“The House Committee on Ethics has opened an investigation, and Congressman George Santos is fully cooperating. There will be no further comment made at this time,” Santos said in a tweet.
Santos has faced a litany of ethical questions after revelations he lied about core components of his educational and professional background. Multiple New York Republicans have called for his resignation — or expulsion — from Congress in light of the scandals.
“George Santos has disgraced Holocaust victims, 9-11 victims, military veterans with PTSD and many more,” first-term Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) tweeted on Wednesday. “Santos is a terrible person and should be thrown out of the Republican conference & Congress ASAP.”
House colleagues have filed Ethics claims against him, most publicly fellow New York Reps. Ritchie Torres and Daniel Goldman, both Democrats. Their claims include questions about Santos’ campaign finances and financial disclosure reports, as well as allegations that he “misled voters in his District about his ethnicity, his religion, his education, and his employment and professional history, among other things.”
The first-term Republican from New York has remained defiant and repeatedly vowed not to resign, though Santos did voluntarily give up his committee slots. A poll released Monday found 66 percent of voters statewide wanted him to resign.
House Ethics is just the latest to add to the Santos inquiry pileup, with the panel only fully organizing earlier this week. Federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York are also reportedly investigating him, and the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission calling for a probe into the embattled Republican. New York Attorney General Tish James said her team would review Santos’ false claims. And Anne Donnelly, the Republican district attorney in Nassau County, said her office is “looking into the matter.”
The competing inquiries could draw out what is already a very slow process within House Ethics. It is common for the Department of Justice to ask the House or Senate Ethics panels to hit pause on their inquiries while a federal investigation plays out. But even if they don’t, Ethics investigations typically take many months.
House Ethics also said that they are extending their preliminary review of allegations against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), related to allegations of rule violations related to the 2021 Met Gala. The preliminary review means an investigative subcommittee has not been established and her case remains in the early stages of inquiry.
Ocasio-Cortez’s case was first referred to House Ethics back in June 2021 by the Office of Congressional Ethics, the nonpartisan, independent body that reviews allegations of misconduct involving House staff and lawmakers and refers cases to the House panel. The Ethics Committee also extended their review in early December last year.
OCE found that there were delays in some payments to vendors associated with the congresswoman’s visit to the Met Gala.
“The Congresswoman finds these delays unacceptable, and she has taken several steps to ensure nothing of this nature will happen again,” her spokesperson Lauren Hitt said on Thursday. “While regrettable, these delayed payments definitively do not rise to the level of a violation of House Rules.”
The payments were finalized and paid out of Ocasio-Cortez’ personal funds.
“We are confident the Ethics Committee will dismiss this matter,” Hitt said.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“The ‘good’ news for Santos is that even in these hyper partisan times, he’s found a way to get Democrats, Republicans and independents to agree about a political figure. The bad news for Santos is that the political figure they agree on is him, and they overwhelmingly view him unfavorably,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.
Voters also dislike Santos. Some 64 percent of them view him unfavorably, up from 56 percent in January.
He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a Long Island swing district last November based on a largely fabricated résumé. He’s facing investigations by state, federal and international agencies on a range of potential crimes from campaign finance violations to pet charity fraud.
Santos insists he merely embellished his résumé and never broke any laws.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“You work for Goldman Sachs in New York?” the judge asked.
“Yup,” Santos responded.
The New York Republican did indeed have a political future. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a Long Island swing district last November based on a largely fabricated résumé that included the claim he worked for Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world.
A spokesperson for the bank told The New York Times in its original investigation into Santos’ background that there was no record of him working there. He later admitted in a New York Post interview he “never worked directly” for Goldman Sachs, but claimed a financial firm he was employed at, LinkBridge Investors, had “limited partnerships” with the bank.
Santos now faces investigations by state, federal and international agencies on a range of potential crimes from campaign finance violations to pet charity fraud. He has refused to resign from Congress despite bipartisan calls for him to step down, arguing he never broke any laws, but he did forgo committee assignments citing the “ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations.”
Santos’ attorney Joe Murray did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Santos appeared at the 2017 hearing on behalf of Trelha using his full name, George Anthony Devolder Santos. He told the judge he would secure “a long extended-stay apartment through Airbnb” in Seattle during the case if the defendant was released on bail.
