be a sham. |
| Claimed his mother was the first female executive at a major financial institution” | No record of his mother being the first or any financial executive at any financial institution. Public employment records obtained by NBC News indicated that her sole listed employer was an imports company in Queens that went out of business in 1994. His mother’s actual occupation has been described as domestic worker or home care nurse. In fact, Ms. Devolder died in 2016, and a Brazilian community newspaper at the time described her as a cook. Mr. Santos’s friends and former roommates recalled her as a hardworking, friendly woman who spoke only Portuguese and made her living cleaning homes and selling food. None of those interviewed by The Times could recall any instance of her working in finance, and several chalked the story up to Mr. Santos’s tendency for mythmaking. |
| Claimed his mother was in her office in the South Tower on September 11, 2001, when the horrific events of that day unfolded. She survived the tragic events on September 11th, but she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer. | No proof offered by Santos Reported – his mother was in Brazil on 9/11 – shown y immigration records. |
| Claimed mother died from 9/11 related cancer | No proof of her dying from a 9/11 related cancer. Why would his mother a domestic worker be near the Word Trade Center at 9 am? |
| Claimed his mother did not apply for federal insurance because she did not want to take money from first responder, and she had more than enough finances | A Catholic priest at Saint Rita’s Catholic Church in Queens reported that Santos had told him the family could not afford a funeral when Santos’s mother died in 2016. The priest recalled that a collection at a memorial Mass raised a “significant” amount for the family, which he gave to Santos Around this time, Santos asked the former friend and co-worker to set up a GoFundMe page so that he could raise money for the funeral, telling the person he was too distraught to submit the necessary ID and bank record requirements for the crowdfunding service. The page shows that several hundred dollars was raised, and the friend said it went directly to Santos, who at the time was using the name Anthony Devolder on Facebook and with acquaintances around New York. |
| Claimed he was biracial and was born to an African American father, who had Angolan roots Claimed to be half-Black during the height of protests following George Floyd’s murder. Santos had invoked Dr. Martin Luther King’s name while criticizing a “black anthem” as being “divisive,” adding that his “biracial” background was the primary reason for his opposition. | No proof offered by Santos When someone replied to ask how Santos was biracial, the 34-year-old responded that he was “Caucasian and black,” despite no other public mention of his purported Black ancestry. |
| Reported for much of his professional career, which included a stint as regional director at an alleged Ponzi scheme, the Republican used the name George Devolder. However, as he ventured further into the world of politics, he began to increasingly use the name George Devolder-Santos or simply George Santos. Claimed “For a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refugees or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names and paperwork were changed in the name of survival. So I don’t carry the family last name that would’ve been Zabrovsky,” Santos told Fox News in February. | Professional genealogist Megan Smolenyak said there’s “no sign” of Jewish heritage in Santos’ family tree, and “no indication of name changes along the way.” |
| Reported he has used the names: Anthony Zabrovsky, George Devolder, Anthony Devolder, George Anthony Devolder, George Santos, George Anthony Devolder Santos Reported he was called “Tony D from Queens” by aides who interacted with him. Reported – he was known as drag queen named ‘Kitara’ in Brazil over a decade ago | Santos tweeted – “The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false,” |
| In his work for Harbor City, Santosused his mother’s maternal surname, Devolder, part of what he described as an effort to compartmentalize his ambitions. “From a very early age, I became George Devolder the businessman and George Santos the politician. I’ve managed to keep that very separate,” he said in one of the Zoom recordings. | |
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| Religious History | |
| Claimed was “Jewish” and described himself as a nonobservant Jew Called himself an “American Jew” and a “Latino Jew” on multiple occasions Claimed In March podcast interview that he was “raised Catholic, born to a Jewish family — very, very confusing religious background.” Last week, he told the New York Post: “I never claimed to be Jewish.” | False Statement – When challenged he said – “I never claimed to be Jewish clarified it was not Jewish but Jew…ish Also stated he was a devout Catholic Professional genealogist Megan Smolenyak said there’s “no sign” of Jewish heritage in Santos’ family tree, |
