Newly Elected Republican Lied about his entire life

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Rep.-elect George Santos spent more than Long Island's three other Republican House candidates on flights, hotels and restaurants during his race for Congress, part of a two-year campaign that experts described as lavish and unusual for a nonincumbent, federal data analyzed by Newsday show.

Santos spent more than $103,000 on restaurants, hotels and flights, far outpacing what the three other GOP House winners — Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), Rep.-elect Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park), and Rep.-elect Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) — as well as his Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, spent in their races to represent the four congressional districts that span Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Many of the dinners and hotel stays occurred out of state, Federal Election Campaign filings show.

According to his filings and campaign finance experts, Santos visited expensive hotels and restaurants and traveled out of state much more than a nonincumbent during two years of campaigning to represent the Nassau-centric Third Congressional District.

Experts said campaign funds must be used for legitimate campaign expenses, and it’s not unusual or illegal for congressional candidates to travel during their campaigns and spend thousands of dollars to court high-dollar donors.

But such spending is more common for senior members of the House, including those in party leadership roles, than for a challenger, former House members and experts said. Nonincumbents, they say, are usually focused on using the money for the basics of getting elected.

Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, said Santos' spending “is pretty lavish … for a challenger who normally should be husbanding his resources very carefully for the purposes of running for office."

“Hotel stays and restaurant bills, those can be explainable in terms of if you’re networking with important people in the party, and potential fundraisers and that sort of thing,” Miller said. But, “If you’re going to resort locations and you're going to high-end restaurants repeatedly, that sort of looks less like political activity and more like personal activity.”

Santos did not respond to a request for comment.

Santos spent a total of $2 million on his campaign through October, the reports show. He raised nearly $3 million, and claimed in federal filings to have lent his campaign more than $700,000.

Compared with other candidates, Santos spent a much smaller portion of his budget on buying television commercials and digital advertisements.

Thirty-three percent of Santos' expenses, about $669,000, went to commercials and ads. The other candidates spent close to half or more of their spending on those media categories.

D’Esposito spent $571,000 on commercials and ads, 60% of his campaign spending, FEC filings show. LaLota spent $542,000, 50% of his total spending. Garbarino spent $1.3 million, or 45%, and Zimmerman's tally of $1.01 million was 44% of his spending.

Newsday reviewed Santos' spending in 2021 and 2022 and found:

For airfare: Santos spent $42,454 on flights. The figure is more than five times the $7,998 Garbarino spent for airfare. D’Esposito spent $5,739, and LaLota paid $2,258. Zimmerman’s total was $1,643, according to FEC filings.

On hotels: Santos spent $29,986 across the country. Garbarino spent $24,155, D’Esposito $3,933 and LaLota $881. Zimmerman did not report spending any campaign money on hotel stays.

On meals and at restaurants: Santos spent $31,276, including for staff meetings. Garbarino spent $6,361, LaLota $10,300, Esposito $4,989 and Zimmerman $4,442. (Newsday reviewed entries that referred to meetings or meals paid for by the campaign, but excluded spending for specific fundraisers or events.)

Santos spent 2021 and 2022 flying across the country to resorts or hotels, in Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Memphis, Nashville, and Wichita, Kansas, the FEC filings show.

Of the total spending on hotels, restaurants and flights, Santos spent $55,259 in 2021 and $48,458 in 2022, according to the FEC filings.

The data doesn't say how many people went to each restaurant, how much he paid per night, or how many staffers flew or traveled with him.

Santos' spending includes 114 entries labeled as "airfare." The number was far smaller for the other candidates: Garbarino's filings showed 26 transactions to airline companies. LaLota's showed six. D'Esposito and Zimmerman each made four payments to airline companies.

Santos dined at pricey restaurants in Miami Beach, Atlantic City and Manhattan. He made repeated visits to some of them.

His filings show 11 trips to Cippolini, in the Americana shopping center in Manhasset, where he sometimes held staff meetings. The bills totaled $2,038, filings show.

The campaign dined at Il Bacco Ristorante in Little Neck, Queens, a total of 25 times, spending $4,552 at the restaurant. Santos also went to Bistro Milano in Manhattan 14 times, spending $2,925 there.

In Atlantic City, the campaign spent $1,085 at Hell’s Kitchen Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill, and $660 at Il Mulino in the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

At the Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Miami, Santos spent $300. The restaurant bills itself as an “internationally acclaimed destination, serving celebrity clientele,” according to its website.

Santos also stayed at top-tier hotels, paying $917 to the W Hotel in South Beach Miami. Its website describes it as a beachfront property offering a "new chapter in luxury."

