Has anyone seen reliable details on when and how he immigrated and/or naturalized? If it was after 2008, when he confessed to a crime in Brazil, I sure wouldn’t want to be his immigration lawyer in the denaturalization proceedings.
(Assuming he did, in fact, naturalize and whoever is in charge of verifying that he is even legally eligible to hold office didn’t drop the ball on that, too.)
His birthplace of record is in Queens; as the child of Brazilians he had the right to travel back and forth and reside. Or so is it claimed. At this point who knows wtf is true.
I don’t feel there are grounds for refusing to seat him. There’s nothing in NY election laws that prohibits general lying or a lack of character. (As others have noted, there are a few specific lies that can violate election law, like age or residency.)
It is now just a distraction. There is no longer any issue, until next election.
I agree. This should have been a campaign issue but now that the election’s over, the only thing to do is to add it to the pile of evidence that Republicans tell lies. It’s unfortunate that in two years this will be old news.
Why bother? If the lies get them elected and/or piss off Democrats, Republicans will put them in the “PLUS” column.
It’s always nice to see a True Christian that treats the Ten Commandments and the Bibles admonishment that only God can forgive breaking them with the respect they deserve.
Another lie - he can’t seem to decide when and how his mother died.
Not that I want to stand up for this guy, or give him the benefit of any assumption of honesty, but isn’t people dying years later from particle inhalation-related diseases a thing? Those two tweets aren’t necessarily contradictory in that case.
He’s busy sanitizing his web presence as scrutiny intensifies.
Gift link:
The article is the first in the NYT today, headlined on the main page as “Santos Facing Federal and Local Inquiries Into His Lies and Finances.”
That would be a perfectly acceptable explanation and, in fact, may very well be the case. But just look at how all of his lies get turned into ‘well, I mean, that was almost the case’ and says it was a poor choice of words and changes it to something similar that may or may not be true, probably harder to fact check and almost always carry the same meaning as the original statement.
I graduated from college
I almost graduated from college
I worked for Goldman Sachs
I worked for LinkBridge. LinkBridge did some work for Goldman Sachs
Four of my employees were killed at the Pulse Nightclub Shooting
We were in the process of hiring four people killed at the Pulse Nightclub Shooting
I’m Jewish
I’m Jew-ish
I’m not sure if he’s currently claiming to have lots of money or no money. Is he gay or straight (and so we’re all on the same page, the issue is the lying)?
He’s now at the point where he’s given the public more than enough reason to doubt just about anything he says.
If this were anyone else, what you said, that the events of 9/11 are what ultimately led to his mother’s death, would make sense. But with him, who knows?
I did also find that he stiffed the church on the funeral expenses even though her funeral, according to the priest, raised a “significant” amount of money. Also, he said Santos was Catholic.
I’m curious if that money, which every article quotes the priest as being “significant”, was closer $50,000 or $500,000. IOW, was it a lot of money for someone that claimed to be poor or like a lot of money that one might fund an election campaign with?
They are. From the NYT, “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.”
I think you’re probably right. He’s going to be seated, he’s not going to resign in shame, and there’s nowhere near the 2/3 majority of the House ready to expel him. The only way he ends up ejected from the House is if he’s convicted (not just indicted) of financial irregularities. At that point he’d come under tremendous pressure from House Republican leadership to resign (although what does he owe them?), and if he didn’t there would likely be the votes to expel. Because they wouldn’t want him used as a Democratic talking point in their own reelections.
At what point do the relevant authorities say that he’s not the person who was elected? I mean, obviously not just for lying about his resume, but if it were to turn out that he was using an assumed name or the like.
I also have to wonder… If the Republicans are OK with someone lying this much to get elected, what’s to stop someone who actually supports liberal policies from lying like this, getting elected with an R after their name, and then voting with the Democrats on everything?
I feel the general principle is that the only thing the corrects this sort of lying to get elected is the next election.
Yep. The combination of written and unwritten rules adds up to that being what addresses the problem of “the wrong person got elected”.
Nothing.
Nothing actually. Such things have already happened, particularly in School Board elections, where right-wing religious candidates conceal their true beliefs in order to get elected, and then vote on the board based on their religious beliefs, with the intent of transforming the public school system.
Which might be a good a reason as any for them to start calling out this kind of bullshit within their own party instead of ignoring it. Granted, they’d likely only torpedo republicans they don’t like to begin with (and it sounds like Santos may have been one of them) but it would give them at least the appearance of the smallest amount of integrity.
OTOH, just in general, I’d rather have their lies out in the open like this than worry about them covering them up even more.
He used his mother’s funeral to raise money? And then stiffed the church?
I had not heard this one. This should be a headline across the country, showing what kind of man the Republicans continue to support.
Every article I found has some variation of this -
He also said that when Santos’ mother, Fatima Devolder, died in 2016, Santos approached him to ask for help from the church. Da Silva had ministered to the family during Devolder’s illness, and soon after she died, Santos told da Silva that the family couldn’t afford a funeral.
A memorial mass was held at the church, which held a collection for the family. Da Silva said he didn’t count the money collected, but recalled that the amount raised was significant, and that he handed the collection directly to Santos. But da Silva’s portrayal of the family’s financial condition is at odds with the biography presented by Santos.
There isn’t any mention of the church charging for the funeral and being stiffed.
How the priest knew it was significant without counting it is beyond me - unless his threshold for “significant” is well below $50K. And a collection being taken up at a funeral/memorial Mass is not what I would really call a fundraiser, not when the subject of the conversation is a politician. It’s really more like a Go Fund Me or the old fashioned version where people put money in the Mass cards to help the family pay for the funeral. Which is absolutely wrong to ask for if you really can afford the funeral , just as it’s wrong to plead poverty to avoid the church fee if you can afford it - but it’s not the same as raising thousands above the cost of the funeral and then stiffing the church.