Why Did George Santos Lie About Being Jewish?

[jserraglio]

NYT

George Santos Admits to Lying About College and Work History

The congressman-elect confirmed The New York Times’s findings that he had not graduated from college or worked at two major Wall Street firms, as he had claimed.

By Michael Gold and Grace Ashford

Dec. 26, 2022

Ending a weeklong silence, Representative-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to a sizable list of falsehoods about his professional background, educational history and property ownership. But he said he was determined to take the oath of office on Jan. 3 and join the House majority.

Mr. Santos, a New York Republican who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, confirmed some of the key findings of a New York Times investigation into his background, but sought to minimize the misrepresentations.

“My sins here are embellishing my résumé,” Mr. Santos told The New York Post in one of several interviews he gave on Monday.

Mr. Santos admitted to lying about graduating from college and making misleading claims that he worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. He once said he had a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties; on Monday, he admitted he was not a landlord.

Mr. Santos, the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, also acknowledged owing thousands in unpaid rent and a yearslong marriage he had never disclosed.

“I dated women in the past. I married a woman. It’s personal stuff,” he said to The Post, adding that he was “OK with my sexuality. People change.”

The admissions by Mr. Santos added a new wrinkle to one of the more astonishing examples of an incoming congressman falsifying key biographical elements of his background — with Mr. Santos maintaining the falsehoods through two consecutive bids for Congress, the first of which he lost.

Mr. Santos acknowledged that a string of financial difficulties had left him owing thousands to landlords and creditors. But he failed to fully explain in the interviews how his fortunes reversed so significantly that, by 2022, he was able to lend $700,000 to his congressional campaign.

Mr. Santos also firmly denied committing a crime anywhere in the world, even though The Times had uncovered Brazilian court records showing that Mr. Santos had been charged with fraud as a young man after he was caught writing checks with a stolen checkbook.

“I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” he told The Post. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”

In the court file, Mr. Santos is identified by his full name and date of birth, as well as by the names of his mother and father. The documents show that Mr. Santos confessed to the crime and was charged, but that the case remains unresolved because authorities were later unable to locate him.

In both interviews on Monday, Mr. Santos also denounced reporting by both CNN and The Forward, a Jewish publication, that he may have misled voters about his account of his Jewish ancestry, including that his maternal grandparents were born in Europe and emigrated to Brazil during the Holocaust.

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Mr. Santos told The Post. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

Mr. Santos, who has repeatedly said he was religiously Catholic but has also identified as a nonobservant Jew, told The Post his grandmother had recounted how she converted from Judaism to Catholicism.

Mr. Santos, through representatives, has declined multiple requests to speak with The Times.

Over the course of his campaigns, Mr. Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010 before working at Citigroup and, eventually, Goldman Sachs. A biography on the National Republican Congressional Committee website said he had attended both Baruch and New York University and received degrees in finance and economics.

But the colleges and companies could not locate records to verify his claims when contacted by The Times.

In Monday’s interview, Mr. Santos admitted to The Post that he had not graduated from Baruch College or any college.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé,” he said, later adding: “We do stupid things in life.”

He also admitted that he never worked directly for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, blaming a “poor choice of words” for creating the impression that he had.

Past statements of Mr. Santos are relatively clear however: An archived version of Mr. Santos’s former campaign website preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine says he “began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm.”

Instead, he told The Post on Monday, he dealt with both firms through his work at another company, LinkBridge Investors, which connects investors with potential clients. LinkBridge, he said, had “limited partnerships” with the two Wall Street firms.

The Times was able to confirm Mr. Santos’s employment at LinkBridge. But in a version of his campaign biography posted as recently as April, Mr. Santos suggested that he had started his career on Wall Street at Citigroup and that he was at Goldman Sachs briefly before his time at LinkBridge.

A spokeswoman for Citigroup declined to comment. Representatives for Goldman Sachs and LinkBridge did not immediately respond to a request for more information.

Mr. Santos has not fully accounted for his employment during the years that he had claimed that he was advancing on Wall Street. In a separate interview with WABC radio, he confirmed reporting by The Times that he had worked at a call center in Queens in late 2011 and early 2012.

Yet even as Mr. Santos, whose victory helped Republicans secure a narrow majority in the next House of Representatives, admitted to some fabrication, his actions will likely not prevent him from being seated in Congress.

Democrats — including the outgoing House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the next House Democratic minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York — have suggested Mr. Santos is unfit to serve in Congress. Top House Republican leaders, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, have largely remained silent.

The House can only prevent candidates from taking office if they violate the Constitution’s age, citizenship and state residency requirements. Once he has been seated, however, Mr. Santos could face ethics investigations, legal experts have said.

Of greater potential concern are questions about Mr. Santos’s financial disclosures, where he reported earning millions of dollars from his company, the Devolder Organization.

Mr. Santos disclosed little about the operations of his company, and The Times could find no public-facing assets or other property tied to the firm. Mr. Santos also did not list any clients on his disclosures, despite the requirement that candidates list any compensation over $5,000 from a single source.

Intentionally omitting or misrepresenting information on a congressional financial disclosure is considered a federal crime.

In a video interview with City & State, Mr. Santos asserted that his consulting practice at the Devolder Organization built upon the work he had done at his former firm, LinkBridge.

“I had the relationships and I started making a lot of money. And I fundamentally started building wealth, and I decided I’d invest in my race for Congress,” Mr. Santos said, adding: “There’s nothing wrong with that — no criminal conduct. No anything of the sort.”

The WABC interview itself was something of a political curiosity. Mr. Santos was interviewed by John Catsimatidis, a supermarket magnate and a big Republican donor, and Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman who resigned in disgrace in 2011.

Mr. Weiner asked Mr. Santos about his claim, made in an interview last month shortly after his election, that a company he had worked for “lost four employees” at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016. The Times reviewed news coverage and obituaries and found no evidence that could support the claim.

On Monday, Mr. Santos shifted his account slightly, telling Mr. Weiner that those four people were not yet employees but instead were in the process of being hired.

“We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando,” he said.

Mr. Santos did not name the company or provide additional information to support his statement. Public records show that Mr. Santos had a Florida driver’s license and was registered to vote in that state in 2016.