“How do you know this man?” the judge asked.
“We’re family friends. Our parents know each other from Brazil,” Santos said.
Trelha was ultimately deported to Brazil in early 2018 after serving seven months in jail and pleading guilty to felony access device fraud. In a telephone interview, Trelha said Santos lied about their relationship, too. Trelha, through a translator, said he met Santos in the fall of 2016 on a Facebook group for Brazilians living in Orlando, Fla., and that his mother died in 2012.
Trelha eventually moved into Santos’ Winter Park, Fla., apartment in November 2016, according to a copy of the lease viewed by POLITICO. Santos had moved south from New York City, after he was transferred to a new position at the hospitality website HotelsPro, according to Lilian Cabral, a coworker at HotelsPro in Orlando.
A federal prosecutor who ultimately handled the case described the fraud as “sophisticated,” saying Trelha’s three-day skimming spree in Seattle was only “the tip of the iceberg,” according to a court transcript first reported by CBS News.
A person close to the investigation who is not authorized to speak publicly said prosecutors ultimately didn’t dig much deeper. The person didn’t remember seeing any forensic reports on Trelha’s phone and said prosecutors didn’t seem eager to pursue any international or domestic co-conspirators.
New York-based lawyer Tiffany Bogosian, a former friend of Santos who helped him duck a theft charge in 2020 involving the use of canceled checks to purchase puppies from Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, told POLITICO in a Feb. 7 interview that Santos said he was an “informant” in Trelha’s case.
Santos told Bogosian a warrant for his arrest in the Pennsylvania case was somehow tied to his work as an informant in the Trelha investigation, she said. Bogosian, believing his story at the time, said she called Seattle police detective Lawrence Meyer, who didn’t verify the term “informant” but confirmed Santos had “pointed them in the right direction” and offered some names of people involved in the credit card fraud. POLITICO could not reach Meyer to confirm the exchange.
When Trelha was arrested on April 27, he was caught on a security camera removing skimming equipment from a Chase ATM on Pike Street in downtown Seattle. He had a fake Brazilian ID card and 10 suspected fraudulent cards in his hotel room, according to arrest documents. An empty Fed-Ex package police found in his rental car was sent from the Winter Park apartment he shared with Santos. Trelha declined to say who sent the package from the apartment.
His plan was to spend a week skimming numbers and making fraudulent cards using gift cards bought at stores, Trelha said, and then another week taking out the maximum ATM withdrawals with pin numbers captured by the skimmers and cameras he installed.
“You go at 11 p.m. so you can max it out and then when it turns midnight you take the max amount again,” he said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Emily Langlie, said sometimes identity and credit card thieves go far from home to collect numbers, so there is less chance of the stolen numbers being connected to the perpetrators later. Langlie told POLITICO she didn’t have any information about Santos’ involvement in the Trelha investigation.
Trelha said that after he was arrested in Seattle he reached out to a friend who contacted Santos to help him, he said. “He was American and spoke English, so we thought he could help me the most,” Trelha recalled. By then, Santos had moved back north to help care for his sick mother.
“Mr. Devolder lives in New York,” Trelha’s public defender Virginia Branham said at the bail hearing. “I have spoken to him multiple times over the last few weeks. This is the second time he’s flown out here to assist Mr. Trelha. He has arranged an extended Airbnb for Mr. Trelha to stay at during the pendency of this case,” Branham said in the recording.
Santos told the judge he’d known Trelha “for a few years,” adding they’d “lost touch [but] got back in touch in September last year in Orlando when I was relocated from New York.”
Santos said he was staying at a hotel “by the Space Needle” until the judge’s bail decision. At the hearing, Trelha’s bail was reduced from $250,000 to $75,000 — still well above the $10,000 requested by his counsel. Trelha said he was unable to post bail because he didn’t have a local guarantor.
A Google account under the name George Devolder, with reviews of Brazilian restaurants in Queens and rental car companies in Miami, left a negative review of a Seattle Domino’s Pizza location in 2017, two miles from King County Jail and close to the Space Needle.
