Tag: Santos

McCarthy broaches Santos, Omar and other panel dramas in closed-door meeting

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McCarthy’s mention came after the California Republican touched on a topic popular with much of his party: booting Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, off the House Intelligence Committee. A select panel like Intelligence is different from most other House committees, in that the speaker has unilateral power to appoint the chair and control the membership.
But during Wednesday’s closed-door meeting, McCarthy also raised his vow to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which would require a full House vote that could occur as soon as next week. McCarthy didn’t wade into whether the GOP has the votes to do so yet, according to one of the Republicans who attended on Wednesday; two GOP members have publicly vowed to oppose removing Omar, and at least two other Republicans have told POLITICO they are undecided.
Meanwhile, McCarthy and his leadership team have said little about Santos as the headline-grabbing New Yorker’s personal scandals continue to mount. A handful of Santos’ GOP colleagues, mostly from his state’s delegation, have called for his resignation — a rare rebuke that demonstrates his political toxicity back home.
And Santos was in attendance for McCarthy’s remarks, leaving the weekly conference meeting as a flock of cameras and reporters chased after him. Conference members had little response to McCarthy’s mention of Santos, and the three Republicans who attended noted how briefly the topic was addressed.
Despite the calls for Santos to resign, there is a growing acceptance among House Republicans that the apparent serial fabricator will stick around for as long as possible given their party’s paper-thin majority. Many lawmakers in both parties privately acknowledge it is unlikely Santos would step down on his own accord.
While both parties have started preliminary discussions about a special election should Santos be forced to step aside — a risky prospect for Republicans in such battleground turf — lawmakers and campaign officials say they’re not expecting one this year, though the dynamics could well shift if the incumbent’s problems get even worse.
Although Santos could still face legal consequences for discrepancies in his campaign finance reports in particular, any probe of them would likely take years to result in any actions.
Jesús Rodriguez contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
The improbability of George Santos’ $199 expenses

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Santos reported 40 of them.
In fact, his campaign accounted for roughly half of all expenses by all campaigns that cost exactly $199.99 — a statistical improbability.
The rarity of campaign expenses falling so close to the legal limit for retaining receipts has raised concerns that the Santos campaign’s disbursements were “deliberately falsified,” a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center alleges. Major questions about Santos’ campaign financing remain unanswered, including the source of $700,000 that the New York congressman ostensibly loaned to his campaign despite questions about his personal finances.
“This was a multi-thousand dollar operation,” said Adav Noti, a former FEC attorney and senior vice president at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, which filed a complaint against Santos. “We don’t know where the money came from, we don’t know where the money went to.”
Santos’ lawyer, Joe Murray, declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations. The congressman has previously admitted to exaggerating components of his biography but denied breaking any laws. Both local and federal prosecutors are investigating whether he may have broken the law, but has not been charged with a crime and has bucked calls to resign from fellow GOP members of the state’s congressional delegation.
Most of the Santos campaign’s $199.99 transactions — including the eight Italian restaurant charges — date back to 2021, according to FEC reports. But like the fabricated aspects of the now-congressman’s biography, they went largely unnoticed until after the election.
Under FEC regulations, campaigns are required to report all disbursements and maintain receipts or invoices for those valued at $200 or more. The sheer number of expenses reported as being just under the threshold for retaining receipts was among the subjects of the CLC’s complaint against the Santos campaign. The complaint also cited the $700,000 that Santos reported as a personal loan to his campaign despite questions about his finances.
Of the more than 4,300 House and Senate campaigns that filed any FEC reports during the 2022 election cycle, fewer than 9 percent reported one or more expenditures costing between $199 and $199.99.