The campaign spent $732 to stay at the SoHo Grand Hotel in Manhattan, a luxury boutique, and $344 at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. There also was an $829 bill for the Hyatt Regency in Wichita, Kansas.

Santos also paid $3,333 to Airbnb for a single charge, dated July 7. 

Santos’ Uber bills added up to $12,650 for 286 rides, the FEC data show. One out of five expenses he filed was for Uber rides.

In interviews with Newsday, former House members said they spent conservatively in their earliest races, saving up big sums to pay for commercials and digital ads to air close to Election Day, which was Nov. 8.

A trip here and there is necessary if it’s likely to yield significant contributions or publicity, experts said. But former House members spoke of sticking to IHOPs and diners for staff meetings and using Knights of Columbus meeting rooms.

Former Rep. Steve Israel, of Oyster Bay, who served as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Newsday of Santos’ spending: “It's unheard of. It's absolutely unheard of.”

“It doesn’t seem like this guy was running for Congress,” said Israel, who represented the Third Congressional District for 16 years. “It seems like he was running for Congress as an excuse to go to nice hotels and eat lavish meals."

“For a first-time candidate from Long Island, not in the leadership? It's very rare” to spend the way Santos did, Israel said. “If you are in the House leadership, and in a high-profile position, you're going to be traveling, and there'll be hotel stays. But for somebody like this, to rack up that amount of money is very questionable."

Israel and other House members said candidates have to focus on their “burn rate” — how much money is raised versus what is spent.

“Every candidate is conscious of burn rate," Israel said. "You want to keep your burn rate really, really low. So you stay at Howard Johnsons if you have to. You don't travel first class and stay at the best hotels."

New York congressman-elect George Santos faces another legal complication as he is set to be sworn-in as a member of the House.

Prosecutors in Brazil are seeking to renew charges against Santos in relation to a 2008 criminal case, a spokesperson for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor's office tells ABC News.

The case involves Santos allegedly paying for goods with a stolen checkbook when he was 19, the prosecutor's spokesperson said. He is accused of forging two checks for $400 to buy clothes for him and a friend, the spokesperson said.

Prosecutors intend to charge him with two counts for alleged fraud, including theft and the check forgery, with each count punishable by up to five years in prison, according to the spokesperson.

An official in the prosecutor's office told ABC News, however, that the likely punishment if convicted would be a fine.

The Rio de Janeiro prosecutor's office on Tuesday will petition the court to revive the charges, then notify the U.S. Justice Department about the case, the spokesperson said.

An excellent article on consequences of Trumpism taken to it's logical conclusion
https://www.newsweek.com/george-santos- ... op-1770401

There's a lesson for any Trump supporters who are willing to admit they are supporting an assortment of opportunists with criminal tendencies.

No one appears more riled about it than New York’s other gay congressman: Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres.

“The House Republican chaos has a silver lining,” Torres tweeted Wednesday, referring to Republicans’ difficulty in electing a House speaker. “George Santos has not been sworn in.”

The tweet was one of at least three dozen swipes Torres has taken against Santos since the lying allegations surfaced last month.

But amid the chorus of criticism, it appears that no one has condemned — or trolled — Santos over the political scandal more than Torres, the representative for New York’s 15th Congressional District.

“Elise Stefanik said that the House Republican Conference is the most diverse in history. Does Stefanik have George Santos in mind?” Torres tweeted Tuesday. “A gay Afro-Latino biracial Ukrainian Belgian Brazilian Jewish Republican Conference.” (Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, is the third-ranking Republican in the House.)

In another tweet last week, Torres posted a screenshot of an invitation Santos sent to supporters, inviting them to celebrate his swearing into Congress. The invitation date was wrongly marked for Jan. 3 of last year.

“Santos claims his swearing-in is on Jan 3, 2022,” Torres tweeted. “He can’t even get the facts right even when he isn’t lying.”

And on Tuesday, Torres tweeted a photo of Santos’ name placard outside his office, sarcastically writing: “I am writing to report an act of vandalism.”

Rep.-elect George Santos, the truth-challenged Long Island Republican who spun a web of lies about his career and educational background, admitted to stealing a ​man’s checkbook to buy clothing and shoes in Brazil more than a decade ago, according to a report on Wednesday.

Santos admitted to police in 2010 that he stole the checkbook from his mom’s purse and used “some sheets” to buy the goods at a shop in Niterói, a city outside Rio de Janeiro, on June 17, 2008, CNN reported, citing case documents.