“1 hour viewing the tracker not move! very very very slow giving the time ordered (late night) called the store was on hold for 35mins with no answer!!!! NEVER order from this store, not worth the agrevation!!!”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Liars are supposed to appall us, but in practice, they don’t. America loves its scoundrels. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is about a prolific liar, ranks near the top polls of America’s best-loved novels. Its enduring lesson teaches that if you can’t make it, fake it, and nobody will be any the wiser by the time you succeed. Spoiler alert if you slept through high school English: Gatsby climbs to the top by lying about his name (it’s James Gatz), the origin of his wealth (bootlegging; moving counterfeit stocks; bribing public officials; working with gangsters), and his past (he was born poor in North Dakota, not rich in San Francisco). He ultimately gets knocked off, not in comeuppance for his lies, but in an act of revenge. (His killer mistakenly thinks Gatsby hit and killed his wife in traffic when actually Gatsby’s mistress Daisy was the wheelwoman.) The moral of The Great Gatsby is if you want to get ahead in American life, lie profusely — but make sure your sweetheart drives safely.
The Gatsby Directive has long been observed in corporate America, with executives routinely getting busted for resume padding. Academia, too, is shot through with professors who doctor their curriculum vitae. And you could fill a roadside Little Library with bestselling memoirs that turn out to be fake. In spinning their exaggerations and embroideries to political success, Santos, Luna and Ogles resemble President Joe Biden, who has dispensed one large dip of double-fudge after another throughout his entire political career. In a recent unrelenting column, the Washington Post’s Marc A. Thiessen truth-squaded Biden. The president’s many lies include those about his family history; about his college achievements; about getting arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison; about getting arrested for protesting civil rights; about getting arrested for sneaking into the U.S. Capitol; about getting shot at inside Baghdad’s Green Zone; about pinning a Silver Star on a Navy Captain in Afghanistan; about cutting the federal deficit in half. And that’s just a partial list.
Of course, the volume and scale of Biden’s lies don’t compare to those of Donald Trump, who completely untethered himself from the truth during his administration. According to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, Trump made at least 30,573 false or misleading comments during his four years in the White House. Trump maintained such a unique relationship with the truth that it might have been simpler for the Post to tabulate his truthful statements than his lies. When the fact-checker first got going at Trump during the 2016 campaign, it looked like their accountings would fracture his credibility with voters, but it didn’t — or at least not enough to turn the election. Trump supporters discounted the fact that he was full of it because they liked many of the things he said about immigrants, foreign entanglements, Hillary Clinton, trade, economic growth and race. The same — although on a radically different scale — appears to be true with Biden supporters. When Joe blunders or overstates, they cover for him by saying, “Oh, that’s just Joe,” and change the subject.
If Santos, Luna and Ogles studied the political career of Donald Trump before composing their personal histories, nobody should be surprised. Trump established that while journalists care about the truth, voters can be more forgiving. If voters cared that much about campaign lies, the Democrats would have made the 2020 election an exercise in public shaming about Trump’s lies. But they didn’t. The only lies politicians must avoid are the ones that might trigger legal proceedings against them, like the iffy campaign finance statements Santos filed that have spurred investigations and might result in prosecution. Garden variety lies that aren’t prosecutable are regularly forgotten by voters by the time their speakers run for reelection.
Politicians lie, lie and lie some more because they’ve learned voters seem not to care much about it when the lies are uncovered. (In a perfect world, the press would fully vet every politician’s every statement, but even before the industry’s decline it didn’t have the resources to perform mass lie detection.) In the long run, voters seem not to care whether a candidate’s credentials are legitimate or if they really climbed Mt. Everest in their stocking feet as they attest on the husting. So why bother fluffing your resume in the first place if voters will only shrug when they discover you stretched the truth? Could it be that, like committing minor acts of vandalism or petty shoplifting, telling lies about ourselves feels too good to resist, especially when engaged in the contest that is politics, where every day brings another public exercise in resume comparison?
When it comes to politics, a candidate’s lived experience should be less important than where they stand on the issue. For that reason alone, we’d be better off if politicians competed by deflating their resumes instead of ballooning them.
