George Santos Faces Federal and Local Investigations, and Public Dismay

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

Published Dec. 28, 2022

Updated Dec. 29, 2022, 12:04 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/nyregion/george-santos-long-island-investigation.html

 

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.

 

Dana Rubinstein and Grace Ashford contributed reporting.

 

Michael Gold is a reporter covering transit and politics in New York. @migold

 

Ed Shanahan is a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk. @edkshanahan

 

Rebecca Davis O'Brien covers law enforcement and courts in New York. She previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, where she was part of a team that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for stories about secret payoffs made on behalf of Donald Trump to two women.