Lies And Grift

The Saga of George Santos gets more and more outrageous. Dana Milbank writes:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has just padded Santos’s résumé further with a seat on the Small Business Committee.

And Santos does have relevant small-business experience! In 2008, the enterprising Santos stole a man’s checkbook in Brazil and used it to buy himself shoes and other items, according to police and court records uncovered by the New York Times.

Santos further honed his business acumen by going from having only $55,000 in earned income in 2020 to loaning his campaign $700,000 in the 2022 cycle, apparently brought in from a “family firm” that had $80 million in assets but no listed clients.

Along the way, Santos gained crucial experience at yet another small business, Harbor City Capital, accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being a Ponzi scheme that stole from its investors (which, The Post reported, included a sanctioned Russian oligarch’s cousin who also contributed to Santos’s campaigns).

McCarthy’s leadership team also awarded Santos a spot on the Science, Space and Technology Committee — and this, too, is a deserved recognition of Santos’s extensive and inventive curriculum vitae. What better place for a man whose stories are not of this world than the committee whose jurisdiction is in outer space?

On Thursday, Santos was denying reports that he had performed in drag in Brazil under the name Kitara Ravache. To summarize:

He didn’t attend Horace Mann School, didn’t attend Baruch College (where he also didn’t have a volleyball scholarship that required him to get two knee replacements), didn’t get an MBA from New York University, and didn’t work for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. He didn’t own 13 rental properties or have employees who died in the Pulse nightclub shooting. His nonprofit, Friends of Pets United, did not save 2,500 dogs and cats (although it is accused of stealing $3,000 from a GoFundMe for a disabled veteran’s dying service dog). He is not a Jew, his grandparents weren’t Holocaust refugees, and they fled neither Ukraine nor Belgium. His mother wasn’t a finance executive, and she wasn’t at the World Trade Center, nor apparently even in the country, during the 9/11 attacks, which didn’t “claim” her life. His real name may or may not be George Santos, or Anthony Zabrovsky, or Anthony Devolder. He may or may not be American born, have a brain tumor, be biracial, have a husband, be a longtime “openly gay” man or have attended a “Stop the Steal” rally in a stolen Burberry scarf.

Santos is the Republican Party in a microcosm -- he's all about lies and grift.

Image: The New York Times