George Santos: Can the Republican spin his way out of his web of lies?
A Republican US congressman who admitted lying on his CV is to face criminal charges, officials have confirmed.
Details of the federal indictment against George Santos, who represents New York’s Long Island, have yet to be confirmed, but he could appear in court as early as today.
Federal prosecutors have been examining false statement allegations in Santos’ campaign filings.
The US politician is at the centre of a web of extraordinary revelations and accusations covering everything from his heritage to jobs he simply never held.
Described by critics as a “total fraud”, he is accused of fabricating parts of his resume while running for Congress. While he denies some of the allegations made against him, he has admitted that some of his claims were lies.
So far he has refused to step down and has previously tweeted that he is cooperating fully with a House Ethics Committee inquiry.
Here’s a round-up of Mr Santos’s claims, how we got here and what could happen next to the controversial congressman.
Who is George Santos?
It’s a seemingly simple question, but one that is becoming increasingly difficult to get a straight answer to. Here is what we know for sure.
George Santos has admitted he lied about working on Wall Street
The Brazilian-American, 34, was elected to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District in November 2022, becoming the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent.
While his victory caused a buzz around Capitol Hill, it was soon dimmed by allegations starting in December over his resume.
A New York Times investigation found a number of false claims Mr Santos made on his CV including lies over his education and previous jobs.
From there, it’s all unravelled.
His responses have varied too. He has admitted that some were lies, rejected others and has backtracked on a few too.
Mr Santos was sworn in by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in January. Pic: AP
He’s ‘Jew-ish’ not Jewish
Mr Santos has made conflicting remarks over being Jewish, taking part in a drag performance in Brazil and the circumstances around his mother’s death.
So let’s start with his heritage.
After his victory, he told the Republican Jewish Coalition summit, the election meant that “now there will be three” Jewish Republican members of Congress.
But then afterwards, he backtracked and told the New York Post he “never claimed to be Jewish”, and said he was Catholic adding: “Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish’.”
Some Republicans have also called for George Santos to resign. Pic: AP
He said 9/11 ‘claimed his mother’s life’ – records show she wasn’t in the country
It’s also quite confusing when you take a look at the conflicting reports over the death of Mr Santos’s mother, Fatima Caruso Devolder.
While running for Congress in 2021, Mr Santos tweeted that the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York “claimed his mother’s life”.
Yet on his campaign website, Mr Santos said his mother was in her office in the South Tower on the day of the terrorist attack but “survived” and died “a few years” later from cancer.
However, records obtained by Sky’s affiliate NBC News and reports by the Washington Post citing immigration records, suggested Ms Devolder had not even been living in the US at the time of the attack and was in fact living in Rio de Janeiro.
He has not publicly commented on that since.
‘Sue me for having a life’
Now on to one of the latest claims about the congressman’s performance at a drag show.
A Brazilian performer, who uses the drag name Eula Rochard, told Reuters she befriended the now-congressman in 2005 in Brazil.
She said in 2008, he competed in a drag beauty pageant in Rio using the drag name Kitara Ravache.
While the congressman first called the reports “categorically false” on Twitter, when confronted on camera, he told US channel ABC7 – “I was young and I had fun at a festival – sue me for having a life.”
A New York Times investigation found a number of false claims Mr Santos made on his resume
The Trump effect
Political strategist Rina Shah said only a “handful” of Republicans are calling for Mr Santos’s resignation and his behaviour echoes the “Trump effect”.
The former senior staffer to two Republican Congress members described him as a “conman”.
She told Sky News: “The situation certainly highlights the Donald Trump effect. The impact of the 45th President, a real style of running to just regularly make claims to be boastful in a way of things that were simply not true and proven to be untrue.”
She added that Mr Santos has “taken on” that style “in a defiant manner that says ‘come and get me because even if you try to get me, I’ll just continue to lie about it’.”
Despite the lies, Ms Shah said no top Republican will take action against him because they “cannot afford to lose” his House seat.
The Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House following the midterms and she warned that Mr Santos’s removal could endanger the seat.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would withhold judgment on Santos, saying: “In America, you’re innocent until proven guilty.”
He didn’t work on Wall Street
While the list of accusations against Mr Santos has grown, he has admitted to lying about some things.
Mr Santos claimed on his campaign website he had a finance career working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs – but the NYT investigation found neither institution had any record of his employment.
He admitted to lying about his education and the roles at the two firms and told the New York Post: “My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry.”
George Santos has been labelled a “fraud” by some Democrats Pic: AP
Stealing from a disabled veteran
But there are some cases where Mr Santos has flat-out denied certain claims.
He denied an accusation by veteran Richard Osthoff, who accused him of scamming him of $3,000 from a GoFundMe campaign page raised for his dying service dog in 2016.