Mr. Santos was mostly recently registered to vote at a house in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, but the house’s owner said he moved out months before the election.

In The Post’s interview, Mr. Santos confirmed The Times’s reporting that he was currently living in Huntington, N.Y, a town just outside his congressional district. (Members of Congress are only required to live in the state they represent, not the district.)

Mr. Santos also admitted that he was not, as he claimed last year on Twitter, a landlord who makes significant income from 13 properties owned by him and his family.

“George Santos does not own any properties,” he told The Post, even though a financial disclosure he filed with the House in September said he owned an apartment in Rio de Janeiro.

[Belle]

Politicians lying? Of my God, call the cops. "I did not have sex with that woman"!! Said the immoral Lefty.

[jserraglio]

Politicians lying? Of my God, call the cops. "I did not have sex with that woman"!! Said the immoral Lefty.

[Ricordanza]

This is way more than "embellishing" his resume. I'm no psychiatrist, but based on what I've seen in my personal and professional life, this reaches the level of mental illness.

I predict that Kevin McCarthy won't say anything or take any action until he gets Santos' vote for Speaker of the House.

[Belle]

Nothing mentally ill about Kennedy or Clinton. Just sleazy. And think of the millions of enablers of both!!

[jserraglio]

He embellishes his lies by saying all I did was embellish my resume.

But unfit to serve? Hardly. Santos’ll fit right in with the other Deplorables in Congress.

[Belle]

He embellishes his lies by saying all I did was embellish my resume.

Unfit to serve? Hardly. Santos’ll fit right in with the other Deplorables in Congress.

You are a serial troll. The gate-keeper of each and every single comment. Please do get a life and some friends. And money. With a giant chip on the shoulder; a growing national characteristic, very sadly.

[diegobueno]

Politicians lying? Of my God, call the cops. "I did not have sex with that woman"!! Said the immoral Lefty.

So a Democratic president lied about his sex life 25 years ago and that excuses the RepublicanParty's full-scale embrace of lies, dishonesty and authoritarianism in the past decade? You're grasping for straws. Get a grip!

And since when was Bill Clinton a "lefty"?? Only someone on the far fringes of the lunatic right wing could make such a statement.

[maestrob]

Politicians lying? Of my God, call the cops. "I did not have sex with that woman"!! Said the immoral Lefty.

So a Democratic president lied about his sex life 25 years ago and that excuses the RepublicanParty's full-scale embrace of lies, dishonesty and authoritarianism in the past decade? You're grasping for straws. Get a grip!

And since when was Bill Clinton a "lefty"?? Only someone on the far fringes of the lunatic right wing could make such a statement.

Bingo!

[jserraglio]

NYT

Here is what we do and do not know about the representative-elect.

Mr. Santos did not work where he said he did.

Over the course of his two campaigns for Congress, the first of which was unsuccessful, Mr. Santos cast himself as an accomplished veteran of Wall Street, with work experience at both Citigroup, where he said he was “an associate asset manager,” and at Goldman Sachs. Both firms told The Times that they had no record of Mr. Santos’s ever working for them.

In recent interviews, Mr. Santos has claimed that he did not actually work for those companies, but rather with them, when he was employed at a company called LinkBridge Investors, which says it connects fund managers with investors.

Mr. Santos told The New York Post that he had merely used a “poor choice of words.”

Mr. Santos did not graduate from the schools he said he had.

Mr. Santos has said he graduated from Baruch College in Manhattan with a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance. A biography on the website of the House Republicans’ campaign committee said he had also studied at N.Y.U. But neither college could find records verifying those claims, and in his interview with The Post, Mr. Santos admitted that he had lied about his education.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.” he told the newspaper. “I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé.”

Mr. Santos says he is not Jewish, so much as “Jew-ish.”

Mr. Santos has said that his mother was born in Brazil to immigrants who “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium and again fled persecution during WW II.” And he has identified as both Catholic and as a nonobservant Jew.

But citing genealogy records and Brazilian records, both The Forward, a Jewish publication, and CNN have reported that Mr. Santos’s maternal grandparents appear to have been born in Brazil before World War II. Mr. Santos has responded to those revelations by modifying his story ever so slightly.

“I always joke, I’m Catholic, but I’m also Jew-ish — as in ‘ish,’” he told City & State. “I grew up fully aware that my grandparents were Jewish, came from a Jewish family, and they were refugees to Brazil. And that was always the story I grew up with, and I’ve always known it very well.”

Mr. Santos amended his story on the Pulse nightclub shooting.

After he won election, Mr. Santos, who says he is gay, claimed to have “lost four employees” at the 2016 shooting at Pulse, a gay club in Orlando, a claim for which The Times could find no evidence.

During an interview on WABC radio, Mr. Santos said that those “four employees” did not actually work for his Florida company. Rather, those four individuals were in the process of being hired, he said.

“We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando,” he said.

Mr. Santos denied committing any crimes.

Contrary to records unearthed by The Times, Mr. Santos has seemed to insist that he was never charged with fraud for writing checks with a stolen checkbook in Brazil.

“I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” he told The Post. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”

In the radio interview with WABC, Mr. Santos offered to provide documents to corroborate his assertion. But he declined to provide any documentation to The Times.

Mr. Santos does not own 13 properties.

During his most recent congressional campaign, Mr. Santos cast himself and his family as the owners of 13 properties. He also suggested he was a beleaguered landlord whose tenants were unjustly withholding rent.

On Monday, he said his family owns property, but he does not.

“George Santos does not own any properties,” he told The Post.

The sources of Mr. Santos’s $700,000 campaign loan remain unclear.

Though Mr. Santos’s adulthood has been marked by a trail of unpaid debts to landlords and creditors, in 2021 and 2022, he lent $700,000 to his congressional campaign, according to federal campaign finance documents. It remains unclear where that money came from.

Mr. Santos continues to claim it originated with his work at The Devolder Organization, which he described as a consulting firm to City & State.

Mr. Santos has disclosed little about the operations of his company, and The Times could find no property or public-facing assets linked to the firm.

[Belle]

Stop the hypocrisy!! It is simply "his truth".

And I'm betting he "identifies" as all those things. Thanks to the Left for providing him cover with their absurd ideological propositions.

