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.
Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.
It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.
He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”
He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.
Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says
By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.
The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.
In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.
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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know
“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.
Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.
He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.
We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.
Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan
In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal
My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.
It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.
All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.
“Drill, baby, drill” was Donald Trump’s campaign pledge – and he’s following through with a proposal to expand fossil fuel production, which environmentalists say would have devastating consequences.
The Trump administration has tabled a plan to open federal waters off the coasts of California, Florida, and Alaska to oil and gas drilling for the first time in decades – including areas that have never been touched.
A total of one billion acres of water would be offered for lease under the proposal. That’s equivalent to more than half the total land mass of the US.
While the rest of the Western world is striving to move away from fossil fuels, the US appears to be gravitating back towards them, with the administration describing climate change as a “hoax,” “a scam,” and a “con job”.
In Huntington Beach – a coastal community in California that calls itself “Surf City USA” – a huge oil spill in 2021 shut down a miles-long stretch of the coastline, killing wildlife and soiling the sand.
From the beach, where surfers lay out alongside tourists and dog walkers, you can see Platform Esther, a hulking oil rig built in 1965 that ceased production in August this year. Sea lions hug the metal pillars on the rig and dozens of birds perch on the platform.
‘What we have here is irreplaceable’
Pete Stauffer, ocean protection manager at the Surfrider Foundation, said: “Here in California, we depend on a clean and healthy coastal environment – whether it’s coastal tourism, whether it’s fisheries, or local businesses and jobs.
“All these things are tied to what we have here, which is really an outstanding marine ecosystem.
“No disrespect to Mickey Mouse, but you can build another theme park. What we have here is irreplaceable. Why would you put that at risk?”
As a state, California views itself as a leader on climate action. A massive spill off the coast of Santa Barbara sparked the modern environmental movement.
‘We need as much oil as possible’
But the Trump administration says more oil drilling will help make the country energy independent, bringing new jobs and reducing petrol prices. That messaging has resonated with some here.
Johnny Long is a surfer who lives in Huntington Beach. “Drill, baby, drill,” he says, when I ask about Trump’s plans for more offshore drilling. “We need as much oil as possible. It’s right below us. We need to take it and extract it and bring the gas prices down, it’s absolutely fantastic.”
I ask about concerns that it will be detrimental to the local environment and beyond.
“I’d say phoeey on that,” Johnny responds. “It’s ridiculous. Climate change is a hoax.”
Read more climate news:
What did COP30 achieve?
How final deal was reached
Johnny Long
But others vehemently disagree – including Linda from nearby Seal Beach: “It’s so bad for the environment. It’s already bad enough, you know, and they’re gonna drill, and what happens when they drill? They always have accidents because people are human and accidents happen.
“Trump and his goonies don’t care about the environment, all they care about is money.”
The president’s push to expand fossil fuel production coincided with the UN climate conference. For the first time in the summit’s history, the US didn’t send a delegation.
Critics say the snub shows a disregard for how future generations will be affected by the decisions the White House is making right now.
The revenge tour has come off the rails.
Donald Trump had long promised retribution against his political enemies, but – to coin a phrase used around the White House – he’s f****ed around and found out that it doesn’t fly so easily through the courts.
His mistake was in choosing a pilot unable to fly the plane.
Lindsey Halligan is the lawyer who took the job of Trump-enforcer when others, better qualified, turned it down.
The prosecution of Trump’s adversaries would have been the job of Erik Siebert, US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, but he gave it a body swerve.
He had declined to prosecute the case against Letitia James, the New York attorney-general who successfully prosecuted the Trump organisation for business fraud.
Siebert concluded there were not sufficient grounds to prosecute, which didn’t please the president, and Seibert quit before he was pushed.
A number of career prosecutors were similarly reluctant to take the case, leaving Trump checking availability.
That’s when he turned to Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer by trade.
Her work experience didn’t necessarily suit the job brief – the prosecutor with the highest of profiles had no prosecutorial experience.
In pursuing the cases against Comey and James, she had to present evidence before a grand jury, something she hadn’t done before.
Letitia James and James Comey have had criminal charges against them dismissed. Pics: Reuters
If that wasn’t ideal, that wasn’t all.
Something else Halligan didn’t have was the legal ability to do the job. Her appointment violated laws limiting the ability of the justice department to install top prosecutors.
It was an elementary error that didn’t pass by Judge Cameron Currie, who called it a “defective appointment”.
In setting aside the indictments against Comey and James, she wrote: “I conclude that all actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment… constitute unlawful exercises of executive power.”
The US Department of Justice can appeal the move, so Comey and James haven’t reached road’s end.
Read more from Sky News:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan
Trump changes tack on Marjorie Taylor Greene
But it’s a significant boost for both, and a significant blow for Trump.
He is the president in pursuit of sworn enemies, which his critics characterise as a weaponisation of the justice system.
Those same critics will point to the haste and impropriety on display as evidence of it, and take heart from a system offering a robust resistance.
Donald Trump appears undeterred. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “The facts of the indictments against Comey and James have not changed, and this will not be the final word on this matter.”
Letitia James is charged with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. James Comey was charged with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation.
Trump fired Comey in 2017, while he was overseeing an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the Trump 2016 campaign.
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