Not all campaign expenditures in that narrow range raise questions. A relatively common expense this election cycle: subscriptions to the web-conferencing platform Zoom, which has a business plan priced at $199.90 per month.
But only 25 campaign committees reported any single expense costing exactly $199.99, POLITICO’s analysis found. No campaign other than Santos’ spent that specific amount more than four times. And Santos’ campaign spent that exact figure 37 times, according to his campaign finance reports, totalling just shy of $7,400. In addition to the Italian restaurant and Miami hotel, he reported spending exactly $199.99 on 10 distinct Uber rides, four Delta Airlines flights and two Amtrak trains, among other expenses.
These reported expenses are still a relatively small share of the more than $2.6 million that Santos’s campaign spent last cycle. But CLC’s complaint alleges that they raise questions about the accuracy of his reported disbursements.
The FEC, which is tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws, sent more than 20 letters to Santos’ campaign asking about mathematical errors and other inconsistencies throughout the 2022 election cycle. While such letters are fairly commonplace, that number is atypical, said Noti of the Campaign Legal Center.
The agency is not equipped to flag transactions that are suspicious based on the amounts and vendors.
Santos’ campaign has repeatedly amended its filings both before and after the election in response to FEC letters. That included filing several updated forms on Tuesday to denote previous large contributions that should have been reported in November, as well as amendments to several quarterly reports. The amendments did not touch on the $199.99 disbursements.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
Majority of New Yorkers want Santos to resign, new poll shows

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The poll is the first large survey on New York voters’ attitudes about Santos, who has refused to step down since a bombshell report in The New York Times in December revealed he had fabricated most of his resume, including his professional background and college education.
Earlier this month, Santos said only the voters could get him to step down.
“I am going to outwork any of the pundits and talking heads that are out there saying I should resign, that I’m unfit for office,” Santos told reporters earlier this month. “When 142 people ask me to resign, I’ll resign.”
He later clarified that he meant to say 142,000 people, a reference to voters in his district.
As more allegations have mounted, some of which he has admitted were exaggerated, Santos has drawn widespread condemnation from within his own party, including Republican officials in Nassau County, who pledged to cut off local support to their colleague in the House.
But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has largely ignored calls for his resignation because he needs to maintain his slim majority in the chamber.
Santos has received low-level committee assignments, but he also faces a slew of federal and local investigations.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 23, 2023
George Santos appears to admit drag queen past in Wiki post

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The Wiki biography was last edited on April 29, 2011. It contains basic information that matches up with the newly sworn-in congressman, including Devolder being born on July 22, 1988, to a Brazilian family with a European background.

The Wiki bio for Anthony Devolder, which is full of spelling and grammatical errors, appears to contain fantastical descriptions of his supposed career in show business.
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Wikipedia
Santos has used the name Anthony Devolder elsewhere for online accounts.
His office referred calls for comment to an outside aide, who did not immediately respond. But if the person who created the Anthony Devolder Wiki bio was anyone other than Santos, it would mean someone used the same alias and same biographical details as him a dozen years ago, all for a user page no one else would see.
The surfacing of the Wiki biography is another twist in a weeks-long saga of lies and embellishments. The New York Republican has been caught fabricating his own resume on everything from his business career, educational achievements and the nature of his mother’s death. He has admitted that he misled about critical parts of his biography, but has also insisted that other politicians have done the same.
The Wiki bio for Anthony Devolder, which is full of spelling and grammatical errors, appears to contain fantastical descriptions of his supposed career in show business. It claims that he had a part in Disney’s “Hannah Montana,” among other examples.
It was, it appears, just the first in several attempts by Santos to edit his bio on the internet encyclopedia — steps that further show the degree to which he has gone to curate his life story.
In November, a Wiki user named Devmaster88 edited the Wikipedia page for then congressman-elect George Santos (a page separate from the Wiki bio for Anthony Devolder). The user changed the section about Santos’ personal life and made edits to his middle name. Around that time another account, georgedevolder22, also made edits to Santos’ public Wikipedia page, removing the entire middle name, Anthony Devolder, so that the biography was shortened to George Santos.
The identity of the users is not revealed by Wikipedia. But both accounts have subsequently been blocked from the site. Moderators, as part of the ban, wrote that Devmaster88 was “abusing multiple accounts” and that it was likely an extension of Georgedevolder22.