The current Australian PM told us during the election campaign that he was once an "economic adviser" to former PM Bob Hawke (in the 1980s!) and this was an unadulterated lie.

Ah, the new era of "decency": what's not to love??!!

[barney]

Belle, your son - by your declaration - was a key adviser to the most loathed Prime Minister Australia has had, a power grabber, a serial liar, an incompetent, and utterly unfit for office. The top reason Labor is now in government, in fact. Not sure what that says about your son, but it can't be wonderful. I don't know whether you or your son have any regrets, but we're all aware of this as you attack the "left" and try to pretend that Santos is just another in the long line of politicians. Long line of Republicans perhaps, the slimeball home (140 voted for the big lie!), but not most parties, except the Morrison part of the Morrison Liberal Government. Aren't you embarrassed about defending him?

[Belle]

What it says about my son is that he was very well regarded by both sides of politics and still is. We were told this by a Labor adviser during the last campaign. He has just been admitted early to a law degree on the basis of his work experience so clearly a university can understand the distinction between an adviser and his boss. He has been head-hunted for jobs but he is after the big bucks.

The most despised PM? You are forgetting Whitlam and his multiple scandals and staggering incompetence in economics. And 32.5% of the vote going to Labor with a 2 seat majority. A real reflection of a landslide. I think not.

Albo lied about his credentials as the basis of his suitability for PM.

Then in the US we all remember Pocahontas claiming she was a native American. The Left THINKS it has the moral advantage but this couldn't be further from the truth.

I'm not embarrassed defending Morrison, who stopped hundreds dying at sea after Labor weakened our borders for, er, compassionate reasons. Goodness knows how many children remain alive because of Morrison. And he was a thoughtful and caring boss for his staff. No turnaround like Rudd and Turnbull - both truly awful human beings.

Remember that the Labor Party which just appointed Rudd as Ambassador to the US publicly declared him a psychopath. Morrison is way behind in using those kinds of insults. He never spoke about his opponents the way you do about him. Kind and caring Lefties called his wife a "handmaid" and "white supremacist". Nobody hates like the Left.

[jserraglio]

It is simply "his truth". And I'm betting he "identifies" as all those things.

Wrong again. Santos admitted to his local conservative rag sheet, the New York Post, that he had lied. But he vehemently denied ever “identifying” as Jewish — he said he misspoke — he meant to say Jew-ish. Them’s the unalternative facts, ma’am.



NYT 27 Dec. 2022 . . .

“If Republican leaders demanded Mr. Santos resign — and he did so — it would prompt a special election in a swing seat, a potential blow to Republicans’ already precarious majority. And the incoming congressman had pledged to vote for Mr. McCarthy for speaker next week, a critical display of support for the Republican leader, who is facing a mini-revolt on the right and needs every vote he can get.

“Representatives for House leaders did not immediately respond to requests for comment or offer any statements on the record. Privately, House Republican leadership has appeared to concede that Mr. Santos’s situation is problematic, but has justified a lack of public condemnation by making the case that Democrats have their own problematic members.

“Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, previewed that argument on Twitter on Tuesday, conceding that Mr. Santos ‘lied about his resume’ before pivoting to accuse several Democrats of also telling lies.”

[jserraglio]

POLITICO

Santos struggles in Fox News interview about lying and integrity

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=isv3QJhpdXk

Guest host Tulsi Gabbard came down hard on the New York congressman-elect, who has admitted to fabricating significant parts of his résumé and embellishing his background.

Rep.-elect George Santos had a difficult time explaining away the discrepancies in his résumé during a Fox News interview with Tulsi Gabbard, who came down hard on the New York Republican for his recent controversy.

As Santos conceded that several lies he made about his credentials were “a mistake,” Gabbard — a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and the guest host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” — refused to let him off the hook on Tuesday, pushing him on the definition of integrity and his “blatant lies.”

“My question is, do you have no shame?” Gabbard asked at one point.

Santos, elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, on Long Island, came under scrutiny last week whenThe New York Times published an investigation calling out inconsistencies in his background. On Monday, the congressman-electtold the New York Post that he had indeed lied about several of his credentials, admitting to having never worked “directly” for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and not graduating from Baruch College, nor “from any institution of higher learning.”

Santos in the lead-up to the midterm elections had also fabricated elements of his family’s history, including that his mother was Jewish and that his maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust during World War II. After referring to himself publicly as “half Jewish” and a “Latino Jew” during his campaign, Santos conceded to the New York Post on Monday that he is “clearly Catholic.”

Gabbard on Tuesday night pressed Santos on the details of his Jewish heritage, asking him to explain a letter his campaign had sent out in which the congressman-elect refers to himself as a “proud American jew.” Santos doubled down on his claim that although he was raised a “practicing Catholic,” his “heritage is Jewish” and has always considered himself “Jew-ish.”

Gabbard repeatedly called out Santos’ “blatant lies” throughout the interview, frequently cutting him off and redirecting her questions as he tried to deflect by bringing up alleged lies Democratic politicians have told and highlighting issues he had campaigned on. She specifically came down hard on the congressman-elect at one point when he contended that “everybody wants to nit-pick at me” but said he still remained “committed in delivering results for the American people.”

“The results that people are looking for are called into question when you tell blatant lies. Not embellishments. And this is, I think, one of the biggest concerns, congressman-elect, is that you don’t really seem to be taking this seriously,” Gabbard said. “You’ve apologized, you said you’ve made mistakes, but you’ve outright lied. A lie is not an embellishment on a résumé.”

The real issue, Gabbard continued, is how the “American people can believe anything that you may say when you are standing on the floor of the House of Representatives, supposedly fighting for them.”

Santos floundered in defending himself, first saying he agreed with what Gabbard was saying and then adding that “we can debate my résumé” and he could “sit down and explain to you” how he worked with private equity firms — even though he lied in his résumé about working “directly” with several firms.

“We can have this discussion that’s going to go way above the American people’s head,” Santos said. “… I can sit down and if you want to have that discussion, I’d be glad to, Tulsi, to explain that to you and make sure that we settle the score.”