******
I do, however, want my neurosurgeon’s resume to be accurate. Send neurosurgeon references to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed pitched in the World Series. My Mastodon account has invented a cure for cancer. My Post account saved a baby from being run over in traffic. My RSS feed has accomplished nothing and has no ambitions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The early donations were just the beginning: Santos’ campaign would go on to become a prolific political donor, giving tens of thousands of dollars to other candidates, groups and nonprofits. Most of the later money was confirmed as received in those groups’ own filings, although there are more reports that did not match up, including $2,000 that Santos’ campaign reported giving in 2021 to Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, though Santos’ disclosure listed a nonexistent Florida address for Masters’ campaign. A spokesperson for Masters, who lost to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), confirmed his campaign did not receive the donation.
Since Santos launched his first campaign in 2019, more than three years before he was elected to Congress, his campaign reported more than $9,000 in donations that do not align with what was reported by other groups, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance records. Though a relatively small sum out of millions in campaign expenses, the mismatching reports do fit into a pattern of other inaccuracies and discrepancies in the New York congressman’s finances, dating back to the very early days of his first campaign.
Saurav Ghosh, director for federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that has filed a Federal Election Commission complaint regarding irregularities in Santos’ second congressional campaign, described the 2019 transactions as part of a “troubling pattern.”
“The Santos campaign’s disbursements to other political committees should be mirrored on those committees’ disclosure reports, and the fact that they aren’t indicates yet another serious reporting error or perhaps even outright fraud,” Ghosh said.
Santos’ lawyer, Joe Murray, declined to comment on questions about the reported donations. “It would be inappropriate to comment on an open investigation,” Murray said.
Santos has previously brushed off questions about his campaign’s finances, saying such matters were dealt with by campaign staff. He is facing several FEC complaints as well as investigations from local and national prosecutors, but he has not been charged with a crime.
Santos has acknowledged some mistakes in his campaign finance reporting, telling Fox 5 last week that there had been “clerical errors or system errors” with respect to certain transactions, and saying he wanted to see discrepancies rectified. He also agreed to forgo his committee assignments in the House while investigations are ongoing.
The donation to Trump’s campaign was among the earliest by Santos’ campaign committee, which was formally registered with the FEC in October 2019. The timing of the donation — dated Sep. 26, 2019 — coincided with a Trump fundraiser in New York City. Santos posted a video about the event on social media.
But neither the Trump campaign nor the former president’s joint fundraising committee or his other political groups ever reported receiving such a donation from Santos or his campaign, according to FEC filings. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to inquiries.
The amount of the donation reported by Santos’ campaign — $2,800, the maximum individual donation at the time — also would have exceeded contribution limits, as transactions between campaign committees are capped at $2,000 per election cycle.
Santos’ campaign similarly reported sending money to several local New York groups in the early going, beginning with a $1,500 donation to the Town of Oyster Bay Republican Club in September 2019. No such group with that exact name exists, but neither of the two Republican groups with “Oyster Bay” in their names reported receiving money from Santos’ campaign, according to the New York Board of Elections’ campaign finance database.
The Santos campaign also reported paying $2,000 to the Nassau County Republican Committee’s federal account in mid-October — but the group reported receiving no money in its federal account at all in 2019, according to FEC filings. Its state-level account also did not report receiving any money from Santos’ campaign around that time, according to the New York Board of Elections’ data.
The three donations — to Trump’s campaign, the Nassau County Republican Committee and the Oyster Bay group — were reported by Santos’ campaign as being part of the same American Express credit card payment paid in January 2020, noted Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director at the nonprofit Documented. For later donations, Santos’ campaign did not report using a credit card.
“It’s impossible to believe that all three of these political committees independently lost track of political donations from Santos’ campaign during this period,” Fischer said.
Santos’ campaign also reported making a $750 donation to the Queens County GOP in December 2019, but the group did not report receiving it, according to the New York Board of Elections’ data. In fact, no local or county-level committees in the New York campaign finance system reported receiving money from Santos’ campaign at all during the fall of 2019 or spring of 2020, according to a POLITICO review of campaign finance records.
The Nassau County Republican Committee reported receiving $1,000 from his campaign in August 2020, records show. That donation aligns with one reported by Santos’ campaign, distinct from the $2,000 he previously reported giving the group. A few local groups also reported receiving donations from Santos as an individual, totaling several hundred dollars.
