A man is succeeding me in Congress

The Times Article by George Santos: “The Case against the False Claims in the Nassau County Democrat Legislature” by Cairo, Jordan, and Joseph Murray

The chairman of the Nassau County’s Republican committee, Joseph Cairo Jr., believes that George Santos should be given a chance to address the claims in the article.

Cairo said “every person deserves an opportunity to clear their name in the face of accusations.”

According to the statement sent to NPR, the college couldn’t locate a match for a George Santos who was born on July 22, 1988 with a graduation year of 2010.

“Congressman-electSantos has enemies at the New York Times who are trying to tarnish his good name with false accusations,” said Joseph Murray.

Murray gave no evidence to back up his claims and the Times article found that Santos appeared to have fabricated key details of his business career.

It is only in this country that a person from a basement apartment in Jackson Heights can become a successful business person, and then run for congress.

Santos lied to voters about his education and his career, invented a fictional Jewish heritage for his family and claimed falsely that employees working for him died in the 2016 Pulse night club shooting.

There were people that worked for me in the club at the time. “My company at the time, we lost four employees that were at Pulse.”

Reply to Comment on Santos’ “Mistakes” and ‘The Case for a Proposed Speaker of the House”

In an editorial before the election, the North Shore Leader newspaper endorsed Santos’ Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, and voiced skepticism about Santos’ credibility.

On his social media feeds, Santos has yet to address the controversy, but on he said he plans to vote for McCarthy to be the Speaker of the House.

Santos, who won an open congressional seat held by a Democrat in November, came under fire for reports he deceived voters with an extensively fabricated biography, including false claims about his Jewish heritage and imagined story about his family escaping the Holocaust. Santos has previously admitted to making some “mistakes,” but maintains that he is not “a fraud or a fake.”

In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post on December 26, Santos admitted to lying about attending Baruch College and New York University as well as misrepresenting his employment at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup but said at the time he still intended to serve in Congress.

“As a Navy man who campaigned on restoring accountability and integrity to our government, I believe a full investigation by the House Ethics Committee and, if necessary, law enforcement, is required,” GOP Rep.-elect Nick LaLota said in a statement.

It is unlikely House Republican leadership will refuse to seat Santos, who is scheduled to be sworn in with the rest of the new members of Congress next Tuesday. Only five US lawmakers have ever been expelled in US history, because the House is able to do so with a two-thirds vote.

In the past, the California Republican has shown little appetite for punishing his own Members of Congress for their bad behavior, especially when it comes to actions before they were ever in Congress. McCarthy has also declined to weigh in when members are under investigation, arguing he will let the probes play out before determining how to proceed.

“This will not deter me from being an effective member of the United States Congress in the 118th session,” Santos told City & State in an interview posted Monday night.

Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph G. Cairo, Jr., said Tuesday that Santos “has broken the public trust” and “has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of voters.”

He said he could never trust someone again once they lied to him. “The Holocaust is something that touches the heart of every Jew and someone that would use that as a talking point as a vote getter, I think is wrong.”

CNN reported that according to sources including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogy researchers, the claims ofSantos that his grandparents survived the Holocaust are not true.

“We are very disappointed in Congressman-elect Santos,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks said in a statement. “He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. He claimed to be Jewish in public and to us personally. He has begun his tenure in Congress on a very wrong note.”

He misrepresented his heritage and deceived us. He claimed to be Jewish before and after his comments to us. “He will not be welcome at any future RJC event.”

Congressman-Elect Mike Santos: Fake resume, misstatement, and prosecution in the U.S. House of Representatives

Santos admitted Monday he didn’t graduate from any college or university, despite previously claiming he had degrees from Baruch College and New York University.

He also admitted that he never worked directly for the financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as he has previously suggested, but claimed that he did do work for them through his company, telling the New York Post it was a “poor choice of words” to say he worked for them.

The biography that Santos touted as a candidate appears to be at least partly fictional. In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post this week, Santos admitted to lying about attending CUNY as well as his employment at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but claimed he hadn’t committed any crimes.