“This is not about settling scores,” Gabbard replied. “And I think you just kind of highlighted, I think, my concern and the concern that people at home have. You’re saying that this discussion will go way above the heads of the American people, basically insulting their intelligence. So not only are you now backtracking on these lies that you’ve told, but you’re saying that you can’t explain it in a way that your constituents would actually be able to understand.”

Gabbard then quickly wrapped up the interview, thanking Santos for his time and then getting the final word in by calling up the question of how his constituents “could possibly trust your explanations when you’re not really even willing to admit the depth of your deception to them.”

The heated interview marked Santos’ first televised appearance since news of the controversy broke.

[barney]

What it says about my son is that he was very well regarded by both sides of politics and still is. We were told this by a Labor adviser during the last campaign. He has just been admitted early to a law degree on the basis of his work experience so clearly a university can understand the distinction between an adviser and his boss. He has been head-hunted for jobs but he is after the big bucks.

The distinction between an adviser and his boss is a fair point, but you boasted throughout the Morrison premiership of your son's closeness and importance to the PM. So that disambiguation is not especially convincing. The fact that he is going for the "big bucks" says it all. Forget keeping a family together; the only thing that matters - as you have made clear in multiple posts - is cash. What a truncated life your family must lead. I hope they are enjoying their Gold Coast penthouses, because apparently it's all they have. I don't think of you as shallow, Belle, but you don't put your children in a positive light on that score.

I was brought up to believe that family is the most important responsibility, more so than career, but I know I'm a dinosaur.

[Belle]

Family closeness and economic progressivism are not mutually exclusive. You could cite the execrable Turnbull and Rudd families if you were making a genuine argument rather than the Guardianista class warrior schtick. That is really behind your comments as you don't know my son or my family. It happens that my son, the erstwhile adviser, is the most loyal and discreet member of our family. He remains a friend of Morrison, along with many others, as he's capable of distinguishing between the man and the politician.

Poverty is more synonymous with family dysfunction, less so affluence.

It has been great being able to support our son in Perth by buying him a home to rent, providing stability for his two precious sons when the Family Court took everything from him. He told me recently that when his former wife had serial affairs and left the marriage that he coped knowing he'd get the house. No, it didn't matter as everything was in that home-destroyers favour, courtesy of feminists and their political lapdogs. He said THAT is but one appalling indicator of where we are as a society and I agree. None of us will ever forgive the previous government for not turning around this disgraceful system.

Thanks to us and our means we have been able to keep our family together- when the State wanted it broken. They forcibly removed my son's children from him for months based on the vicious lies.of his former wife. Her own sister did it to 2 previous husbands and is now onto a 3rd: this time a vulnerable farmer 500km south of Perth whom she would have met on the internet. Once she has lived there for 12 months she's entitled to at least half of what he owns, whether it is part of a extended family structure or not. Married or not.

So, please, no crypto-marxist iterations about affluence being the.prerogative of dysfunctional families. We will leave that to the Left's media of choice - those who wouldn't dare deal wirh the real issues, like prejudice in the Family Court system and its rewarding of perjury.

It is the Left's erosion of family values, excessive leniency and a culture of grievance which has led us to where we are today. And the failure of conservatives to push against it. A social problem for our children and theirs. Thank God they'll have some money when we die to be able to absorb at least some of those shocks.

[barney]

So, please, no crypto-marxist iterations about affluence being the.prerogative of dysfunctional families. We will leave that to the Left's media of choice - those who wouldn't dare deal wirh the real issues, like prejudice in the Family Court system and its rewarding of perjury.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. Am I claiming that affluence is the prerogative of dysfunctional families? I hardly think so.

[diegobueno]

It is the Left's erosion of family values, excessive leniency and a culture of grievance

Do you not read your own posts?

[jserraglio]

George Santos Faces Federal and Local Investigations, and Public Dismay

Prosecutors said on Wednesday that they would examine Mr. Santos, who has admitted lying about his work and educational history during his campaign.

By Michael Gold, Ed Shanahan, Brittany Kriegstein and Rebecca Davis O’Brien

NEW YORK TIMES

Published Dec. 28, 2022. Updated Dec. 29, 2022.

Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Representative-elect George Santos committed any crimes involving his finances and lies about his background on the campaign trail.

The federal investigation, which is being run by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, is focused at least in part on his financial dealings, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investigation was said to be in its early stages.

In a separate inquiry, the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney’s office said it was looking into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos” during his successful 2022 campaign to represent parts of Long Island and Queens.

It was unclear how far the Nassau County inquiry had progressed, but the district attorney, Anne Donnelly, said in a statement that Mr. Santos’s fabrications “are nothing short of stunning.”

She added: “No one is above the law, and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on Wednesday. The office’s interest in Mr. Santos was reported earlier by ABC News, and the Nassau County inquiry was first reported by Newsday.

Both investigations followed reporting in The New York Times that uncovered that Mr. Santos had made false claims about his educational and professional background, including whether he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. The Times also found that Mr. Santos had omitted key details about his business on required financial disclosures.

Questions remain about how Mr. Santos has generated enough personal wealth to be able, as campaign finance filings show, to lend his campaign $700,000. Mr. Santos has said his money comes from his company, the Devolder Organization, but he has provided little information about its operations.

The statement by Ms. Donnelly, a Republican like Mr. Santos, added to the growing pressure on Mr. Santos, who was elected in November to represent northern Nassau County and northeast Queens in Congress beginning in January.

In interviews with several other media outlets on Monday, Mr. Santos confirmed some of the inaccuracies identified by The Times. He admitted that he had lied about graduating from Baruch College — he said he does not have a college degree — and that he had made misleading claims about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Santos also acknowledged not having earned substantial income as a landlord, something he claimed as a credential during the campaign. In making his admissions, he has sought to explain his dishonesty as little more than routine résumé padding.

But among more than two dozen Long Island residents interviewed on Wednesday, many, including some who said they had supported Mr. Santos, expressed disappointment at his actions and anger over his explanations.

Felestasia Mawere, who said she had voted for Mr. Santos and had given money to his campaign, insisted that he should not serve in Congress after admitting to having misled voters.

“He cheated,” Ms. Mawere, an accountant who lives in Manhasset, said. Of the falsehoods in his biography, she added, “He intentionally put that information knowing that it would persuade voters like me to vote for him.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Santos appeared to retain the support of many in his party, including those who are set to be his constituents.