Santos’ campaign would emerge as a more significant political donor during the next election cycle, ahead of his 2022 victory. State and local groups in New York reported receiving more than $18,000 from his campaign in 2021 and 2022.
His campaign also reported giving $5,500 to other federal campaigns during the 2022 election cycle, with most of those transactions aligning with what was reported by other groups, although far more funds flowed through his leadership PAC. Most of the later contributions reported by Santos campaign did match what was reported by other groups — with the reported donation to Masters a notable exception.
Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Santos was defensive about the unusually high price tag for a local event.
“Understand that I’m not here for personal gains or for any kind of financial gains,” he said in a spring 2019 video message to the group posted on its Facebook page. “All monies raised are solely for structuring this movement slash organization.”
Santos was only able to pull in $645 out of a $20,000 goal. It’s unclear what happened to the funds.
While Santos was ultimately unsuccessful in raising $20,000 for the Trump group, his extravagant asks drew questions about whether he was out for personal, financial gain. The episode has echoes of other fundraising efforts that have made Santos the target of state and federal prosecutors. The Federal Election Commission is probing questionable campaign expenses including nearly $11,000 spent on rent for his Long Island home and the FBI is investigating claims that he absconded with $3,000 in donations meant for a disabled U.S. Navy veteran’s dying service dog.
Santos was a fringe player in 2019. He’s now a national political figure — but not for anything he’s accomplished. Instead, the Republican congressman who was elected in November in a swing district on Long Island, is best known for largely inventing his campaign biography. He has resisted calls for his resignation, saying his resume was only embellished, although he did step away from committee assignments citing the “ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations.”
Naysa Woomer, Santos’ communications director, said she could not comment on any campaign or personal matters, and calls to Santos’ personal attorney were not returned.
In spring 2019, a year before his first, unsuccessful run for Congress, Santos became a founding member of United for Trump, a grassroots group supporting President Donald Trump’s reelection. At a March 23 rally at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Santos was filmed holding a “Gays for Trump” sign.
By March 25, Santos set up a GoFundMe account that other United for Trump members pushed to the group to raise money for a future “Northeast tour” of Trump rallies.
He posted a video in the United for Trump Facebook group to introduce himself to other members that month.
Santos had a few specific asks: He said he wanted to establish an LLC with an accountant, at a cost of $500 to $750. United for Trump also needed a lawyer — “to keep in our back pocket and just to retain” — for $2,500.
In the March video, Santos alluded to “a lot of confusion as to what we are raising money for,” acknowledging it can cost less than $100 to get permits for rallies. But, he explained, United for Trump would be different than what members were used to, calling it “an organization to actually give power.”
In May 2019, Santos was listed in a Facebook post as the group’s “president” using part of his full legal name, George Anthony Devolder. Other United for Trump committee members included Joseph, who organized central New York rallies for a group called ACT for America, described as a “national anti-Muslim hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Joseph said she met Santos when he introduced himself to her at the March Trump Tower rally and that he “seemed like a sweet kid.”
“In grassroots, we accept everyone who wants to join and do a little work,” she said, adding that after the New York City rally, most of United for Trump’s other events envisioned for that year “didn’t get off the ground.”
Joseph said she was preoccupied with other things and began fading away from the group around the time Santos became its president, and said she didn’t remember the group getting very far with organizing events while she was involved.
In July 2019, Santos did help organize a counterprotest to an Impeach Trump rally in Buffalo — an event that turned violent.
Rus Thompson, a longtime conservative activist from Buffalo, was the lead organizer of the counter-rally. He had no recollection of Santos attending the event. The New York congressman should “never have been elected,” Thompson said in a recent telephone interview.
United for Trump planned to hold another Erie County rally at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center on August 3, 2019, according to administrator posts in the group’s Facebook page.
Santos had asked United for Trump members to help raise six-figures for the August event.
“Need your help. The est. cost to bring the pro-Trump rally to Buffalo with credible speakers is $20,000,” according to a call for donations that went out in the Facebook group.
Thompson questioned the $20,000 price tag for Buffalo speakers.
“I never paid speakers,” he said.
