The congressman-elect is the focus of a federal prosecutors investigation
The Corrupt Politics of George Santos: A Rep.-Elect for the Third District of Washington, D’Esposito, Rhodes, and Nassau County
With the election of a Republican, and a recent onslaught of publicity relating to lies in his personal life, Brazilian law enforcement officials now intend to file fraud charges against him.
“Congressman-Elect George Santos has broken the public trust by making serious misstatements regarding his background, experience and education, among other issues,” said Joseph G. Cairo, chair of the Nassau County Republican Committee, which is within the 3rd Congressional District.
“The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress,” she said. “If a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”
The New York Times discovered last week that the biography was not real. CNN confirmed details of that reporting about his college education and employment history.
A full investigation by the House ethics committee is a must, since it’s necessary to restore integrity to our government, said the GOP Rep.-elect.
Another incoming GOP lawmaker from New York, Rep.-elect Anthony D’Esposito, condemned Santos’ false statements and called on him to “pursue a path of honesty,” although he stopped short of calling for an investigation.
The incoming member of the House of Representatives from New York asked his fellow Republican to cooperate with any investigations and called on him to apologize. Lawler added that by downplaying action’s, Santos is “only making things worse.”
Several Republican House members and local Republican officials called for his resignation, but Santos brushed it off. He has played coy when asked if he plans to seek re-election, though filed required paperwork to keep the option open.
When the U.S. House returns next week, he will be sworn in. The House Committee on Ethics could investigate him if he is elected to office.
The source of the fortune the Republican claims to have, despite recent financial problems, including evictions and back rent, remains a mystery, despite him admitting to lying about his background.
A Correspondence to “Comment on George Santos During his ‘RJC Campaign’ in Long Island and Queens”
Brendan Brosh, a spokesman for the Nassau County district attorney’s office, said Wednesday they are looking into the matter. There was no clear scope of the investigation.
Questions intensified after The New York Times examined the narrative Santos, 34, presented to voters during his successful campaign for a congressional district that straddles the north shore suburbs of Long Island and a sliver of Queens.
In an interview with the New York Post last week, Santos denied that he had been charged with any crime in Brazil, saying: “I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That did not happen.
Santos has apologized for some of his lies, but he maintains that he only wrote a little bit of fluff in his resume.
He admitted to lying about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as having earned a degree in finance and economics from Baruch College in New York.
He backtracked on the claim and said he never intended to claim Jewish heritage, which would likely have raised his appeal among Jewish voters in his district.
“He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. He had claimed to be Jewish in the past, the coalition said. “He won’t be welcome at any future RJC event.”
It wasn’t much of a gain for the Democratic opponent to raise the misrepresentations during his losing campaign.
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, but not with any purpose of evasion. I haven’t been able to locate how many evasions and lies Mr. Santos has told about himself and his relationship with northeastern Queens. It will diminish our country, Congress, and my people when he is seated. 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.
Afraid of the Fake Mr. Santos, and why he will not be in the House of Representatives to the 118th Congress
I hold on to my sense of optimism. The rule of law, our free press, and our democratic system work as slow as it can sometimes be. They have to.
I also know the voters of the Third District pretty well; they believe in the rule of law, in playing by the rules. They like their leaders to be authentic and have a good BS detector. The fact is that the basics of Mr. Santos biography were fabricated to an extent most voters wouldn’t have thought possible. Well, the shame would be too great. He will not be in Congress if Third District voters have a chance to vote on his political future.
After The New York Times found out that part of his resume was faked,Santos admitted to lying about some of it, but he will be in office on Tuesday.
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.
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.
Investigating the disappearance of a GOP Representative George Santos, a Republican in Brazil, as a result of the January 2011 congressional resignation scandal
GOP leaders in Washington have not demanded he leave, but he was allowed to sit on a pair of House committees. As the furor over his lies grew in late January,Santos withdrew from those assignments.
The police suspended their investigation into him because they were not able to find him for more than a decade.
Law enforcement officials in Brazil will reinstate fraud charges against Rep.-elect George Santos, the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office tells CNN, as the New York Republican officially assumes his role in the US House Tuesday under a cloud of suspicion over his dubious resume.
After Santos left for the United States, Brazilian authorities could not find an address to serve him papers intimating him to appear in court, which eventually led to the archiving of the case, until it was reopened in January.
Santos’ claims that his grandparents fled the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees and that his mother died as a result of being present in the South Tower during 9/11 have also come under scrutiny, CNN’s KFile found.
The Nassau County District Attorney said at the time that no one is above the law and she would prosecute anyone found guilty of a crime in the county.
The US attorney’s office in the New York District did not say what fabrications it was investigating and the district attorney’s office did not state what they were.
Speaking with the police for the first time that month, Santos confessed he stole the checkbook from his mom’s purse and that he used “some sheets” to make purchases. Santos confessed to forging the man’s signature on two checks to purchase clothes and shoes costing approximately $1,313.63 on the date of the forgery, and confirmed it was his signature on the forged checks.
“He [Santos] acknowledged having been responsible for forging the signatures on the checks, also confirming that he had destroyed the remaining checks,” authorities wrote in an inquiry report about Santos.