Jackie Silver, of Great Neck, said she had voted for Mr. Santos and would do so again. Ms. Silver said that those calling for him to face further investigation, or even relinquish his seat, were only targeting him because he is a Republican.

“When they don’t like someone, they really go after them,” Ms. Silver, a courier for Uber Eats and DoorDash, said, before echoing Mr. Santos’s primary defense: “Everyone fabricates their résumé. I’m not saying it’s correct.”

Others who made financial contributions to Mr. Santos’s campaign did not appear ready to cast him aside, although only a few of about three dozen donors contacted for comment responded.

Lee Mallett, a general contractor from Louisiana and the chairman of the state contractors’ board there, said Mr. Santos’s immediate task was straightforward.

“He has to ask for forgiveness, and he’ll be forgiven,” Mr. Mallett, a registered Republican, said. He added: “He’s just making it way too complicated. It’s really simple.”

Barbara Vissichelli of Glen Cove, N.Y., said that she had met Mr. Santos while helping to register voters and had bonded with him over their shared love of animals. Ms. Vissichelli contributed $2,900 to his campaign and said she would continue to support him.

“He was never untruthful with me,” she said.

House Republican leaders have so far been silent amid the persistent questions about Mr. Santos, but he has gotten a tougher reception close to home. Ms. Donnelly is just one of several Long Island Republicans to show a willingness to examine him closely over his statements during the campaign and on his financial disclosure forms.

On Tuesday, Representative-elect Nick LaLota, a Republican who won election in a neighboring Long Island district, said the House Ethics Committee should investigate Mr. Santos. Nassau County’s Republican Party chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., said he “expected more than just a blanket apology” from Mr. Santos.

Another incoming member of New York’s Republican House delegation, Mike Lawler of Rockland County, sounded a similar refrain.

“Attempts to blame others or minimize his actions are only making things worse and a complete distraction from the task at hand,” Mr. Lawler said in a message posted on Twitter. He added that Mr. Santos should “cooperate fully” with any investigations.

Mr. Santos and his representatives have not responded to The Times’s repeated requests for comment, including to detailed questions raised by the newspaper’s reporting and to an email seeking a response to Ms. Donnelly’s statement.

In an interview broadcast on Fox News Tuesday night, Mr. Santos again asserted that he had merely “embellished” his résumé. The interviewer, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress who left the party in October, challenged him bluntly.

“These are blatant lies,” Ms. Gabbard said. “And it calls into question how your constituents and the American people can believe anything that you may say when you’re standing on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

On Wednesday, one more possible misrepresentation emerged. During his first campaign, Mr. Santos said on his website and on the campaign trail that he attended the Horace Mann School, an elite private school in Riverdale in the Bronx, but that his family’s financial difficulties caused him to drop out and get a high school equivalency diploma.

But a spokesman told The Washington Post that it could not locate records of Mr. Santos’s attendance, using several variations of his name. The spokesman, Ed Adler, confirmed that report to The Times. Mr. Santos’s press team did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, the news site Semafor published an interview with Mr. Santos in which he said his work with his company, the Devolder Organization, involved “deal building” and “specialty consulting” for a network of 15,000 wealthy people, family offices, endowments and institutions.

As an example, he said, he might help one client sell a plane or a boat to someone else, and that he would receive fees or commissions. But he provided no details on his contracts or clients to Semafor and has not answered similar questions from The Times.

Mr. Santos’s exercise in damage control has also involved cleaning up his personal biography, which was removed from his campaign website for most of Tuesday. By the time an updated version appeared on Wednesday, it had been stripped of several significant details.

Gone, for instance, was the claim that he had received a degree from Baruch College. (Another profile of him, on the House Republicans’ campaign committee website, said he had studied at New York University; that information is now gone as well.)

Mr. Santos’s campaign biography also no longer mentions work on Wall Street. A reference to Mr. Santos’s mother working her “way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution” has also been expunged.

Mr. Santos also deleted a reference to past philanthropic efforts. He previously claimed he had founded and run a tax-exempt charity, Friends of Pets United. The Internal Revenue Service and the New York and New Jersey attorney general’s offices said they had no records of a registered charity with that name.

In an interview with the political publication City & State, Mr. Santos said he was not the charity’s sole owner and that he was responsible for the “grunt work.” But he did not address the lack of official documents related to the organization.

The revised biography now also omits any mention of where Mr. Santos lives, another detail thrown into doubt by the The Times’s reporting.

[jserraglio]

What Can the House Do to Address George Santos’s Falsehoods?

The representative-elect’s long list of fabrications has raised questions about whether he will even be allowed to take his seat next week. But House Republicans have shown little appetite for punishing him.

By Catie Edmondson

Dec. 29, 2022, 2:19 p.m.

On the campaign trail, Representative-elect George Santos, a Republican who ultimately flipped a Democratic seat in New York, misled voters about his work and educational history, his family’s heritage, his past philanthropic efforts and his business dealings.

His litany of fabrications has raised questions as to whether Mr. Santos, who was elected last month to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, will be allowed to take his seat next week when Congress convenes or thrown out once he is sworn in.

But House Republican leaders, who have so far remained silent amid the persistent questions about Mr. Santos, are unlikely to punish him in any significant way. Even if they could force him out of Congress, it would prompt a special election in a swing seat, setting up a potential blow to the party’s already precarious majority.

And Mr. Santos has pledged to vote for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, for speaker next week as Mr. McCarthy faces a rebellion on the right and needs every vote he can get.

Here are some of the options for addressing Mr. Santos’s falsehoods.

Could the House refuse to seat him?

The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that a person who met the constitutional requirements for office in the House of Representatives could not be refused a seat once elected. In that case, Powell v. McCormack, the court suggested that a permissible remedy for the House, should it try to exclude one of its duly elected members, would be a vote to expel the lawmaker once he or she was seated.

House leaders could, in theory, band together to try to defy that precedent and force Mr. Santos to challenge the move in court. But Republicans have no appetite to do so.

Could he be expelled?

In theory, yes. Practically, probably not.

Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states that “Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

While the Constitution grants the House broad authority to cast out one of its own, there has long been internal debate over whether lawmakers can be expelled for behavior from before they took office.