The New York attorney general’s office told CNN last week that it had not initiated a “formal investigation” into Santos but said Attorney General Letitia James was “looking into” some of the things that were raised about Santos in recent reports.

“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning,” said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly.

Residents of the 3rd Congressional District in New York have an honest and accountable representative in Congress, she said. No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

CNN confirmed thatSantos was charged with fraudulent activity in a Brazilian court in 2011. However, court records from 2013 state that the charge was archived after court summons went unanswered and they were unable to locate Santos.

As a soon to be freshman member, Rep.-elect Mike Lawler called on his fellow Republican to apologize for the controversy and urged him to cooperate with any investigations. Lawler said that by downplaying action’s, Santos is making things worse.

He said that he will serve out his full term. He admitted to faking his resume before he was elected to a seat on Long Island.

The U.S. House is due to take place next Tuesday. If he is elected, he can face investigations by the House Committee on Ethics and Justice Department.

The Republican has admitted to lying about having Jewish ancestry, a Wall Street pedigree and a college degree, but he has yet to address other lingering questions — including the source of what appears to be a quickly amassed fortune despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands in back rent.

The DCCC’s Report on a New York DA Candidate: “We do stupid things in life” by S.J. Santos

A spokesperson for the Nassau County DA’s office, Brendan Brosh, said Wednesday: “We are looking into the matter.” It was not clear what the scope of the investigation was.

The New York Times examined the narrativeSantos presented to voters during his successful campaign for a congressional district that straddles the north shore suburbs of Long Island and a small part of Queens.

In an interview with the New York Post earlier this week, Santos apologized for his fabrications but downplayed them as “sins” over embellishing his resume, adding that “we do stupid things in life.”

He said that he never meant to claim Jewish heritage and that he’d likely appeal to his district’s sizable number of Jewish voters.

Red flags about the Republican’s record were raised but the committee was able to accept some of the Republican’s assertions, including his educational record. The 87-page dossier sought to tie him to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and his support for baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He was portrayed as a far-right candidate in the report. He left behind thousands of dollars in debt because of issues about his shaky financial standing and multiple evictions, which were buried within the DCCC’s report.

His Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, also tried to raise Santos’ misrepresentations during his losing campaign, but it didn’t gain much traction.

“Campaign expenditures for staff members including travel, lodging, and meals are normal expenses of any competent campaign. The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best,” Joe Murray, a lawyer for Santos, said in a statement to CNN on Saturday.

Santos’ FEC reports contain a number of unusual expenditures, including exorbitant expenses on air travel and hotels, as well as a number of expenses one penny below the dollar figure above which the FEC requires campaigns to keep receipts.

The expenditures, and particularly the $199.99 payments to Uber, Walgreens, Walmart, Best Buy, Delta Airlines, Il Bacco Restaurante and more, “definitely stood out to me,” said campaign finance expert Paul S. Ryan, the deputy executive director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation.

He said the payments might be an effort to skirt the requirements of the FEC. The FEC encourages candidates to keep receipts below that threshold, but only mandates them for payments over $200.

However, Ryan said, the consistent appearance of $199.99 charges effectively shows that Santos knew about the threshold he was attempting to skirt – potentially inviting Justice Department scrutiny and criminal penalties.

“My view is a bunch of expenditures right below legal requirement for the committee to keep receipts is evidence that he knew what he was doing,” Ryan said. “If in fact he did misuse campaign funds, this was a blatant effort to evade detection.”

A campaign donor tells CNN that the congressman-elect George Santos hasn’t done anything wrong with regard to the Jewish community leader Jack Mandel

Jack Mandel, a Jewish community leader who voted for Santos after meeting him twice and believing he was a kind, fresh face, said he “couldn’t in good conscience” vote for Santos again if he had to do over.

She said that the ability of him to deceive us is troubling. We all know that this man should not be in office. I want to assure you the Republicans know it too.”

Tom Zmich, a former congressional candidate in the adjacent 6th District, said that he has not done anything wrong with regards toSantos.

A significant campaign donor who wanted to speak candidly about his experience withSantos told CNN on Thursday he was connected with her after she was introduced by a New York congressman. He said that she asked him to speak to him when he first ran.