Bruno Simes claimed in an interview with CNN that Santos used stolen checks and the owner’s signature to pay for items.
The clerk had to pay the amount of the fraudulent purchase in installments to the store, he told police, although the store ended up waving some of the payments for the clerk, the store manager told the police in 2010. The manager said they were able to find the owner of the bank account after the sale. He said he had closed the account in 2006 after losing the checkbook.
At one point the clerk was able to track down Santos using social media and, he said, Santos promised to pay him back but never did. The clerk turned over pictures of Santos to police that he had found on social media. Screenshots of the conversations between the clerk and Santos are included in the documents obtained by CNN.
Voters who cast their ballot for the Republican congressman-elect should not feel guilty because he does that well, says a former shop clerk in Brazil who was allegedly cheated out of more than $1,300. He’s a professional liar.”
You are not going to be suspicious of a person who is gentile. He sort of disarms people with those skills so that he can execute those frauds, ” Simões said.
A Brazilian clerk scammer and his friend George, says he did not look up to pay his debts in his early 20s
When it became clear they were fraudulent, the shop’s owner demanded Simões, then in his early 20s, pay the damages – roughly equal to four months’ salary. The shop owner waives the remaining amount if Simes pay in installments.
I was very upset. Simes told CNN that being deceived is a terrible feeling. It is worse than being mugged by someone who will hold a gun, but you will be angry, but you will also be deceived and tricked by the person that is going to steal from you.
I have been robbed in Brazil by someone armed when I was younger, and I felt more frustrated by George’s case, because he abused my good faith.
In a 2009 social media exchange with Simões, Santos promised to repay him, saying, “I know I screwed up and I want to pay up.” But Simões said Santos never made good on the pledge and, barring a court order, doesn’t have “high hopes” he’ll ever see the money again.
“Even though he confessed to his crime, he never looked me up to pay his debt. I had to take the debt and it was quite high, said Simes.
“Some people make mistakes and regret them, and others seem to never regret and end up living their whole lives as a fraud. I believe that is the case with George,” Simões said. The chances of me getting this money back are very low.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/politics/george-santos-brazilian-clerk-fraud/index.html
The story of a man who cheated: An investigative subcommittee to investigate criminal activities in the 2022 congressional campaign
The New York Republican was pursued by reporters on Wednesday through the hallways and tunnels at the US Capitol, where he has been under scrutiny for his fabrications.
In his statement to police he stated that he got a checkbook, used just two checks, and then threw the rest of it in a manhole. I think he cheated other companies and people.
Simões said he thought it was important to share his story because “it looks like he hasn’t learned and is still investing in this career of fraud, faking information and lying.”
Simes said he didn’t know that the man who had cheated him over a decade ago had been elected to Congress. But after a local reporter pointed him out, Simões searched Santos’ name online.
He said it was a comedy scene and a mix of shock and surprise. “It was surreal to me to see the image of him in a suit.”
I remembered vividly the photographs I had seen of him when he was 19 years old. I asked if it was possible for a criminal to be elected as a congressman. To me that was unbelievable.
The Ethics Committee said in a news release that it voted to set up an investigative subcommittee with authority to look into a number issues, including whether Santos may have engaged in unlawful activity related to his 2022 congressional campaign.
Do you think people distract from the work I do? Comments on a New York City Citizen, Piers Santos, and an Associated Treasurer
“You’re saying that the freedom of speech of my constituents is a distraction to my work?” Santos said. Do you think people detract from the work I am doing?
In a recent interview with Piers Morgan, Santos also suggested the local grassroots campaigns demanding his ouster were not representative of the district. But a poll released on Monday by Siena College found that 66% of New Yorkers wanted him out – including 58% of Republicans.
“The ‘good’ news for Santos is that even in these hyper partisan times, he’s found a way to get Democrats, Republicans and independents to agree about a political figure,” pollster Steven Greenberg said in the survey’s release. It is good news for Santos that they agree on his political stance, but that they don’t like him.
The campaign’s bookkeeping has also come under scrutiny, especially since the revelation that the former treasure listed dozens of expenses just a penny beneath the legal threshold for keeping receipts.
On the Hill, Santos will also now have to answer for an accusation by a prospective staffer who claims Santos made an unwanted sexual advance toward him during a private encounter in the congressman’s office. The accuser says he was denied a job after he rejectedSantos. Santos has denied the claims.
“Even after OCE’s exhaustive review of the Congresswoman’s personal communications, there is no record of the Congresswoman refusing to pay for these expenses,” David Mitrani wrote in the letter. “To the contrary, there are several explicit, documented communications, from prior to OCE’s review, that show the Congresswoman understood that she had to pay for these expenses from her own personal funds – as she ultimately did. We are confident that the Ethics Committee will find no basis in this matter.
The case against Santos: a non-prosecutorial settlement of a multi-million dollar violation of the Massado equivalence principle
The defense was told in a memo that prosecutors would have the ability to reach the victim before the deal is finalized.
In order to get a non-prosecutorial agreement, the petition was filed in January and argued thatSantos was gainfully employed and is re-socialized. The request for permission to contact Santos via phone and email was part of the petition.
