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 family of the man accused of throwing petrol bombs at a pro-Israel group in Colorado have been taken into custody.
Immigration officers detained Mohamed Soliman’s relatives, believed to be his wife and five children.
Soliman, an Egyptian national, moved to the US three years ago and lived in Colorado Springs but was there illegally after his visa and work authorisation expired. He reportedly has two teenage children and three younger children.
“We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it,” said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem on X.
Soliman, 45, is being held after Molotov cocktails were thrown at a group doing a walk for Israeli hostages in Boulder on Sunday.
The attacker allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” and had a total of 18 petrol bombs – but police said he “got scared” and only tossed a couple.
Soliman also had a makeshift flamethrower in the form of gas in a backpack sprayer, according to a FBI statement, but told investigators he did not use it.
Twelve people were injured, authorities said. The victims were aged between 52 and 88 and three of them were still being treated in hospital on Tuesday.
Mohamed Soliman appeared with a bandaged ear in a mugshot. Pic: Boulder Police Dept.
Soliman was allegedly dressed as a gardener to get as close as he could to the small group. Authorities said he told them he had no regrets.
He has been charged with a hate crime and 16 counts of attempted murder in federal and state cases.
Court papers said he planned the attack for a year and told authorities that no one, including his family, was aware of the plot.
Video showed Soliman being arrested at the scene and an apparent burn mark on the ground
An FBI statement said Soliman left an iPhone hidden in a drawer at his home with messages for his family but that his wife handed it to police.
The family are said to be cooperating with investigators.
Soliman admitted taking gun training to try to get a permit but was denied as he wasn’t a US citizen, according to police and the FBI.
Barred from buying a firearm, he allegedly used YouTube to learn how to make petrol bombs.
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Law enforcement searched for bombs after the attack. Pic: AP
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Boulder attack was “aimed against peaceful people who wished to express their solidarity with the hostages held by Hamas, simply because they were Jews”.
The incident follows the arrest of a Chicago-born man in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC last month.
Tensions are simmering in the US over Israel’s war in Gaza.
There has been an increase in antisemitic hate crime, as well as moves by some supporters of Israel to brand pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic.
Elon Musk has criticised US President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, calling it “outrageous” and a “disgusting abomination”.
The bill, which includes multi-trillion-dollar tax breaks, was passed by the House Republicans in May, and has been described by the president as a “big, beautiful bill”.
The tech billionaire hit out at the tax cuts on his platform X, writing: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Elon Musk left his ‘special government employee’ role last week. Pic: AP.
In American politics, “pork” is a political metaphor used when government spending is allocated to local projects, usually to benefit politicians’ constituencies.
Musk left the administration abruptly last week after working to cut costs with his team, the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency – known as DOGE – with the ambition of sacking federal workers and cutting red tape.
The White House brushed Musk’s comments aside, claiming they did not surprise the president.
In a press conference on Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill”.
She added: “This is one, big, beautiful bill.
“And he’s sticking to it.”
The White House on Tuesday asked Congress to cut back $9.4bn in already approved spending, taking money away from DOGE.
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What did Musk achieve at DOGE?
The billionaire tweeted: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!!) and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
He also suggested voting out politicians who advanced the president’s tax bill.
“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” Musk wrote in another X post.
How Musk’s mission to cut government spending fell flat
Last Thursday, Musk revealed on X that his scheduled time as a “special government employee” was coming to an end.
Before the news broke, Musk’s father told Sky News his son was “not a very good politician”.
But speaking to Gillian Joseph on The World, Errol Musk insisted there was “no rift between Elon and Donald Trump”.
Musk’s time at DOGE was controversial, with drastic cuts to America’s humanitarian efforts sparking particular criticism.
Questions have also been raised about whether the department has actually saved taxpayers as much money as suggested.
Musk initially had ambitions to slash government spending by $2trn (£1.5trn) – but this was dramatically reduced to $1trn (£750bn) and then to just $150bn (£111bn).
Elon Musk brought his son X Æ A-12 to the Oval Office during a press conference earlier this year. Pic: Reuters.
The 53-year-old, who famously brought his son X Æ A-12 to the Oval Office, also expressed frustration about resistance to his ideas and clashed with other senior members of the Trump administration.
He recently told The Washington Post: “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realised. I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC to say the least.”
By law, status as a “special government employee” means he could only serve for a maximum of 130 days, which would have ended around 30 May.
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