Mr Osthoff told the news site Patch that he was told Anthony Devolder, one of the names Mr Santos used before entering politics, had a pet charity called Friends of Pets United.
He claimed Mr Devolder closed the page and disappeared after the funds were raised. Mr Santos has angrily denied the reports and called them “shocking and insane”.
What makes his ‘lies’ different?
While some may say lying in politics is not new, one psychologist specialising in lying and deception research explains why Mr Santos’s claims and accusations may seem a little different.
Dr Chris Hart, a psychology professor at Texas Woman’s University, told Sky News: “If we look at the lies most politicians tell they’re often exaggerations and half-truths. They rarely lie in such a way that they are making a claim which has absolutely no basis in reality and that’s where he is different.
“The frequency with which he appears to tell them is a bit surprising compared to other politicians.”
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‘I will NOT resign’
Revelations about Mr Santos’s lies and the allegations against him have caused anger among Democrats who have described him as a “total fraud” and are calling for him to resign.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he is a “complete and total fraud” and he “deceived and connived his way into Congress”.
Despite calls from some Republicans and Democrats, Mr Santos has repeatedly refused to resign.
For now, it seems he has no intention to go anywhere.
The US secretary of state has hailed a “tremendous amount of progress” on peace talks after the US and Ukraine delegations met in Geneva – but said that negotiators would “need more time”.
Marco Rubio said the meetings in Switzerland on Sunday have been “the most productive and meaningful” of the peace process so far.
He said the US was making “some changes” to the peace plan, seemingly based on Ukrainian suggestions, “in the hopes of further narrowing the differences and getting closer to something that both Ukraine and obviously the United States are very comfortable with”.
Mr Rubio struck an optimistic tone talking to the media after discussions but was light on the details, saying there was still work to be done.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Geneva after peace talks with Ukraine. Pic: Reuters
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Analysis: Rubio strikes an optimistic tone – but is light on detail
“I don’t want to declare victory or finality here. There’s still some work to be done, but we are much further ahead today at this time than we were when we began this morning and where we were a week ago for certain,” Mr Rubio said.
He also stressed: “We just need more time than what we have today. I honestly believe we’ll get there.”
Sky News’ defence analyst Michael Clarke said on the initial US-Russian 28-point peace plan that it was Donald Trump against the world, with maybe only Moscow on his side.
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Is Trump’s plan a ‘capitulation document’?
Mr Rubio praised the Ukrainian attitude towards the talks and said Mr Trump was “quite pleased” after he previously said in a social media post that Ukraine’s leaders had expressed “ZERO GRATITUDE” for US efforts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Sunday that there are signs that “President Trump’s team hears us”.
In a news release on Sunday evening, the White House said the day “marked a significant step forward”.
“Ukrainian representatives stated that, based on the revisions and clarifications presented today, they believe the current draft reflects their national interests and provides credible and enforceable mechanisms to safeguard Ukraine’s security in both the near and long term,” it claimed.
Despite diplomatic progress in Geneva the finish line remains a long way off
We’ve witnessed a day of determined and decidedly frantic diplomacy in this well-heeled city.
Camera crews were perched on street corners and long convoys of black vehicles swept down Geneva’s throughfares as the Ukrainians worked hard to keep the Americans on side.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio did not want to go into details at a press “gaggle” held at the US Mission this evening, but he seemed to think they had made more progress in the last 96 hours than the previous 10 months combined.
The Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy also seemed satisfied enough, posting on Telegram that there were “signals President Trump’s team is hearing us” after a day of “numerous meetings and negotiations”.
That said, we are a long way from the finish line here – something Rubio acknowledged when he said that any proposal agreed here would have to be handed over to the Russians.
At that point, negotiations to stop the war would surely get tougher.
President Putin has shown little or no inclination to stop the conflict thus far.
This, then, is the most important reason the Ukrainians seem determined to keep the Americans on side.
European leaders have presented a counter proposal to the widely criticised US-Russian peace plan, with suggestions including a cap on Ukraine’s peacetime army and readmitting Moscow into the G8.
This will only take place if the plan is agreed to by the US, Russia and Ukraine, and the G7 signs off on the move. Russia was expelled after annexing Crimea in 2014.
The counter proposal also includes US guarantees to Ukraine that mirror NATO’s Article 5 – the idea that “an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against them all”.
Read more:
Who actually wrote US-Russian peace plan for Ukraine?
In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal to US-Russia plan
The initial peace plan was worked up by the White House and Kremlin without Ukraine’s involvement, and it acquiesces to many of Russia’s previous demands.
It covers a range of issues – from territorial concessions to reconstruction programmes, the future Ukrainian relationship with NATO and the EU, and educational reforms in both Ukraine and Russia.
