2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Probably won't make a damn bit of difference but ...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Most bizarrely, Santos claims that he never said he was "Jewish". He says that he said he was "Jew-ish".

[N.E. Brigand]

If Santos is really sorry, then he should announce that he's resigning.

(Or that he will resign. How does someone who's been elected but has not yet taken office officially withdraw from the job?)

If he believes voters will forgive him, then he can then run again in a special election, this time citing his actual biography and record rather than the one he made up.

The New York Post article in which Santos sort of comes clean (while still leaving some notable holes) says that senior Republicans were aware enough of problems with Santos's biography that it was a "running joke" among them, but they assumed the matter "would be worked out by the voters." Also fyi: the article has been changed since it was first published a few hours ago. Before it was a bit blasé about Santos's false claims; now it takes a harsher tone. (I'm pretty sure the first word in the headline now being "Liar" is new, but I didn't save a screenshot of what it said earlier, so I'm not absolutely confident about that. But note that the first word in the URL ("Rep.-elect") is now the second word in the headline)

[Eldy]

Maddening that the NY Dems' opposition research team was not aware of this before the election, given how thin the margins are in the House as a whole.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Even more so since Santos also ran in a different district in 2020 and lost, but none of this came out then either.

However, I do agree with this point by "The Palmer Report" (and I like your new avatar, again!)

[Eldy]

Fingers crossed voters care and there does indeed turn out to be a silver lining here.

(And thank you, again! I felt like going with a somewhat less melancholy look. )

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The newly constructed district that Santos will represent includes the town where I went to high school.

[N.E. Brigand]

Most bizarrely, Santos claims that he never said he was "Jewish". He says that he said he was "Jew-ish".

This despite having claimed that his ancestors emigrated to Brazil to escape the Holocaust.

And despite having a "position paper shared with Jewish and pro-Israel leaders during the campaign. In the two-page document, Santos called himself 'a proud American Jew.'"

Santos also told these groups that he'd made frequent trips to Israel, but there seems to be no evidence supporting any visits to that nation.

[RoseMorninStar]

Santos is obviously a compulsive liar and one can't believe a thing he says. How he could possibly function as a trustworthy public representative is beyond me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

One of the unanswered questions about Santos is where the money came from that funded his campaign, because he clearly does not have the type of money that was reported to have been given to the campaign by him. At least part of the answer is not at all surprising:

Russian Oligarch’s Cousin Funneled Cash to N.Y. Politician

[N.E. Brigand]

Uh, per an article today in the New York Times, new Congressman-elect George Santos, Republican of New York, apparently lied about most of his supposed biography:

Santos’ campaign biography says the Brazilian-American worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but both firms said they had no record of him there; a review of public documents and court filings found no evidence that his family owns 13 real estate properties [as he claimed]; both Baruch College and New York University found no records of his enrollment, despite claims he graduated from Baruch in 2010 and took classes at NYU; and a New Jersey animal group said it never received any money from a $50-a-ticket fundraiser he co-hosted in 2017.

Santos also claimed, apparently falsely, that four of his employees were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

Santos said today that these four (unidentified) people were not his employees but "were going to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando." (No details were provided about the company.)

[N.E. Brigand]

This decent summary of the Santos saga published just yesterday morning by Jeet Heer in The Nation is already out of date. Consisder this statement: "It’s an open question whether Santos is even Jewish at all" and this one: "His claim to have had coworkers who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre is unsupported." Less than twelve hours later, Santos would admit to the New York Post that he is not Jewish. (Today, the Republican Jewish Conference announced that Santos had deceived them and would never again be welcome at their events.) And today he told NPR that no one he worked with was killed in the Pulse attack.

Santos's campaign biography said that his mother was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11 but survived the attack, only to die of other causes "a few years later." Several people have pointed out that she died in 2016, i.e., fifteen years later. Has anyone confirmed whether she was actually at the WTC that day?

One thing that was reported prior to the big New York Times expose on Santos's lies was how Santos's campaign received funding from Andrew Intrater, the American cousin of Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg -- but even that story (in The Daily Beast) came three weeks after the election.

[N.E. Brigand]

Today the judge in the case ordered Kari Lake to pay Katie Hobbs more than $33,000 as reimbursement for Hobbs's payment to expert witnesses, but he did not sanction Lake or her attorneys.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To be clear, that is just a normal awarding of costs that would be awarded to any prevailing party. The judge explicitly ruled that Lake did not act in bad faith and that her claims were not "groundless".

[N.E. Brigand]

I don't understand the reasoning behind the arguments of several pundits, like this editor at New York news site The City, who criticize "Democrats who'd been up in arms about Trump trying to steal the presidential election [now arguing] that Santos shouldn't be seated in Congress," unless this is a complaint on strictly technical grounds: per the Supreme Court's 1969 ruling in Powell v. McCormack, there is apparently no way around "seating" George Santos, but he can be promptly expelled.

There's definitely no hypocrisy. None of the four members of the House to be refused seating ("excluded") prior to 1969 was a Republican. The five members of the House who have been expelled were all Democrats. Most recently, in 2001, big-haired Ohio Congressman Jim Traficant, a Democrat who had been convicted of bribery and other charges but refused to resign, was expelled by a vote of 420-1. Two-thirds are needed for expulsion. (The sole vote against Traficant's expulsion came from California Congressman Gary Condit, also a Democrat, who was embroiled in his own scandal: he'd been having an extramarital affair with a missing woman who was eventually found murdered. Condit had no role in her murder -- someone else was convicted ten years later -- although it seems he did twice lie to police when questioned about his relationship, and he lost reelection in 2002.)

In any case, now even some Republicans are calling for Santos to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee and law enforcement.

[N.E. Brigand]

From Talking Points Memo: George "Santos Once Boasted About Being ‘Head Guy For New York City’ At Alleged Ponzi Scheme." This was in 2020, a year before the company where he claimed to hold a major role, Harbor City, was exposed as being a scam. This is a situation where Santos is better off if he was "embellishing," because Harbor City is under investigation (at this point, it seems he probably was lying about his role: the article notes that he hasn't been named in the SEC's complaint).

In the same 2020 interview, Santos also claimed to have worked for JP Morgan. During the 2022 campaign, he claimed to have worked for two other banks, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup: those claims are now known to be false. I suspect this one likely is too.

(Edit: And I was just coming back to note that CNN has found still more, but V beat me to it!)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yet more lies.

More false claims from George Santos about his work, education and family history emerge

[N.E. Brigand]

And even more on Santos: "George Santos’ Massive Campaign Loans May Not Be Legal" (Daily Beast).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And on that note:

Federal prosecutors are investigating Rep.-elect George Santos’ finances

[N.E. Brigand]

Santos's campaign biography said that his mother was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11 but survived the attack, only to die of other causes "a few years later." Several people have pointed out that she died in 2016, i.e., fifteen years later. Has anyone confirmed whether she was actually at the WTC that day?

Uh, in July 2021, Santos tweeted, "9/11 claimed my mother's life."

Then five months later he tweeted, "December 23rd this year marks 5 years" since her death.

At this point, can we even be certain she's actually dead?

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More!

"Two years ago George Santos claimed to be half Black."

Scanning the replies, it seems this one might be true? And yet it's weird that he's made only a few comments about this but has falsely claimed many times to be Jewish.