| Claimed he visited Israel “numerous times” for “educational, business, and leisurely trips,” | No record of these trips having taken place. |
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| Criminal History, Investigations, Possible Violations | |
| Claimed “I’ve worked my entire life. I’ve lived an honest life. I’ve never been accused of any bad doing.” In an interview 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.” | False Statement – the list of his dishonesty grows daily. |
| Reported that Mr. Santos assured the Nassau County Republican vetting team that he had no arrest record and no knowledge of “anyone who might have a grievance” that could harm his candidacy. | Reported Mr. Cairo said in an interview |
| Reported A Brazilian former shop clerk allegedly defrauded out of more than $1,300 by George Santos has a message to voters who cast ballots for the Republican congressman-elect: “Don’t feel guilty, he does that really well. He’s a professional liar.” Bruno Simões said that Santos in 2008 paid for merchandise using a pair of stolen checks and forging the signature of the account owner. Claimed when questioned about a theft he was accused of in Brazil, Santos said. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.” “I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes,” Santos said in an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis. | False Statement – Police and court records show that Mr. Santos stole a checkbook from a man his mother was caring for in Brazil used the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases, including a pair of shoes. Two years later, Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was later charged The court and local prosecutor in Brazil confirmed the case remains unresolved. Mr. Santos did not respond to an official summons, and a court representative could not find him at his given address, records show. The report said Santos confessed to the crime but that, according to a local prosecutor and the court in Brazil, the case is unresolved since Santos could not be found – apparently, he fled prosecution By 2008, court records show, Mr. Santos and his mother were living in Brazil, just outside Rio de Janeiro in the city of Niterói. Just a month before his 20th birthday, Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store and spent nearly $700 in 2008 dollars using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show. Mr. Santos has denied that he committed crimes in the United States or abroad. But the Brazilian record shows that he admitted the fraud to both the police and the shopkeeper. “I know I screwed up, but I want to pay,” he wrote in a message to the store’s owner on Orkut, a popular social media website in Brazil, in August 2009. “It was always my intention to pay, but I messed up.” In a 2009 social media exchange with Simões, Santos promised to repay him, saying, “I know I screwed up and I want to pay up.” But Simões said Santos never made good on the pledge and, barring a court order, doesn’t have “high hopes” he’ll ever see the money again. In November 2010, Mr. Santos and his mother appeared before the police, where they both admitted that he was responsible. On Sept. 13, 2011, a Brazilian judge ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case. Three months later, a court official tried to subpoena him, but he could not be found. By that time, he was back in New York, working at a Dish Network call center in College Point, Queens, company records show. Brazilian law enforcement authorities intend to revive fraud charges against Mr. Santos, and will seek his formal response, prosecutors said on Monday (1/1/23). |
| Reported a campaign adviser said, “I mean, if there is one thing we know how to do, it is read a campaign-finance report,” one said. “It’s what we do for a living.” He was, in the words of another consultant who met with him, “a walking campaign-finance violation,” allegedly coming up with schemes about how to circumvent campaign-finance law, including one that involved getting donors who had maxed out their donations to him to give to the political action committees of other candidates, who would then funnel the donation back to Santos. | |
| Possible violation in campaign spending Santos’s campaign appears to have routinely falsified its disclosure of disbursements. The campaign reported an astounding 40 disbursements between $199 and $200, including 37 disbursements of exactly $199.99.6 The sheer number of these just-under-$200 disbursements is implausible, and some payments appear to be impossible given the nature of the item or service covered. Accordingly, there is reason to believe Santos’s campaign deliberately falsified its disbursement reporting, among numerous other reporting violations. Moreover, some of the reported disbursements made by Santos’s campaign appear to violate federal laws prohibiting the conversion of campaign funds to personal use, including disbursements to pay rent on a candidate’s personal residence. | Possible spending on personal items such as airfares, hotels, restaurants, and house and multiple expense for 199.99 just below receipt requirement threshold of $200. |