Some Republicans, for example, argued that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, should not have been stripped of her committees for her social media posts from before she was elected. In the posts, she endorsed executing top Democrats, suggested that a number of school shootings were secretly perpetrated by government actors, and repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories.

But House Republican leaders are unlikely to want to expel Mr. Santos in the first place.

Only 20 members of Congress have been expelled from either chamber: five from the House and 15 from the Senate, according to the Congressional Research Service. Seventeen of those expulsions were related to disloyalty to the United States during the Civil War era, occurring only after the secession of the Confederate states.

The others — including the most recent instance, the expulsion in 2002 of Representative James A. Traficant Jr., Democrat of Ohio — occurred after representatives were convicted on public corruption charges.

Could he be removed from office in some other way?

Mr. Santos could choose to resign if he faces pressure from party leadership to do so, or if he is placed under an ethics investigation and no longer wishes to bear the costs of legal representation and stress that come with those proceedings.

There is no mechanism for voters to recall a member of the House of Representatives.

What punishments could the House dole out?

The House Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers who have historically shied from punishing their colleagues, has not commented on Mr. Santos’s case and is in a state of limbo until a new Congress is seated on Jan. 3. Its investigations are known to drag on for months or even years and seldom result in significant punishment.

Should House Republican leadership want to mete out some sort of punishment, they could move to censure him, a mostly symbolic gesture that requires a simple majority vote and sometimes is accompanied by a fine. After a lawmaker is censured, he or she must stand in the well of the House while a rebuke is read.

House Republican leaders could also choose not to seat Mr. Santos on any committees or to relegate him to backwater committees.

[jserraglio]

NYT 27 Dec. 2022 . . . Republican Jewish Coalition Says Santos ‘Deceived Us’ About His Heritage

“The country’s most prominent group of Jewish Republican political donors said Tuesday that it was ‘disappointed’ that Representative-elect George Santos had misrepresented himself as Jewish, and that it would bar him from its events. But the group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, stopped short of calling him unfit to serve in Congress or demanding his ouster.

“Mr. Santos, a Republican who was elected last month to represent a New York district that includes much of Long Island’s North Shore, has been embroiled in a widening scandal over misstatements and lies he told about his education, employment and finances.

“I never claimed to be Jewish . . . I am Catholic . . . I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'

“He also claimed repeatedly to be a descendant of European Jews who fled to Brazil to escape the Holocaust and said that while he was religiously Catholic, he also identified as a nonobservant Jew. He described himself as a Jew on the campaign trail in a heavily Jewish district and regularly attended events with rabbis and other leaders of the religious community.

“But in an interview with The New York Post published Monday, he said that he “never claimed to be Jewish” and was instead ‘Jew-ish.” He also denounced reporting that said he misled voters about his Jewish ancestry.”

[jserraglio]

George Santos alleged 9/11 attacks claimed life of his mom who died in 2016

By Snejana Farberov

December 29, 2022

Congressman-elect George Santos’ web of lies has gotten even more tangled after he stated last year that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks claimed his mother’s life — only to tweet months later that she actually died of cancer in 2016.

The Republican, who is poised to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District beginning next week, has admitted to fabricating much of his resume and concocting lies about various aspects of his personal life and family background.

Journalist Yashar Ali first shared Santos’ contradictory tweets about his mom, which he fired off five months apart in 2021.

In July of that year, Santos was responding to an account called “9/11 is a victimless crime” when he wrote: “9/11 claimed my mothers (sic) life…so I’m blocking so I don’t ever have to read this again.”

In July 2021, Santos sent out this tweet in response to an account called “9/11 was a victimless crime.” Twitter/santos4congress

Five months later, Santos revealed in a tweet that his mother died Dec. 23, 2016.Twitter/santos4congress

In December of the same year, Santos tweeted: “December 23rd this year marks 5 years I lost my best friend and mentor. Mom you will live forever in my heart.”

Santos’ campaign website states that 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 of September 11th, but she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.”

According to her online obituary, Santos’ mother, Fatima A.C.H. Devolder, died on Dec. 23, 2016 — more than 15 years and 3 months after the attacks. She passed away at a Long Island hospice facility a day after celebrating her 64th birthday.

Fatima Devolder died at a hospice facility on Long Island, according to her obituary.

As of August last year, shortly before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, health officials said they had recorded 23,710 cases of cancer among first responders and people who lived, worked or went to school near the World Trade Center. That total included 1,510 deaths.

While it is conceivable that Fatima Devolder contracted cancer from toxins released by the collapse of the Twin Towers, there is no evidence she was at or around Ground Zero during or immediately after the attack.

A previous version of Santos’ website reportedly claimed that his mother worked as a financial executive, but 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.

On his campaign website, Santos claimed that his mother worked in the World Trade Center’s South Tower and then died of cancer “a few years later.”

The New York Times reported last week that Fatima Devolder worked as a domestic aide in Brazil.

Santos did not immediately respond Thursday to phone and email messages asking him to clarify claims about his mother’s death.

In an interview with The Post Monday, Santos, 34 admitted that he lied about his college education, his employment history and his religious background.

Santos came clean after the Times revealed that there was no record of his employment at top Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The publication also found no evidence that the congressman-elect ever graduated from Baruch College, as he indicated in his biography.

“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” Santos said, adding, “We do stupid things in life.”

Santos claimed that his mother was Jewish, the daughter of refugees from Ukraine.

In campaign materials, Santos described himself as a “proud American Jew.” Speaking to The Post, he clarified that he was actually Catholic, but “because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish,'” he said.

The admitted fabulist also claimed his family were refugees who escaped Nazi persecution in Ukraine and settled in Belgium before immigrating to the US.

He told Fox News Digital in February that his ancestral name is Zabrovsky, but that he now uses his mother’s maiden name of Devolder, which is Dutch in origin.

A genealogist hired by CNN found “no sign of Jewish and/or Ukrainian heritage and no indication of name changes along the way.”

Santos also said in a December 2020 radio interview that his mother immigrated to the US from Belgium, but genealogical records reviewed by CNN and The Forward indicated that she was a native of Brazil, as were Santos’ maternal grandparents.

