|
A New York Times review of Congressman-Elect George Santos’ resume unveiled even more of the right-wing extremist’s long-running record of lies, deceit, and unanswered questions.
According to the report, there was no proof to back up Santos’ claims of working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, no proof of his alleged family fortune in real estate, no proof of him ever attending the colleges he claimed to attend, no proof of any clients from his alleged consulting company, and no record of his alleged charity being registered with the government.
Disturbingly, Santos even appears to have lied about working with several victims of the tragic Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016.
The only thing Long Islanders can trust from George Santos is that his record of lies and omissions “have the potential to create ethical and possibly legal challenges once he takes office.”
Let’s not forget just recently, George Santos was highlighted as a “special guest” at a far-right convention flooded with white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and dangerous extremists.
DCCC Spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre
“George Santos is a serial liar who has managed to prove week after week just how completely undeserving he is of representing Long Island. His consistent deceit and blatant lies show us exactly the type of failure he’ll be in Congress.”
Read more here:
New York Times: Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction.
By Grace Ashford and Michael Gold
-
But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.
-
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.
-
There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.
-
On a campaign website, Mr. Santos once described Devolder as his “family’s firm” that managed $80 million in assets. On his congressional financial disclosure, he described it as a capital introduction consulting company, a type of boutique firm that serves as a liaison between investment funds and deep-pocketed investors. But Mr. Santos’s disclosures did not reveal any clients, an omission three election law experts said could be problematic if such clients exist.
-
And while Mr. Santos has described a family fortune in real estate, he has not disclosed, nor could The Times could find, records of his properties.
-
At the same time, new revelations uncovered by The Times — including the omission of key information on Mr. Santos’s personal financial disclosures, and criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil — have the potential to create ethical and possibly legal challenges once he takes office.
-
A biography of Mr. Santos on the website of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the House Republicans’ campaign arm, also includes a stint at New York University. The claim is not repeated elsewhere, and an N.Y.U. spokesman found no attendance records matching his name and birth date.
-
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.
-
A previous campaign biography of Mr. Santos indicates that he left Citi to work at a Turkey-based hospitality technology company, MetGlobal, and other profiles mention a brief role at Goldman Sachs. MetGlobal executives could not be reached for comment. Abbey Collins, a spokeswoman at Goldman Sachs, said she could not locate any record of Mr. Santos’s having worked at the company.
-
Attempts to find co-workers who could confirm his employment were unsuccessful, in part because Mr. Santos has not provided specific dates for his time at these companies.
-
He has also asserted that his professional life had intersected with tragedy: He said in an interview on WNYC that his company, which he did not identify, “lost four employees” at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016. But a Times review of news coverage and obituaries found that none of the 49 victims appear to have worked at the various firms named in his biography.
|