| 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.” | |
| Possible violation in source of $700,000 loan to campaign and donors to campaign | The Federal Election Commission has requested clarification and more information on certain donors and apparent excessive contributions to his 2022 campaign. The FEC noted descriptions of donors were not acceptable and it appears certain donors far exceeded the per individual maximum campaign contribution of $5,800. Santos has until February 8 to respond. |
| Reported – RedStone Strategies reportedly raised money for Santos’s campaign. The FEC has no evidence that RedStone was registered as a political group, and there do not appear to be any records documenting its donor, contributions, or spending. RedStone, described itself as a 501c4 for the exclusive benefit of giving aid to Santos. | Where donors’ money went is unclear. FEC regulations require registration if a political group raises more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election. One donor disclosed they donated $25,000 solicited by a friend of Santos. A 501c4 is limited to spending 49.9 percent of their budget on candidate election work. |
| Possible violation in reporting he lived in Florida on his company filing documents | TBD |
| Possible reporting violation for not disclosing liabilities for the past rent court settlements against him | TDB |
| Possible federal and state tax issues for not reporting and paying taxes on the statements he made about his income and dividends from his company, if there were any. | TBD |
| Reported he tried to pass a check that bounced | No Comment by Santos |
| Reported campaign committees tied to Rep. George Santos paid tens of thousands of dollars to newly formed companies with opaque histories and meager track records of working for other candidates, a Newsday review of state and federal filings shows. The companies lacked websites and social media presence, filed incorporation documents without listing their principals and had little track record of working for other political campaigns, Newsday found. | |
| Claimed he made huge “disbursements” to Washington DC “consulting firms” | Experienced Washington DC professionals say they have never heard of these firms |
| Reported he spent more than $103,000 on restaurants, hotels and flights | This amount is far more than NY Congressional candidates and will likely be under audit to determine if any amounts were used for personal expenses |
| Reported Admitted to the New York Post that he owed a former landlord thousands of dollars in back rent. The New York Times had reported that a judge ordered Santos to pay more than $12,000 to the landlord for several months of unpaid rent and that Santos had written a check that bounced | Admitted |
| Reported he owes $5,000 to a former roommate. | No Comment by Santos |
| Accused by ex-boyfriend of stealing his phone, not paying bills and never going to work Accused by two former roommates of taking a $520 Burberry scarf from one of them and wore it in public to a 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally at which he claimed his own 2020 election was stolen from him. Also, of stealing other expensive items including a $500 Armani shirt. | No Comment by Santos |
| Reported – A Santos campaign fundraiser impersonated Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff to help raise campaign cash. The Washington Times reported last month that one of Santos’ staffers was impersonating Meyer but didn’t identify who it was. McCarthy’s team first learned about a Santos staffer impersonating the speaker’s chief of staff in August 2021 The lies and embellishments helped Santos and his allies raise nearly $3 million for his winning 2022 campaign to represent New York’s 3rd District. | No Comment by Santos |
| Reported Suozzi’s (D-NY) campaign was doing research into Santos and his backstory when they noticed that he was registered to vote outside the district, at his home in Queens. When pressed by reporters, he would give an address that actually belonged to his treasurer in another part of Long Island. | |
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| Investigations Commenced and Likely | |
| Nassau County District Attorney | Reported Commenced |
| Queens District Attorney | Reported Commenced |
| US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York – | Reported Commenced |
| House Ethics Committee Investigation | He could potentially be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, but those probes are typically reserved for misconduct during office, not before. Another option is censure, a formal disapproval which would entail the House Speaker reading Santos’ misconduct on the House floor. |