Planning for the August Buffalo rally was the last time Santos seemed to be involved with United for Trump. In October 2019, he announced his 2020 candidacy for Congress at a Queens Village Republican Club dinner. His biography for the event doesn’t mention United for Trump.
Thompson said he didn’t remember an event happening in Buffalo around that time. The location Santos proposed, he said, didn’t make sense.
“That’s really expensive and not set up for a rally,” Thompson said. “Car or boat show, yes, but political rally? No.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The Pennsylvania theft charge, which has not previously been reported, is the latest revelation in a dizzying array of scandals for the beleaguered New York congressman, who fabricated much of his campaign biography. Santos is facing at least five law enforcement probes including an FBI investigation into his role in a service dog charity scheme tied to Friends of Pets United and a Brazilian fraud case.
Santos has said he merely fabricated parts of his résumé and has denied breaking any laws. A spokesperson and a lawyer for Santos did not respond to a request for comment.
A chance encounter with a former classmate
Attorney Tiffany Bogosian, who attended middle school with Santos but eventually fell out of touch with her classmate, ran into him at a Queens Starbucks in late 2019, she told POLITICO.
Santos told her he just lost a bid for Congress. Several weeks later, she said, Santos asked for help: He’d been awakened by a 4 a.m. knock on the door of his Queens home from NYPD officers who served him with an extradition warrant related to the Pennsylvania theft charge, he told her. On Feb. 15, 2020 she said he stopped by Bogosian’s New York office, where she tried to help him with some legal advice as a friend.
Santos said his checkbook had gone missing in 2017 and blamed someone he knew for its disappearance, she recalled. He told Bogosian he “canceled the checkbook” with TD Bank as soon as he’d noticed it was gone, just “days after getting it.”
Bogosian said one of the NYPD detectives told her and Santos they should contact a Pennsylvania state trooper about the warrant.
The NYPD referred questions about the warrant to Pennsylvania State Police, who said it doesn’t comment on prior investigations.
At her office in February 2020, Bogosian sent an email to “Trooper Adams” on Santos’ behalf, according to a copy of the message she shared with POLITICO.
In the email, Borgosian argued Santos’ case, as he’d relayed it to her.
“In 2017 he received four check books for the account at his request from the TD BANK branch he banked with in Queens, NY, and of the four one went missing,” Bogosian wrote to the Pennsylvania trooper.
“He immediately called his bank upon learning 1/4 check books was missing and all checks were canceled at that time, with a stop pay on all checks.”
“As such no checks were ever cashed or presented against his account due to his cancellation of all checks linked to this account. The account was closed on March 3, 2018, for personal reasons unrelated to any alleged fraud on his account (banking preference),” Bogosian wrote.
She attached copies of the nine canceled checks to eight different people and corresponding bank statements from Santos’ account showing a negative balance of $690 on Nov. 4, 2017 and another negative balance of $349 on Dec. 3, 2017.
She noted to the trooper that the signatures were different on each of the checks and attached Santos’ New York State driver’s license to show his signature on that ID didn’t match any of the ones on the checks. She wrote that Santos was clearly a victim of fraud — but hadn’t realized it until he was served with the warrant because he’d canceled the checks and later closed the account.
Santos told Bogosian, because he was involved in politics, he couldn’t have an outstanding charge against him. A week after their meeting, he went to Pennsylvania to address the warrant, and told prosecutors that he “worked for the S.E.C.,” successfully persuading them to drop the charges, she remembered him telling her after he returned.
Bogosian said she didn’t learn why the Pennsylvania State Police couldn’t locate Santos until 2020, or how they ultimately found him in Queens, but said the trooper seemed happy to have “finally found” Santos when she talked to him on the phone after she sent the email.
Bogoisan said she now doesn’t believe Santos’ story, after what happened a few months later.
Bogosian told The Washington Post last month that she introduced a personal injury client who’d won a big settlement to Santos in late 2020 after he’d promised lucrative investment opportunities. Santos tried to get the client, Christian Lopez, to invest with Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm where he worked that the Securities and Exchange Commission later said was a Ponzi scheme. Her client demurred, telling CNN the rate of return promised by Santos sounded too good to be true.
Santos has said he wasn’t aware of any illegality at the firm and is not named in the SEC complaint.