Santos, a Republican, has pushed back on relatively few accusations that he has lied about his past. But he did deny the drag performances that were first revealed by MSNBC reporter Marisa Kabas, who posted a photo she alleges to be of Santos dressed in drag in 2008. Kabas also spoke with a Brazilian drag queen who allegedly was friends with Santos when he lived near Rio de Janeiro and used the stage name Kitara.
On Thursday, the New York Post translated a video from Portuguese in which a person who appears to be Santos discusses performing in drag. The video was later posted online by the Daily Mail.
Santos has rebuffed repeated calls from fellow Republicans to resign his seat over the fabrications, even as he has come under investigation over his finances. In recent days he denied separate allegations from New Jersey veterans claiming that he absconded with thousands of dollars earmarked for life-saving surgery for one of their sick dogs.
In the 2011 Wiki bio, the user Anthony Devolder sprinkles show business credits that ring similarly untrue. He describes his Hollywood career as taking off after a meeting with a producer of the 1996 blockbuster “Independence Day.” He name drops the director Steven Spielberg (he misspelled his last name as “Spilberg”), and claims to have starred in “a few T.V shows and DISNEY Channel shows such as ‘the suite life of Zack and Cody” and the hit “Hanna[h] Montana.”
The Wiki bio concludes with Santos writing that, two years prior, he “taped his very first movie startting [sp] Uma Turman, [sp] Chris Odanald, [sp] Melllisa George, [sp] and Alicia Silver Stone [sp] in the movie “THE INVASION.”
“The Invasion” is a 2007 sci-fi/thriller with roots in the “Body Snatchers” storyline and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023
Santos leans on group with white nationalist ties

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And as scrutiny of Santos has intensified, he’s reached out to others at the club.
The club’s president, Gavin Wax, who, per FEC records, gave $500 to Santos’ joint fundraising committee in September, told POLITICO that the congressman called him last weekend. “He didn’t say much beyond how stressed he is and asking me how I’ve been,” Wax said. “I think he just wanted to speak to someone.”
But like others in conservative circles, even The New York Young Republican Club is distancing itself from Santos amid revelations that he fabricated numerous parts of his résumé, including false claims that he attended New York University and worked for Goldman Sachs. Santos has admitted that he has embellished his biography, but he has argued that others in politics have done the same.
Wax said the club won’t endorse Santos if he runs again in 2024, though unlike a number of New York House Republicans, it is not calling for his resignation. He described Santos’ relationship with the club as one of “self-interest” because of its influence in the district. He questioned whether the freshman congressman had fixed beliefs, saying he was “trying to play all sides” but aligned himself with the far right because that’s the coalition he thought would be most useful. He said that members suspected Santos was exaggerating his biography but that they kept him in the loop because he “was able to back it up with money.”
“The thing that made him good at being a con man was that he could align himself with whatever group he was addressing,” Wax said. As for that money he gave, he added, “I wish I got it back.”
A spokesperson for Santos, who is under investigation over his finances amid questions about how he was wealthy enough to lend his campaign $700,000, did not return a message seeking comment.
The relationship that has developed over time between Santos and The New York Young Republican Club is a microcosm of the odd place the congressman has found himself within the larger conservative firmament. Hoping to stay afloat politically, Santos has sought to forge alliances with some of the movement’s more extreme institutions and members. But it’s not entirely clear if they’re all that interested in having him in their ranks.
The degree to which Santos agrees ideologically with those extreme elements of The New York Young Republican Club is difficult to know. He embraced the group’s endorsement of his fledgling campaign in 2021, with the press release citing his commitment to fighting socialism — and a promise to not take a salary in Congress.