| Federal Election Commission The FEC informed Santos that the information listed for three of his listed donors … is “not acceptable” and that his campaign “must provide the missing information.” A complaint was filed Monday (1/9/23) with the Federal Election Commission accused Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who has admitted to fabricating key details of his biography, of wide-ranging campaign finance violations. The alleged wrongdoing includes masking the true source of his campaign’s funding, misrepresenting his campaign’s spending and using campaign resources to cover personal expenses. Alleged – Santos did not divulge any income from the company, Florida-based Harbor City Capital, on a financial disclosure form required of all federal candidates. | The commission has requested clarification and more information on certain donors and about his 2022 campaign. The FEC letter says that Santos’ latest fundraising report “discloses one or more contributions which appear to exceed” federal contribution limits, and it identifies three donors who each contributed at least $25,000 to his campaign. Candidates are allowed to receive a maximum of $5,800 from individuals during an election cycle. A response from Santos’ campaign regarding his donors is requested by February 8. The payments from Harbor Capital the lawyer described to The Washington Post, which have not been previously reported, indicate that Santos received money at least a month after he has said he left the firm |
| New York State Attorney General | NY AG looking into Santos |
| IRS | Possible – stated he made $750,000 two years in a row and received large dividend from his company – all taxable income |
| NYS Tax Authority | Possible – stated he made $750,000 two years in a row and received large dividend from his company – all taxable income |
| Florida Attorney General | Possible – listed a FL address that was not his |
| Florida Tax Authority | Possible – stated he made $750,000 two years in a row and received large dividend from his company – all taxable income |
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| Addresses and Homes | |
| ReportedSantos was braggadocious, telling aides about a $5.1 million house he was having built in Oyster Bay — | |
| According to the NYC Courts, Santos was evicted twice in the past five years from rented apartments in Queens – for non-payment of rent. | Judge ordered Santos to pay $12,000 to landlord for past rent. Santos claimed that he completely forgot about it. |
| Claimed eggs and rocks were thrown at this house after he visited Mar-a-Largo – reported to police | the home’s owner, Nancy Pothos, who also lived on the floor below Santos, told the Times she couldn’t recall any such incident. The NYPD also had no reports of violence, vandalism, or disputes at the address that January, despite Santos’ claim that he spent four and a half hours filing police and insurance reports. |
| Reported by former landlord “They (Santos and his sister) had four dogs and they did a lot of damage to the place, so they left,” in August, leaving behind $17,000 worth of damage. | Nancy Pothos (former landlord) said. |
| Claimed – His apartment was robbed In a sworn statement in housing court in 2016, Mr Santos claimed he was mugged on his way to pay hundreds of dollars in back rent to his Queens landlord during an eviction case. The New York City Police Department has no record of any such attack. A report from New York outlet Gothamist revealed that Mr Santos wrote that he was mugged on his way to deliver a rent cheque to Queens Housing Court on 15 January 2016 in an effort to resolve his case. The Republican wrote that he was “unable to provide a police report” and was told to return to police several days later to pick one up, according to an affidavit that was filled out under oath. Mr. Santos was set to pay $2,250 in back rent for his Queens apartment. | A spokesperson for NYPD told the outlet there was nothing on file related to Mr Santos’s claims. |
| Reported -Mr. Santos described his family’s wealth and business success — even a home on Nantucket — which Mr. Morey-Parker said had seemed at odds with the ordinary life the family led. | |
| Resides at sister’s place in Huntington | |
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| Personal | |
| Reported his first marriage ended just 12 days before he started his congressional campaign Santos also says he is currently married to a man and previously referenced him as a fiancé in campaign materials | The Daily Beast could not find a record of that marriage to a man |
| Reported his driver’s license was suspended | |