Representative-elect George Santos reported earning $750,000 from his Devolder Organization consulting firm, along with dividends valued between $1 million and $5 million.

On Wednesday, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly, a Republican, announced that her office has launched an investigation into Santos.

“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos are nothing short of stunning,” Donnelly said in a statement. “The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the 3rd District must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress.”

Despite facing growing scrutiny and outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike, Santos has shown no signs that he will be willing to step aside before his Jan. 3 swearing-in ceremony.

Under Article I of the Constitution, House members must be at least 25 years old, been a citizen of the US for at least seven years and live in the state they represent. A duly elected member cannot be excluded from being seated unless they flout one of those criteria.

[jserraglio]

As His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus, George Santos Goes to Washington

Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.

By Michael Gold and Grace Ashford
NYT
Jan. 1, 2023

In two years, George Santos went from being a little-known also-ran to a beacon of the Republican Party’s unexpected resurgence in a deep-blue state.

But a swirling cloud of suspicion surrounds Mr. Santos, just as he is poised to take the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to swear to serve Constitution and country.

Mr. Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.

Mr. Santos would join Congress facing significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Santos has been hard to reach. He has not answered telephone calls, text messages or emails asking him to respond to The Times’s reporting. Earlier this week, Mr. Santos’s lawyer responded to an email asking about his campaign’s unusual spending, saying it was “ludicrous” to suggest the funds had been spent irresponsibly. Mr. Santos did not answer an email sent to him and his lawyer on Friday asking for comments about new reporting on the discrepancies in his past.

Members of his own party have called for more detailed explanations of his behavior, and Nick LaLota, also a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, has called for a House ethics investigation.

Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News on Thursday night that he was “pretty confident” that the House Ethics Committee would open an investigation into Mr. Santos. He added, “What Santos has done is a disgrace. He’s lied to the voters.”

New York Democrats also made it clear they want to subject Mr. Santos to deeper scrutiny. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic leader, has said Mr. Santos is “unfit to serve.” Representative Ritchie Torres said he planned to introduce the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act — the SANTOS Act — that would require House candidates to provide details of their backgrounds under oath.

The lawmaker who may have the most significant role in his future in the House, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has been silent when asked about The Times’s reporting and Mr. Santos’s interviews supporting it.

It remains unclear how the controversy might affect Mr. Santos’s debut in Congress, including his committee assignments. Mr. Santos told NY1 last month that he hoped to serve on the House Financial Services or Foreign Affairs committees, based on his “14-year background in capital markets” and a “multicultural background.” He has since admitted to misrepresenting his work in financial services, while aspects of his heritage have been called into question.

New reporting by The Times brings a clearer picture of his earlier life into view, including information about the gaps in his personal history, along with discrepancies in how he described his mother’s life.

Mr. Santos has said that he grew up in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Until Wednesday, Mr. Santos’s campaign biography said that his mother, Fatima Devolder, worked her way up to become “the first female executive at a major financial institution.” He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died “a few years later.”

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.

His apparent fabrications about his own life begin with his claims about his high school. He said he attended Horace Mann School, a prestigious private institution in the Bronx, and said he dropped out in 2006 before graduating and earning an equivalency diploma. A spokesman for Horace Mann said that the school had no record of his attending at all.

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 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.

Interviews with half a dozen former friends and colleagues, several of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified to avoid being dragged into Mr. Santos’s controversies, suggest that he was reinventing himself when he moved back to New York, and that he would continue to do so in the years to come. They portray Mr. Santos as a striver, whose tendency toward embellishment and one-upsmanship left them with doubts about his many claimed accomplishments.

He told some that he had been a journalist at a famous news organization in Brazil, but none could find his name on its website. He said that he was taking classes at Baruch College, but none of his friends remembered him studying. He bragged of Wall Street glory but often seemed to be short on cash, at times borrowing from friends whom he didn’t always repay.

When he joined a travel technology company called MetGlobal, Mr. Santos portrayed himself as a man with family money. But 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.

Not everything in Mr. Santos’s stated biography was a lie. A LinkBridge document supports his claim that he was a vice president. Several former colleagues confirmed he worked for MetGlobal, for a subsidiary called HotelsPro. And records examined by The Times appeared to corroborate his claim that he received his high school equivalency degree in New York in 2006.

In 2016, Mr. Santos left for Florida, public records show, around the time that HotelsPro was opening an office in Orlando. Mr. Santos told Newsday in 2019 that he went there briefly for work. He received a Florida driver’s license and was registered to vote there in the 2016 election.

Those who knew him recalled that Mr. Santos had long been a follower of Republican politics, and that he railed against Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio, who was then the mayor of New York.

One who was close to Mr. Santos was Pedro Vilarva. Mr. Vilarva met Mr. Santos in 2014, when he was 18 and Mr. Santos was 26. Mr. Vilarva found him charming and sweet. They dated for a few months before Mr. Santos suggested they move in together. Mr. Vilarva said he felt on top of the world — even if he said he did find himself footing many of the bills.

“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,” Mr. Vilarva recalled. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work,” he said.

Things began to unravel between the two men in early 2015, Mr. Vilarva said, after Mr. Santos surprised him with tickets to Hawaii that turned out not to exist. Around the same time, he said he discovered that his cellphone was missing, and believed Mr. Santos had pawned it.

The betrayal prompted him to plug Mr. Santos’s name into a search engine, where he found that Mr. Santos was wanted by Brazilian police.

“I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left,” he said.

Looking back, Mr. Vilarva said, he was young and gullible: He wanted to believe Mr. Santos’s many stories and believe in the life that they shared. Today he is worried about the impact Mr. Santos might have as an elected official.

“I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands,” he said.

[lennygoran]

As His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus, George Santos Goes to Washington

Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.

Okay now he's been sworn in so let's give him a break! Regards, Len [Fantasy continues]

[maestrob]

As His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus, George Santos Goes to Washington

Mr. Santos, under scrutiny for lies about his background, is set to be sworn into Congress on Tuesday even as records, colleagues and friends divulge more about his past.

Okay now he's been sworn in so let's give him a break! Regards, Len [Fantasy continues]

Hate to nitpick, Len, but until a Speaker is elected, new members cannot be sworn in, IIRC.