One New York Republican leader granted anonymity to speak freely about party tensions said Santos, who is gay, at times clashed with other members of the club over “values.”
“There were some individuals in that group that don’t support gay marriage, there was a little bit of contention there. George was offended because he didn’t feel like anybody stepped up,” the leader said.
And while some members of the New York Young Republican Club have chronicled meetings with far-right European leaders on social media, Santos largely avoided that issue in public. When Hungary’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán, spoke at CPAC in August, Santos joked about him on Twitter — with “no disrespect,” he wrote in the tweet.
But within the city’s GOP circles, it is believed that the group served as a springboard to help the congressman pull off the win in his congressional race this past November. A New York Republican leader, granted anonymity to talk freely about intraparty tensions, said Wax in particular has proved to be a steady ally to Santos through the tumult.
“George’s inner circle has changed at least two or three times since [the summer],” said the Republican leader. “The consistent people have been Gavin and Vish [Burra].”
Despite its innocuous sounding name, the New York Young Republican Club is known for its support of far-right figures. The group recently endorsed Orbán, and Wax spoke at a December gathering that featured white nationalists from the U.S. and Europe, including members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has faced scrutiny in its own country for extremist ties. Santos also attended, along with a newly elected Florida House member, Cory Mills.
Domestically, it has closely aligned itself with former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon and “Pizzagate” conspiracist Jack Posobiec. Burra, who is working for Santos in Washington, is a former producer of Bannon’s podcast who touts a role in exposing “the Hunter Biden ‘laptop from hell.’”
In the process, the club has gained political clout on the right. Within the past few years, Wax grew the group from a political backwater with a small membership to a robust kind of Junior League for Manhattan Republicans who flock to events like “Wine Wednesday” and gather at a midtown clubhouse with exposed brick walls and a vintage tin ceiling.
In addition to Santos, the group counts New York GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney and Marc Molinaro among its members, as well as the newly elected Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), a reflection of the group’s integration with the Republican Party. The club’s board members include Tyler Bowyer, who was among the Trump allies who signed fraudulent electoral vote certificates sent to Congress as part of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. There’s also Michelle Malkin, a longtime conservative pundit who has appeared at events with white nationalists including a former Ku Klux Klan lawyer.
Wax doesn’t hide from these associations — he touts them as evidence of political cachet. He said the club rejects the “premise and narrative” that endorsements of Orbán and others “are beyond the pale and outside of polite society.”
“If you believe the Trump wing is racist, then there’s nothing we can do,” he said. “They’re big names in the conservative right wing of the party. If that’s the new level of controversy then, sure, we’re controversial.” Of the December event with European officials from parties with authoritarian influences, Wax said: “We reject the premise and narrative that these parties are beyond the pale and outside of polite society.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023
Opinion | George Santos Isn’t Going Anywhere

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If Santos has checked the historical record — and you can bet he has — he would rightly figure that Congress is the best place for him to lounge for the next two years. And maybe beyond. At the end of December, POLITICO’s Olivia Beavers reported that Santos had told New York party leaders that he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2024. But last Friday, he fended off calls for his resignation by indicating he might seek vindication by running again. And why shouldn’t he keep his seat or run again? The job pays $174,000 a year and with five years of federal employment comes a nice pension. Plus, a House seat allows him to boss all those staffers around. And don’t forget franking privileges!
In normal times, Santos’ gross résumé inflation and other lies would earn him a cold shoulder from all Republicans. But these are not normal times. Given the party’s slim majority, every vote counts, even a liar’s vote. Santos wisely barnacled himself to Speaker Kevin McCarthy as quickly as he could, voting for him on all 15 ballots in the speaker race, and his loyalty has earned him two congressional committee slots — Small Business and Science, Space, and Technology. Santos is said to have coveted finance and foreign policy assignments, but small matter. He can always claim on his résumé that he got those committees. As long as the Republican leadership can count on Santos to vote the party line, he remains a net legislative asset for them.
New York state Republicans have denounced Santos because he makes them look bad, but it’s a different matter in the House. So far, only a handful of Republican lawmakers have demanded his resignation because if he were to resign, his district could easily swing Democratic, diminishing the tiny Republican majority.
“I will NOT resign!” Santos tweeted a week ago. This stand is more practical than principled. As Ben Jacobs noted in Vox, clutching his seat might give him some plea-bargaining leverage if and when federal prosecutors come calling. (Copping a plea spared Vice President Spiro Agnew jail time in 1973.) Santos might figure that surrendering his seat in Congress will only earn him a quicker seat in prison. The question only Santos can answer right now is how hefty is his criminal liability? Might his crimes be so expansive and easily proved that the feds will decline to offer him any sort of deal?
In the short term, we’re stuck with Santos. Serving in Congress is the best job he’s ever had. The Republicans need him. And members of Congress can’t be recalled. But in the long term, he’s toast.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 19, 2023