Professional con man and Republican Congressman (but I repeat myself) George Santos is discovering the hard way that when your entire life is a juicy lie and that the GOP crime family had dirt on you, there's no longer a reason for the press to stop digging.
In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him.
Campaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on. But when the report came back on Mr. Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier.
Some of Mr. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race, and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing. When Mr. Santos disputed key findings and vowed to continue running, members of the campaign team quit, according to three of the four people The New York Times spoke to with knowledge of the study.
The episode, which has not been previously reported, is the most explicit evidence to date that a small circle of well-connected Republican campaign professionals had indications far earlier than the public that Mr. Santos was spinning an elaborate web of deceits, and that the candidate himself had been warned about just how vulnerable those lies were to unraveling.
Fraudulent academic degrees. Involvement in a firm accused of a Ponzi scheme. Multiple evictions and a suspended driver’s license. All of it was in the report, which also said that Mr. Santos, who is openly gay, had been married to a woman. The report did not offer conclusive details, but some people briefed on the findings wondered whether the marriage was done for immigration purposes.
It remains unclear who else, if anyone, learned about the background study’s contents at the time, or if the information made its way to party leaders in New York or Washington. Mr. Santos, 34, managed to keep almost all of it from the public until after he was elected, when an investigation by The Times independently unearthed the problematic claims documented by researchers and others that they missed.
After The Times sent a detailed list of questions for this story, a lawyer for Mr. Santos, Joe Murray, said “it would be inappropriate to respond due to ongoing investigations.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Santos’s congressional office did not respond to a similar request for comment.
Mr. Santos himself has admitted to some fabrications, but insists he was merely embellishing his qualifications. He has vowed to serve out a two-year term in Congress. State, local and federal prosecutors are now investigating his activity.
So it's no longer an issue of whether or not Kevin McCarthy and the crooks, thieves, and grifters will protect their fellow criminal George Santos, it's all about why they have to do so in order to save their own hides.
They knew.
The existence of the vulnerability study underscores one of the most vexing questions still surrounding the strange saga of George Santos: How did the gate-keeping system of American politics — Republican leaders, adversarial Democrats and the prying media — allow a fabulist who boasted about phantom mansions and a fake résumé get away with his con for so long?
Interviews with more than two dozen associates, adversaries and donors, as well as contemporaneous communications and other documents reviewed by The Times, show that Mr. Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of his own party.
Well-connected supporters suspected him of lying and demanded to see his résumé. Another former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices. And the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Mr. Santos’s story did not add up.
But in each case, rather than denounce Mr. Santos publicly, the Republicans looked the other way. They neglected to get the attention of more powerful leaders or to piece together shards of doubt about him, and allowed him to run unopposed in the 2022 primary. Some assumed that Mr. Santos’s falsehoods were garden variety political embellishments; others thought Democrats would do their dirty work for them and Mr. Santos would be exposed in the heat of a general election campaign.
"We ran a crook, but it's the Dems' fault they didn't find out!"
Sure, Jan.
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