| Claims about his heath: Claimed “I have an immunodeficiency…” Claimed “I have acute chronic bronchitis” Claimed “I battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago, and I had radiation done, which really lowers your immunity in general,” he told the podcast hosts. “Radiation isn’t a game.” Claimed I’m susceptible to cancer. It’s in my DNA.” Claimed I was an early COVID survivor. Santos said he was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens by ambulance, placed on a gurney on arrival, and spent around five hours in a “plastic bubble” with an “air filter” as the hospital had run out of isolation rooms. He said he was given a chest X-ray, which came back clear. Santos said he was then swabbed for COVID-19, and on March 14 he received a positive result. He said he spent days with a high fever, hallucinating and confused. | On March 14, 2020, the day that Santos originally said he received his own positive test for coronavirus and was bedridden with fever, his campaign tweeted a press release on the unfolding COVID-19 crisis including a lengthy quote from Santos and praising then-President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. The tweet made no mention of Santos’ own illness. On March 18, 2020, four days after he originally claimed he had received a positive test and was very sick with COVID, Santos appeared on Fox Business, showing no signs of illness. However, during a COVID town hall that Santos hosted in April 2020, he said that he was still symptomatic through March 18. In a September 2020 interview with local outlet The Island Now, Santos said Elmhurst Hospital provided him with no treatment other than recommending Advil for his fever. |
| Reported Some of Santos’s staffers had begun to wonder about Santos’s mental stability around this time, concerns that were further exacerbated when Santos went to Washington, D.C., for new congressional-member orientation even though it was clear that he was on track to lose, and then wouldn’t leave the orientation once Suozzi was certified as the winner. | |
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| Political Assistance | |
| Reported Santos took some $56,000 from a Russian money man named Andrew Intrater – a cousin of Putin crony Viktor Vekselberg, who is under international sanctions. After receiving the Russian money, Santos attacked Ukraine, claiming the government of Ukrainian President Zelensky was “fascist” and “totalitarian” and implicitly supporting the invasion by Russia. Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’s main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year. Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. In 2020, when Santos was tasked by Harbor City with locating investors in New York, he claimed in a Harbor City meeting held over Zoom that Intrater’s investment firm, Columbus Nova, was a “client” of his, according to footage obtained by The Post. Harbor City was able to land a $625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer, according to an exhibit included in the SEC’s complaint against Harbor City. A month after the SEC filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Harbor City of Operating a Ponzi scheme Santos assured Intrater his money was a safe and that he had personally raised $100 million, that his family had invested d$4 million and a letter of credit was in place. | Under criticism, Santos later backtracked and then claimed he was actually “Jewish” and “Ukrainian.” Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond. |
| Reported Other Santos’s backers include a migrant smuggler and a big time Trump donor | |
| Reported – a late 2021 vulnerability study conducted authorized by his campaign and conducted by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier. Some of Mr. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing. Well-connected supporters suspected him of lying and demanded to see his résumé. Another former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices. And the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Mr. Santos’s story did not add up. But in each case, rather than denounce Mr. Santos publicly, the Republicans looked the other way. In the run-up to the 2022 contest, Dan Conston, a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC, also confided in lawmakers, donors and other associates that he was worried information would come out exposing Mr. Santos as a fraud, Mr. Santos’s own vendors to quit months earlier: his fabricated educational record, his marriage to a woman and questions about his residency. research firm Mr. Santos hired in the fall of 2021 — his campaign reported spending $16,600 on Capital Research Group LLC — seems to have had relatively little trouble turning up some of that same information. Researchers found no evidence that Mr. Santos had earned degrees at Baruch College and New York University, as he had claimed. They turned up records showing his involvement with the company accused of a Ponzi scheme — a relationship he had played down. They found eviction records, business records and a suspended Florida driver’s license, which together raised questions about whether he was a legal New York resident and as rich as he claimed to be. The people working for Mr. Santos convened an emergency conference call to discuss the results on Dec. 1, 2021. They presented him with a choice: bow out of the race with dignity or stay in and risk letting the Democrats turn up the same information and use it to destroy his political and personal future. When he said he was staying in the race, most of his team quit. | |
| Reported – he required those working for his campaign to sign nondisclosure agreements, limiting the spread of the vulnerability report. | |