“I did think it was so weird at the time that his checks didn’t have his address or phone number listed on them. After the dinner with Christian [Lopez] I started having second thoughts, I thought, ‘Oh, he had the animal adoptions.’ To be honest, even at the time I questioned it,” she said, but she ultimately took Santos at his word.
Theft by deception charge
A representative from York County District Court in Pennsylvania confirmed Santos was charged in November 2017 with theft by deception, but said the record was expunged on Nov. 24, 2021. No further information about why the charge was expunged could be given, the representative said.
One of Santos’ bounced checks was written out to Jacob Stoltzfus, a dog breeder in Bird-in-Hand, Pa., in the amount of $775 for “puppy” and dated Nov. 22, 2017, according to a copy of the check obtained by POLITICO. Stoltzfus said that would have been a typical amount for one of his purebred dogs at the time.
The recipients attempted to cash the checks at Coatesville Savings Bank and Bank of Bird-in-Hand in Pennsylvania.
Just three days after the $775 check is dated — on Nov. 25, 2017 — Santos’ animal charity Friends of Pets United held a puppy adoption event at the Staten Island pet store Pet Oasis.
“Friends of Pets United has a puppy overload … We’ll be cuddling: Golden Retriever, Lab, Yorkie, Border collie, American Eskimo and Shepherds … #adoptdontshop,” an Instagram post from Pet Oasis read.
The New York Times reported this week that Santos had an unusual request for the pet store owner Daniel Avissato after an adoption event at Pet Oasis. He asked Avissato to make a check with the proceeds out to his name instead of the name of the charity. Avissato said he refused, but later noticed — when he looked at his bank records — that the check had been changed to the way Santos wanted it, according to the Times.
Later that same year, in December 2017, Michele Vazzo said she met Santos at Pet Oasis when she adopted a puppy at another event. Santos told her the golden retriever was rescued from an Amish puppy mill. There were many dogs at the charity events, and adoption costs ranged from $300 to $400, she recalled.
“The fees were always different and he always had a ton of puppies and a ton of people helping him,” Vazzo said in an interview.
Santos told her different stories about where the puppies came from, sometimes saying he found pregnant dogs on the street and other times claiming he rescued them in Puerto Rico or other places, she said.
After Vazzo adopted her puppy, Santos asked her to volunteer for his charity to foster dogs and coordinate adoption events. She grew disillusioned with him after she said she fostered an estimated 30 dogs in one month, but the only help Santos offered was some money for paper towels.
The charity was not a registered nonprofit or rescue group, according to The New York Times.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Trying to shake hands with every senator in the United States — given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and saying quiet, instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” Romney said.
“I don’t think he ought to be in Congress and he certainly shouldn’t be in the aisle trying to shake the hand of the president of the states and dignitaries coming in. It’s an embarrassment,” the senator continued, adding: “If he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”
When asked if the senator was disappointed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy had not called on Santos to resign, Romney replied: “Yes.”
Earlier in the night, Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to turn around when she saw Santos as she walked to the front, according to the Daily Beast.
Santos is facing calls from all sides to resign over his rapidly multiplying scandals. The freshman congressman recently recused himself from his committee assignments amid investigations into his finances.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The former Republican congressman, who stepped down to run for governor, would not confirm reports he’s interested in challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Instead he said he simply wants to reenter politics.
Zeldin seemed eager to distance himself Santos and Marks, who are mired in allegations of campaign finance irregularities.
“The treasurer has something like close to 200 different accounts,” Zeldin said.
As for Santos, Zeldin said, “I don’t see how he is possibly going to regain the trust of his constituents.”
He stopped short of calling for the Long Island congressman’s resignation.
“Whether or not whatever his expiration date is as a member of the House, I don’t have that answer. He is seated.”
Marks has served as a campaign treasurer for Zeldin since his time in the state Senate over a decade ago.
She resigned from Santos’ campaign and affiliated committees late last month. The Federal Election Commission, along with federal and local law enforcement, is probing allegations of financial impropriety in Santos’ campaign.
Zeldin acknowledged he had a personal connection to Marks because their children go to school together on Long Island.
“Our interaction has been through Marks’ daughters,” he said, without elaborating.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