Santos’ mom, Fatima A.C.H. Devolder, had been a nurse​ for the man — Delio da Camara da Costa Alemao,​ who has since died — and had his checkbook in her purse.​​

Santos told police that he forged the man’s signature on two checks that he used to buy $1,313.63 worth of merchandise, CNN said.

​In making the purchases, Santos used an identification card with the checkbook’s owner’s name and a picture of himself, the report added.​

He told police that his mother didn’t learn about the theft until roughly a month later and pleaded “with despair” for him to return the checkbook, but he said he had ripped up the remaining checks. ​

According to the police records, Santos told police he was an American who had dual citizenship and was a professor. ​​

“He [Santos] acknowledged having been responsible for forging the signatures on the checks, also confirming that he had destroyed the remaining checks,” authorities wrote in an inquiry report about Santos​, CNN said​. ​

Santos signed the confession on Nov. 18, 2010.

Police put their investigation into Santos on hold after they were unable to reach him for nearly a decade, but law enforcement officials in Brazil told CNN that they will reinstate fraud charges against him after allegations surfaced last month that he fabricated whole elements of his past.

Would Santos have won if voters had known the truth?
Still, it’s unclear whether he would have lost if his lies had been exposed earlier. We know that, theoretically, the district has enough Democratic voters to have defeated Santos. According to Daily Kos Elections, President Biden carried New York’s 3rd District in 2020 by 8.2 percentage points. But many of those voters were nowhere to be found in 2022.

It turns out, Santos didn’t do unusually well for a Republican in the district. The district voted red up and down the ballot. According to data from Democratic strategist Benjamin Rosenblatt and the New York City Board of Elections, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin carried the 3rd District by 12 points. And Republican Senate candidate Joe Pinion carried the district by 4 points. And Pinion’s margin within the district represents a scenario where the Republican candidate was much weaker than the Democratic candidate: Pinion raised a pitiful $589,000 for the race, while his opponent, powerful Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, raised $41.8 million. Of course, Pinion didn’t have Santos’s allegations swirling around him.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver previously calculated that scandals, on average, shave 9 points off sitting House members’ margins in general elections and 13 points in competitive districts. Santos’s winning margin in 2022 was just 7.5 points. But a scandal’s impact varies quite a bit from election to election. Historically, some scandal-plagued candidates have underperformed by more than 30 points, while others have actually done better than expected. What’s more, in this era of high partisan polarization, scandals may hurt candidates less than they used to.

Will Santos resign?
Of course, the reality is that Santos was elected and took his seat in the House this week. Many people have called on him to resign, but historical trends suggest he may try to ride the scandal out.

I maintain a database of political scandals and their impacts on politicians’ careers. Since 2017, 87 federal and statewide office-holders have been credibly accused of illegal or unethical activity, and only 17 have resigned. Another two were removed from office, though this probably won’t happen to Santos: It takes a two-thirds vote of the House to expel a representative, and it’s unlikely that dozens of Republicans will vote to potentially shrink their already-narrow majority.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Santos will get off scot-free. Another nine of these scandal-plagued candidates chose not to run again, and another 23 of them lost reelection or failed in a bid for higher office. Santos has reportedly told local Republican leaders that he will not seek reelection. But if he were to run again, Santos would face a brutal reelection campaign in 2024 in his Biden-voting district.

Some scandals are more severe than others and may be more likely to lead to dire consequences for a person’s political career. But let’s look at politicians in situations similar to Santos’s. At least three other sitting or aspiring U.S. House members have been accused of embellishing their résumé in recent years. First, former Rep. Steve Watkins claimed to have founded a company he merely worked for and was accused of voter fraud and making unwanted sexual advances. He lost reelection. Former Rep. John Ratcliffe falsely claimed he prosecuted a terrorist case as a U.S. attorney. As a result, he had to initially withdraw from consideration to be director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump. But Trump nominated him again and he won Senate confirmation. And then there’s Sara Jacobs, who said she was a State Department “policymaker” even though she was a contractor who did not make actual policy. She won her election and is still in Congress today.

Who would win a special election to replace Santos?
If Santos does resign (or is expelled), a special election would be held in New York’s 3rd District to choose a successor. Under New York law, the governor must announce the date of the special election within 10 days of the vacancy, and the election itself would be between 70 and 80 days after that. So if Santos were to resign today, the special election would be in late March or early April.

Ahead of the 2022 election, New York’s 3rd District had a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean of D+4. That means, in a theoretically neutral political environment where the nation is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, we would expect Democrats to win the seat by 4 points. But of course, D+4 is still highly competitive, and it wouldn’t take much for Republicans to win. (Just ask Santos himself — or Zeldin, or Pinion.) In November, the national political environment leaned Republican by about 2 points, and it may shift toward Republicans or Democrats by the time a special election is held.