It’s not clear if the Office of Congressional Ethics has been contacted bySantos, or if he was the one to initiate the contact. According to the exchange, he was trying to make sense of a concerned donor.

CNN has reached out to the OCE. The House Ethics Committee could potentially be the first step in a congressional investigation if the public complaints are referred by the office.

Another campaign donor, who similarly requested anonymity to speak freely, told CNN on Friday that she “of course is shocked” following the news of the congressman-elect’s alleged deception and feels “betrayed and lied to.”

Today is my last day as a member of Congress, and George Santos is about to be sworn in to take the seat I held for six years. He will take an oath to be faithful to the Constitution, and not for any purpose of evasion. I don’t know how many times Mr.Santos has lied and evaded during his time in our area. If he is seated, it will diminish our Congress, our country and my constituents. It saddens me that after 30 years of public service rooted in hard work and service to the people of this area, I’m being succeeded by a con man.

The Investigative Investigation of a Crime against Santos after the New York Times reported on December 8, 2008 During a Meet and greet with the House Foreign Affairs Committee

I have a sense of optimism. I believe our democracy, free press and rule of law work as hard as it sometimes does, even though it is slow and frustrating. They have to do that.

After lying about parts of his resume, Santos will be sworn in as a congressman on Tuesday despite his admitted lie to The New York Times.

All incoming members of the 118th Congress are scheduled to be sworn in following the vote for House speaker at the US Capitol, which is set to begin after noon ET on Tuesday.

The police suspended their investigation intoSantos because they were unable to find him for over a decade after he was accused of stealing a checkbook.

In Brazil the prosecutor’s office tells CNN that they will put fraud charges back up against the congressman-elect as he assumes his role in the US House on Tuesday.

The criminal case came from a visit to a small clothing store in Niteri, Brazil, where Santos spent more than $700 out of the stolen checkbook using a fake name, according to the Times.

The Nassau County District Attorney said that no one was above the law and that she would prosecute any crime committed in the county.

The district attorney’s office did not give a description of what it was investigating, while the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York refused to comment.

Democrats said the Republicans were hypocritical in ousting Alfonso and two other House Democrats from committee assignments because of their mounting false statements. The House Foreign Affairs is one of the topics that will require a vote on the floor of the House.

There was a lot of drama over the situation, especially what we are doing to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Small Business Committee Chairman Roger Williams, a Republican from Texas, said that he thinks Santos “probably made the right decision” to step down from his committee assignments until the questions about his past and his financial irregularities are resolved.

The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC that describes his disbursements as “odd and seemingly impossible.” The cost of one of the expenses was portrayed to be for a hotel stay at the W Hotel South Beach in Florida, where the lowest-price room would have cost $700.

The source of $700,000 that was claimed to be a loan for Santos’ campaign was not in the financial report he filed two years before.

The Giorge Santos House Committees is Not the Right Place For The People Of New York’s Third District, or For the American People

The GOP conference has just been over, and George has taken himself out of committees to go through this process.

“There’s a threshold that he feels like [where] he’s not the issue anymore and when he hits that, it sounds like he wants to get back on committees and get going,” Williams told reporters.

“For a while, the question I was getting asked by [the press] is ‘Where you gonna put him? It became about him and Can he do this? Williams said. It’s not about him. It’s about the committee, we have a lot to do, when he gets back on. and he’s met the thresholds that he’s set or whatever, then let’s go.”

“Half-measures like voluntarily taking himself off his committee assignments are not good enough for the people of New York’s third congressional district, or for the American people,” Torres said in a statement. “He was a disgrace yesterday. He’s a disgrace today. He’ll be a disgrace tomorrow. He should resign from office immediately.”

He doesn’t need to be in the Nassau County Republican Committee or in public service. He’s not welcome in the Republican headquarters or at our events.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/31/1152771493/george-santos-house-committees

Romney tells Santos: ‘You don’t belong here, guys!’ after he’s been there, but didn’t tell anybody

An investigation from The New York Times couldn’t substantiate many of Santos’ claims, including his graduation from Baruch College and his work for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

“The voters have elected George Santos,” McCarthy said during an early January press conference. “If there is a concern, he will go through ethics. If there is something that is found, he will be dealt with in that manner.”