| Reported Santos’ lies were known to plugged-in Republicans before last year’s election, according to a new report. Republicans alerted to Santos’ vulnerabilities before the 2022 midterms included Dan Conston, the head of a super PAC dedicated to winning a GOP majority in the House, and associates of Rep. Elise Stefanik, an upstate New York lawmaker, The New York Times reported Friday. Conston, who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, was so alarmed about Santos’ lies that he warned Republican lawmakers and donors, and the PAC withheld support for his campaign, according to the report. | |
| Reported – Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was aware there were questions about him yet endorsed him and helped his campaign | |
| Reported – Elise Stefanik – Representative (R-NY) one of Mr. Santos’s biggest early backers | |
| Reported – Representative Lee Zeldin – Congressman (R-NY) | |
| Reported – Vickie Paladino – Councilwoman (R) NYC District 9 | |
| Reported – Joseph G. Cairo Jr. Chairman of the Nassau County Republican Committee | |
| Reported – Max Miller Representative (R-OH) -contributed thousands of dollars to Mr. Santos’s congressional campaign Kevin McCarthy said he had spoken to Mr. Santos about an incident in which a Santos aide was caught impersonating Mr. McCarthy’s chief of staff while soliciting campaign donations. | |
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| Peers in Congress | |
| House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that he not only would resist calls to push Mr. Santos out, but that he planned to seat him on a congressional committee. | “The voters elected him to serve,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters in Washington, adding that Mr. Santos “has to answer to the voters and the voters can make another decision in two years.” |
| GOP peers publicly came out against him | D’Esposito, LaLota, Williams, Langworthy, Fitzpatrick, Miller – 8 R, 6 from NY |
| Nancy Marks, Santos’s former campaign treasurer, had been treasurer for several committees supporting Santos — and she and her family gave maximum contributions to his campaign. A company associated with Marks’ Long Island address is listed on paperwork among the co-owners of a company he and others formed in Florida in 2021 after the collapse of Harbor City Capital, an investment firm where Santos worked that the SEC alleges was a Ponzi scheme. Marks, a longtime Long Island political operative, was treasurer for LaLota’s predecessor, former Rep. Lee Zeldin, and was closely associated with Santos’ rise to office. | |
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| Other | |
| He attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally at the Ellipse. He went on to boast that he had written “a nice check for a law firm” to help defendants who had stormed the Capitol. | No proof of a check offered by Santos |
| It appears he flashed a white-power symbol during House speaker vote | photos from mainstream media on the internet |
| Reported after Suozzi won in 2020 Santos went back to Washington and spoke at a pro-Trump rally on January 5 at the Ellipse, where, dressed in a camel-hair overcoat and a Burberry scarf, he told the crowd, “They did to me what they did to Donald J. Trump — they stole my election. For 14 days I was congressman-elect of the Third Congressional District of New York, the first ever biggest upset for a Republican in New York City. And what did they do? When they were too busy printing 280,000 ballots in my district and shipping them to Pennsylvania, they sneaked in a few for my opponent.” | |
| Reported a Santos and an affiliated super-Pac gave $185,000 to the Nassau County Republican Party, which eventually endorsed him. | |
| Reported One of the people who had been raising money to fight the redistricting plan was shocked to hear Santos brag to a roomful of GOP donors at an event with Elise Stefanik that he had given $100,000 to the cause, a figure that was off by roughly $100,000, since he in fact had never donated. | |
| Reported – Nassau County Republican leaders said that he was no longer welcome and that they would freeze him out of the day-to-day functioning of local government, barring him from local meetings and events. | |
| Claimed he was mugged by two men in broad daylight (3pm) “in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and E. 55th Street – a block from Trump Tower in midtown NY – “They robbed me, took my briefcase, took my shoes and watch, and that was in broad daylight. I was leaving my office, going to the garage, getting my car, and I was mugged.” “The fear is real. It’s surreal what we live through here.” | Santos told a Brazilian podcast –. Requests have been filed with the NYPD—but hasn’t yet received a response. |
| Claimed “We have already suffered a attempt on my life, an assassination attempt, a threatening letter, having to have the police, a police escort standing in front of our house.” | |
| Claimed his Florida home was once burglarized because he “was attending a Republican party” on New Year’s Eve. | |
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