[lennygoran]

Hate to nitpick, Len, but until a Speaker is elected, new members cannot be sworn in, IIRC.

Brian exactly what santos should have known before yesterday's lying tweet! Regards, Len

[jserraglio]

NYT OPINION
GUEST ESSAY
Why Did George Santos Lie About Being Jewish?
Jan. 4, 2023
By Mark Oppenheimer

Mr. Oppenheimer is the host of the podcast “Gatecrashers: The Hidden History of Ivy League Jews” and the author of “Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood.”

I know I should be horrified by the revelations about George Santos, the representative-elect from Queens who seems to have embellished or invented everything about himself except his name. But truth be told, I can’t get enough of this guy.

I love that he dragged Goldman Sachs into his sordid story, by putting the investment bank on his fanciful résumé. I really love that his dubious philanthropic credentials included founding Friends of Pets United, which, if a pro-animal group, raises interesting modifier questions — Were they friends only of united pets? What about the lonely, solitary pets? — but which actually sounds like a cult for dog lovers, one I would happily join.

And I really, really love that he claimed to have Jewish ancestry.

This was the lie that his (Catholic) grandparents were Jewish Holocaust refugees who fled to Brazil. Once the truth came out, he defended himself by telling The New York Post that he “never claimed to be Jewish” but only “Jew-ish.”

But there’s more that draws me to this case than Mr. Santos’s way with the truth. After all, he is not the first politician to seek advantage by merely saying he is Jewish (in his case, dishonestly).

How can this be? After all, this is a time of rising antisemitism; there’s a lot of bad news out there for us: the Tree of Life shooting, Ye, the hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue, the spike in attacks on observant Jews. And yet public figures still come out as public Jews.

I am reminded of the joke, purportedly told in prewar Germany, about the Jew who likes reading the Nazi newspaper. When asked why, he says that the Jewish papers carry news only about Jews being beaten and ostracized. “But in Der Stürmer, I read that we control the banks, the media, everything!”

That’s what it’s like to read about George Santos lying in a campaign position paper about being a “proud American Jew.” He seems to think being Jewish makes you more popular! Some good news!

Still, why do it? Politicians — by nature, canny operators all — must sense that there is some political advantage in being identified as having Jewish heritage. And in New York, there generally is. Remember that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proudly claimed her Jewish ancestry the month after her election to Congress in 2018, when she told a Queens synagogue that “generations and generations ago” her “family consisted of Sephardic Jews.”

That was mere months after Tablet magazine reported that Julia Salazar, who was running for the New York State Senate as a politically progressive Jew and claimed a mixed Jewish-Catholic background, “appears to have had a Christian upbringing.” She spoke to reporters about going through a conversion to Judaism in college, around the time she became embedded deeply in New York City’s robust left-Jewish community.

Gentile politicians in Arkansas are not bragging about Jewish ancestry. But in Brooklyn or Queens or out on Long Island? There are Jews, and they vote.

Jewishness — or Jew-ish-ness? — can bring one closer to powerful activist groups, can help give one a constituency. For Mr. Santos, having a Jewish identity made him a shinier object for the Republican Party, which for decades has been trying, and failing, to peel Jews away from the Democratic fold. (After the revelations about Mr. Santos’s fibbing, the Republican Jewish Coalition said that Mr. Santos “will not be welcome at any future R.J.C. event,” which hardly seems like a punishment.)

It’s noteworthy that in many cases claiming to be a Jew doesn’t seem to benefit, exactly — but having a whiff of Jewish heritage or ancestry does. That stands to reason, because in politics, or in celebrity, there is no such thing as bad ancestry. Being 1/128th Native American or part Romani or a smidgen Jewish — they all lend a little flavor, liven up a staid image. Actually being a current, practicing, engaged member of the group? Less appealing. A practicing, Sabbath-observant Jew makes some people suspicious; being a secular American who happens to have had a great-great-grandfather who was a shtetl rabbi is a cool biographical fact.

To quote the title of Dara Horn’s essay collection, people love dead Jews. Having a dead Jew in your past is swell. George Santos invented his past in business because he hoped it would make him seem successful. He invented dead Jews to make himself seem sympathetic or interesting.

Still, I am a little wary of calling out Mr. Santos for culturally appropriating Jewishness, for trying to assimilate himself to my people, because we Jews are always trying to assimilate people to us. In the words of Adam Sandler, in his Hanukkah-song roll call of famous Jews, “Harrison Ford’s a quarter Jewish — not too shabby” (and he’s actually half Jewish). There’s nothing a Jew likes more than welcoming to the club a celebrity with surprise Jewish ancestry.

But that’s an invitation offered, tongue in cheek, by Jews. It’s like the MacArthur “genius” grant: You don’t apply; you just get contacted. (I’m still waiting for my phone call.) If you do want to apply, or be accepted as a member of the community, then there are many ways in — but all of them involve being serious, not opportunistic; caring not just about your DNA or ancestry, but about the living community of Jews. You can be serious in many ways: praying with us, studying with us, learning how to cook with us, doing political organizing with us, converting to be one of us.

And for those who feel “Jew-ish,” either because they had lots of Jewish friends in college or because they discovered a Jewish great-great-grandparent, even though every relative since the Civil War has been Christian: Maybe keep quiet about it? Or just say you’re a friend of the Jews — you could even found Friends of Jews United, which, like Friends of Pets United, may not exist, but definitely should.

[Rach3]

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) Jan.24


Offering his full-throated support for Representative George Santos, Rudolph Giuliani said that “it’s time for Republicans to pass the torch to a new generation of liars.”

“I get why some Republicans are knocking the kid—they’re envious of his raw talent,” Giuliani told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity. “But we should be showing him our respect. I mean, look at this kid’s body of work. He could turn out to be the Michael Jordan of lying.”


“When I watch him lie, he reminds me of me at his age,” Giuliani said. “Like poetry in motion. But he’s taking his game to a whole new level. The inventiveness, the audacity. Personally, I can’t wait to see what he does next.”

“I still like to think that I can lie with the best of them, but I know I’ve lost a step,” he added. “What can I tell you? I had a good run. But now it’s George Santos’s time to shine. Just put him out there and watch the magic happen.”