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told GOP Rep. George Santos of New York: “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange in the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night.

Romney spoke to CNN about the fact thatSantos was under ethics investigation and that he stood in the front aisle trying to shake the president’s hand.

“He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” he said, noting that Santos may have responded to his remark but he “didn’t hear.”

He says that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-,” the senator said. “Lying is saying you graduated from a college that you didn’t even attend and he shouldn’t be in Congress.”

“And they’re gonna go through the process and hopefully get him out. .. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

The New York Congressional Campaign Committee is rolling out a five-figure campaign to prosecute a fraudster in the midterm elections

The FEC requires a statement of candidacy from candidates who have raised and spent thousands of dollars since the mid-terms. Even if an incumbent doesn’t intend to run, they should file a statement of candidacy in the following cycle to avoid running afoul of FEC rules.

In the letter, the FEC asks Santos needs to “either disavow these activities by notifying the Commission in writing that you are not a candidate, or redesignate your principal campaign committee by filing a Statement of Candidacy.”

The FEC requires any person who raised more than $5,000 in a federal office campaign within 15 days to register as a candidate. Any such candidate, including incumbents like Santos, must file a statement of candidacy with the agency each electoral cycle.

Beginning on Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is rolling out a five-figure billboard campaign targeting five freshman Republicans who took donations from Santos: New York Reps. Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams, all of whom helped Republicans win a narrow majority last fall by winning seats that President Joe Biden had carried.

Molinaro and D’Esposito both returned the money from Santos after a number of his financial issues came to light, but the billboards in their districts ask why the lawmakers took campaign cash from “a fraudster” in the first place. The other three billboards, which feature a picture of Santos and the lawmaker, ask whether the members will return the campaign donations.

The weeks-long campaign, the details of which were first shared with CNN, comes unusually early in the cycle, and is a sign that Democrats plan to make a serious effort to reverse their midterm losses in the Empire State. While Democrats were able to stave off an anticipated red wave in many parts of the country, New York was an exception. Republicans there effectively ran on the issue of crime and flipped a number of competitive House seats, which will be top targets for Democrats as they look to win back power in 2024.

“New Yorkers want Santos out of office, and these congressmen’s meaningless words aren’t enough to make up for their failure to actually take action to hold their campaign donor accountable,” said DCCC spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre. “The least they can do is answer these questions.”

After months of scandal, the House Ethics Committee announced Thursday it has opened a formal investigation into New York Republican Rep. George Santos.

The investigation will determine whether the congressman engaged in sexual misconduct with a person seeking a job in his office, or if he was in violation of federal conflict of interest laws. Santos has denied that allegation.

“You’re saying that the freedom of speech of my constituents is a distraction to my work?” Santos said. “Do you think people are a distraction to the work I’m doing here?”

The Congressional Ethics Committee Investigates the Campanas-Campusus oust, Piers Morgan, and the Menacing Accountability of the Met Gala

The local grassroots campaigns demanding his oust were not representative of the district, according to an interview with Piers Morgan. But a poll released on Monday by Siena College found that 66% of New Yorkers wanted him out – including 58% of Republicans.

Steven Greenberg stated in the survey release that the good news forSantos is he has been able to get Democrats, Republicans and independents to agree on a political figure. “The bad news for Santos is that the political figure they agree on is him, and they overwhelmingly view him unfavorably.”

Additionally, the campaign’s bookkeeping has also come under a harsh spotlight, especially following the revelation that his former treasure listed dozens of expenses just a penny beneath the legal threshold for keeping receipts.

The individual, Derek Myers, said in a House Ethics complaint that Santos “touched” his groin before allegedly inviting him to his home and said his husband was out of town, according to a copy of the document provided to CNN last month.

Counsel for Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement to the committee that “though no Ethics violation has been found, the Office of Congressional Ethics (‘OCE’) did identify that there were delays in paying vendors for costs associated with the Congresswoman’s attendance at the Met Gala. The Congresswoman has taken a number of steps to make sure nothing like this happens again, after she found these delays unacceptable.