US and Ukrainian officials are set to meet again today to continue work on the proposal.
It has also been reported that President Zelenskyy could travel to the US as early as this week to discuss the most sensitive aspects of the plan with President Trump.
Questions are being raised about the Russia-Ukraine peace plan, after US politicians suggested the proposal’s 28 points did not originate from Donald Trump’s administration but were put forward by Moscow.
Senators, critical of the US president’s approach to Ukraine, said they spoke with the US secretary of state Marco Rubio, who told them the plan is a “wish list” from the Russians and not a proposal offering Washington’s positions.
Ukraine war latest: Washington denies backing ‘Moscow wish list’
The US state department has called that account “blatantly false”, with Mr Rubio saying that the senators were mistaken and that Washington was responsible for the proposals.
The 28-point plan has surprised many for being so favourable to Moscow.
Explained: Trump’s peace plan in full
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How Ukraine peace plan came about
Republican senator Mike Rounds is among those who have claimed the plan was not drafted by Washington.
“This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form,” he said at a security conference in Canada. “They want to utilise it as a starting point.”
Mr Rounds added: “It looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”
Independent senator Angus King said Mr Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “essentially the wish list of the Russians”.
The senators said they spoke to Mr Rubio after he contacted them while on his way to Geneva for talks on the plan.
According to the Reuters news agency, some US officials also said the plan contains material that the US secretary of state has previously rejected and neither he, nor anyone in the state department, was aware of the plan before it was announced.
These latest claims have added to growing confusion over who was involved in drawing up the 28 points.
European leader asks: ‘Who authored the plan?’
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has raised concerns about its origins. On Sunday, he wrote on X: “It would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”
In a post on X, Mr Rubio insisted that “the peace proposal was authored by the US… but it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine”.
A former adviser to Vladimir Putin had denied that Russia was behind the peace plan. Sergei Markov told Sky News “it is American” and the points were a “very good basis for diplomatic negotiation”.
Mr Markov insisted there were “some positive moods in Russia about it” but also accused Europe and Ukraine of wanting to continue the war, despite Russia unilaterally launching and pursuing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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Former Putin advisor challenged over 28-point peace plan
Read more from Sky News:
Peace plan scrutinised at G20
Ukraine issued with ‘surrender ultimatum’
Ukraine and Europe cannot reject plan
American special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Kirill Dmitriev in Miami at the end of October to work on the proposals, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Mr Dmitriev, who is a close ally of the Russian president, was blacklisted by the US government in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kirill Dmitriev and special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg in April 2025. Pic: Kremlin Pool Photo/AP
Trump rows back on demands
The US president initially demanded that Ukraine accept the peace plan by Thursday. But he has since rowed back from that position, instead saying the proposal was not his final offer.
The plan currently on the table calls for major concessions by Kyiv, including ceding territory to Russia, pledging not to join NATO and abandoning certain weaponry.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not rejected the proposals outright, but said he would not betray Ukraine’s interests. Meanwhile, Mr Putin has described the plan as the basis of a resolution to the conflict.
Separately, Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been equally dismissive of the proposals.
“This so-called ‘peace plan’ has real problems, and I am highly sceptical it will achieve peace,” he said.
Morgan Geyser, who stabbed a classmate to please the internet horror character Slender Man, has been detained after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and leaving a group home.
The Madison Police Department said on Sunday night she had been taken into custody in the state of Illinois.
Now an adult, she was sentenced to 40 years in a psychiatric hospital after carrying out the nearly fatal attack in 2014.
Police in Madison, Wisconsin, had said earlier on Sunday that she was at large and her whereabouts were unknown.
“If you see Geyser, please call 911,” the force said.
She was last seen around 8pm local time on Saturday with an adult acquaintance.
Geyser had been moved to a group home this year after being granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
Her lawyer Tony Cotton said he did not know what had happened and urged Geyser to turn herself in.
“It’s in her best interest for her to turn herself in immediately and not continue with this course of action,” he said in an Instagram video post.
“We don’t know any of the facts about what happened or who might have assisted her.”
Mugshots of Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier from the time of the attack
Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, were 12 years old when they lured a classmate to a suburban Milwaukee park after a sleepover, authorities said.
Geyser stabbed their victim more than a dozen times as Weier egged her on. The victim barely survived the ordeal.
The girls told investigators they had carried out the attack in order to please Slender Man, an online horror character.
They said they wanted to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and they feared he’d harm their families if they didn’t follow through.
Read more from Sky News:
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A depiction of the Slender Man fictional character
Created in 2009, Slender Man is depicted as a mysterious figure with long limbs that is photo-edited into everyday pictures.
He grew into a popular bogeyman and has appeared in games, online stories and a 2018 film.
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide. She was also sent to the psychiatric centre and was granted release in 2021.
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