In addition, Republicans or Democrats could overperform by running a strong campaign, which could come down to the quality of the nominees. Unlike some other states, New York doesn’t hold primaries for special elections; instead, leaders in each party will choose their nominees. That means each candidate will probably be a party insider — someone unlikely to have the same baggage as Santos or the other flawed candidates Republicans nominated in the 2022 midterms. That could lead to a highly competitive, tooth-and-nail fight where neither party begins with the advantage.

Incoming Rep. George Santos appeared to flash a widely known white supremacist hand sign on the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday evening, according to images captured by photojournalists.

In photos, Santos (R-Queens/Nassau) is seen raising his right hand to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to become the next speaker of the House.

With the left hand, Santos forms an “OK” sign often used by white-supremacist and other far-right groups.

A Santos aide, presented with the photo outside Santos' congressional office, refused to answer questions from Newsday about the hand gesture and shut the door in the reporter’s face when pressed for comment.

Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told Newsday in an email: “The OK sign is a smirk and a wink signaling to insiders support for hateful, extremist ideas — it’s about identifying with a group.”

“Like all coded and underhanded actions, it’s difficult to confirm an intention,” Carroll Rivas said when asked about the Santos photo.

Santos on Friday avoided a small group of protesters who arrived at his congressional office to call on House Republicans not to adopt rules that would weaken ethics investigations of House members.

The protesters held up signs with Santos’ face that read: “House GOP — Don’t gut the Office of Congressional Ethics.”

When approached by one of the group’s members, Santos walked in the opposite direction, away from his office.

He circled back from a different hallway and, seeing protesters still outside his office, ducked into an elevator.

Santos entered his office about an hour later, after the protesters had disbanded.

Even as more and more of his past lies come to light, George Santos is as defiant about clinging to office as he has been brazen about lying, and he has the support of his Republican leadership. Kevin McCarthy, having squeaked out a speaker win, cannot afford to lose even a single member, and there’s a good chance a Democrat would win a special election to replace Santos. So they’re standing together, insisting, hilariously, that somehow it would violate the will of the voters for Santos to resign because he was elected.

After the county Republican Party in Santos’ district called on him to resign, Santos tweeted, “I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living. I will NOT resign!”

In fact, what we know about Santos’ lies continues, unbelievably, to grow. At the time of the original New York Times report on his essentially fake identity, it didn’t seem like there could possibly be much left to uncover. And yet every couple of days there’s a new revelation. That Santos didn’t actually attend Baruch College, as he claimed, is old news. That he told the chair of the Nassau County GOP that he was a volleyball star at Baruch is new. Not just a star—one who led the team to a “league championship.” At the school he was lying about having attended.

During Santos’ time in Brazil more than a decade ago, the most significant lie we know of that Santos told was the criminal one, in which he fraudulently used checks belonging to a deceased former patient of his mother’s. That wasn’t a victimless crime. Mother Jones reports that a store clerk who accepted Santos’ fraudulent checks had to pay back more than $1,300 to cover what Santos stole. But Santos’ lies in Brazil are still coming to light, with a television show now reporting that Santos used multiple different names and nationalities on dating apps in the country. While Santos can legitimately claim two nationalities—Brazilian and U.S.—there’s no credible evidence that he’s Russian, which he also claimed.

Santos will maintain the support of House Republican leadership because they need him too much to do the right thing. On Wednesday, McCarthy chimed in with a “but the voters” message similar to Santos’ tweet, telling reporters, “He has to answer to the voters”—something that conveniently won't happen for nearly two years—and “it's the voters who made that decision he has to answer to the voters, and the voters get to make another decision in two years.” And Kevin McCarthy is not worrying about two years from now. He’s trying to survive day to day with a narrow Republican majority and substantial internal opposition.

Santos is under criminal investigation by federal and local prosecutors, so we may yet get to see whether McCarthy will stick by him through criminal charges in this country in addition to the ones outstanding in Brazil. And honestly, I wouldn’t bet against it.

Hopefully there's a legal mechanism to toss him for campaign finance violations or something.

Obviously he's a total fraud and everyone knows it, including mccarthy and the rest of the republicans. But they don't care if it give them power.

Which is why I hope there's a mechanism to toss him out.

I am still amazed how much support he still maintains. Trump enabled the idea you could have a criminal represent people so long as they are charismatic.

The support from some politicians is purely based on the fact that they can’t afford to lose any republican votes to maintain their razor thin majority. They all know he’s trash but some are supporting him staying purely for group power dynamics reasons.