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.”
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
‘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.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully performed another launch of its Starship rocket in front of President-elect Donald Trump, but the test flight did not go perfectly.
The 400ft (122m) high rocket system, designed to land astronauts on the moon and ferry crews to Mars, lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas.
The first stage, called Super Heavy, unexpectedly made a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead of attempting to return to its launchpad, indicating something went wrong.
SpaceX’s Starship launched as expected in Texas. Pic: Reuters
Pic: SpaceX
Mr Trump’s appearance signals a deepening alliance with Mr Musk, who stands to benefit from his recent election victory.
The billionaire entrepreneur is expected to secure favourable government treatment, not only for SpaceX but also Tesla, and help his companies.
Mr Trump has also appointed Mr Musk as co-leader of a new government efficiency project.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk arriving ahead of the launch. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump listened as Mr Musk explained how the test would work. Pic: Reuters
After separating from the Starship second stage, the booster returned to Boca Chica in Texas, where it was supposed to be grabbed and clamped in place using what the company describes as “chopsticks”.
Arguably, they look more like massive pincers mounted on a huge steel tower.
Musk and Trump’s bromance continues – but will it go up in smoke?
Booster catch was a ‘no-go’
But the booster catch was called off just four minutes into the test flight and the booster hit the water three minutes later.
“We are a no-go for tower catch,” said SpaceX, adding the ‘criteria’ was not met, although the firm did not specify what went wrong.
The SpaceX Starship rocket booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. Pic: SpaceX
Pic: SpaceX
The Starship rocket also splashed down around an hour later, but this time in the Indian Ocean, off the northern coast of Australia.
It descended in a “belly flop” position before its central engines flipped it around.
Analysis: This is not the outcome any party wanted to see
Elon Musk will be very disappointed by the failure to catch the booster with Donald Trump watching on.
This was their moment to show their prowess in efficiency, reusability, the “fail-fast efficiency” that Donald Trump really wants his presidency to embody.
Donald Trump isn’t somebody who wants to be associated with things that don’t look brilliant or work amazingly.
Instead, Trump wanted to be associated with Musk’s glory and that hasn’t happened.
This was a flight test with a political moment tagged on to it and I think it will have been not the outcome that any party wanted to see.
Step towards moon trip
It was the sixth test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon and eventually Mars.
Among the objectives for the test were igniting one of the engines in space and thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft.
SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire Starship, as full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people into space.
NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4bn (£3.1bn) to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade.
As the two most powerful countries in the world, the relationship between the United States and China is the most consequential of all bilateral ties.
Any change in interactions and behaviour by either side does not just impact security, economic activity and trade in Washington and Beijing, but also affects the rest of the planet.
President Xi Jinping chose to make this point publicly as he said hello – and presumably goodbye – to Joe Biden when the two men met on the sidelines of an economic forum in Peru in what was likely their last face-to-face sit down before the US leader hands the keys to the White House over to Donald Trump.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping shaking hands in Peru earlier this week. Pic: Reuters
“As two major countries, China and the United States should bear in mind the interest of the whole world and inject more certainty and positive energy into the turbulent world,” Mr Xi said, speaking through a translator.
“It is my consistent belief that as the world’s most important bilateral relationship, a stable China-US relationship is critical not only to the interests of the Chinese and American peoples but also to the future and destiny of the entire humanity.”
Mr Biden, whose relationship with his opposite number does not just span his four years as president but also when he previously served as vice president under Barack Obama, also focused on the importance of dialogue.
“We haven’t always agreed, but our conversations have always been candid and always been frank,” he said, sitting at a long table, surrounded by aides, with Mr Xi opposite him.
Read more:
Analysis: Trump building a very controversial cabinet
Could Barron Trump run for president in 2044?
“I think that’s vital. These conversations prevent miscalculations, and they ensure the competition between our two countries will not veer into conflict. Be competition, not conflict.”
While clearly directed at him, it is doubtful that Mr Trump will heed the advice.
He has consistently criticised the Biden administration for being too soft on Beijing and has vowed to be much tougher – even saying he would impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
The president-elect’s picks for top jobs in the White House, such as with China hawks Senator Marco Rubio as his desired secretary of state, and Representative Mike Walz as national security adviser, also point to a hardening in the US’ position on Beijing – which is on a trajectory to overtake Washington as the world’s number one superpower.
This moment of re-ordering in global dominance – something the UK was once forced to absorb when the sun set on the British Empire – is on course to happen regardless of who is in the White House.
But a more hostile and combative commander-in-chief in the White House makes it an increasingly perilous time for everyone.
It is perhaps why the current leaders in Beijing and Washington are so keen to stress that while their feelings towards one another go up and down, the ability to keep talking is critical.
Joe Biden has met with Xi Jinping for the last time as US president, where the Chinese leader said he is “ready to work” with Donald Trump.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru, Mr Biden said the US and China’s relationship should be about “competition, not conflict”.
“We haven’t always agreed, but our conversations have always been candid and always been frank,” he said.
“We’ve never kidded one another. These conversations prevent miscalculations, and they ensure the competition between our two countries will not veer into conflict.
“We’ve been level with one another. I think that’s vital.”
Their last-ever meeting comes as president-elect Donald Trump vows to introduce blanket 60% tariffs on US imports of Chinese goods as part of a series of “America First” trade measures.
Pic: Reuters
But despite Mr Trump’s proposed measures, Mr Xi said his country’s goal “of a stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship remains unchanged”.
“Our commitment to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and… cooperation as principles for handling China-US relations remains unchanged,” he added.
The Chinese president then said the country is “ready to work with the new US administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences, so as to strive for a steady transition”.
Read more from Sky News:
Davina McCall out of surgery
Eight dead in China school stabbing
Neither Mr Xi nor Mr Biden responded to a question about whether there were concerns about Mr Trump’s proposed tariffs.
The president-elect has also named several China hawks to his transition team, such as Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Representative Mike Waltz as national security adviser.
Read more:
Team Trump: Who is in and out?
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Under Mr Biden, Washington has introduced restrictions on US investment in Chinese artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductors.
Former house speaker Nancy Pelosi also visited the island of Taiwan – which China views as a breakaway province – in April 2022.
In their meeting at this time last year – which followed a surge in tensions when an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down over the US – both leaders said direct communication between American and Chinese military forces would be restored.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports8 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway