George Santos



Being a chronic liar isn't a disqualification for a Republican candidate… it's a prerequisite. George Anthony Devolder Santos (a.k.a. Anthony Devolder, George Devolder-Santos, Kitara Ravache  and Anthony Zabrovsky ) is a talented conman who managed to get himself elected to the United States Congress running as a Republican (naturally), based on his web of deceit — he lives a life that is absolutely fabulist.

While Santos' antics may seem fantastical and 'stranger than fiction', they are not. A man named Ignaz Trebitsch Lincoln had a much more storied career as a conman in the first half of the 20th century. Santos ran for Congress in both 2020 (losing by 56% to 43% in the general) and 2022 (winning by 54% to 46%), finding that turning the fantastical claims up to 11 worked like a charm in 2022. Santos' high level of deception means that absolutely nothing he says, including his denials, should be believed without independent corroborating evidence.

Ethnic impersonation
Santos has made false, contradictory, and unbelievable claims about his ancestry: None of his falsehoods are his fault though, he is just the victim of "fake news, witch hunts and hoaxes"; according to Santos, he is the victim, not the people that he offended or harmed.
 * That his maternal grandparents were Ukrainian Jews with the last name of Zabrovsky
 * That his mother was born in Belgium (she was actually born in Brazil)
 * That he was "Jew-ish" not "Jewish", and also that he is an American Jew and a Latino Jew. This impersonation is particularly egregious because in 2011 Santos had tried to make a joke about Hitler killing "the jews and black mostly", and in 2022 he falsely claimed that his Jewish grandparents fled the Holocaust. Santos later trebled-down on the impersonation problem in a long interview with Piers Morgan, claiming that "everybody’s pounding down for a pound of flesh", referring to Shakespeare's antisemitic play,
 * That his father has ancestry and that he himself is therefore Black and Jewish.

Credential abuse
Santos has claimed to have attended a variety of prestigious educational institutions. The reality is, the extent of his education is that he obtained a high school equivalency diploma. Institutions that he has falsely claimed to be associated with or have degrees from:
 * Horace Mann School college preparatory school
 * Baruch College — bachelor's degree in finance and economics, claiming a 3.89 grade point average (out of 4)
 * New York University — master of business administration, also claiming a 710 (out of 800) on his GMAT entrance exam.

Claimed
Santos has falsely claimed to have some peculiar forms of employment:
 * TV shows ("the suite life of Zack and Cody" [sic] (2005-2008) and "Hanna Montana" (2006-2011)) and the film "THE INVASION" (2007). These were perhaps meant in jest since he wrongly associated famous names with these productions.
 * Citi Group (2011-2014) — asset manager associate
 * A reporter for the Brazilian media company Globo (2013)
 * A model for New York Fashion Week (2013)
 * Claimed to be running a charity called Friends of Pets United from 2013-2018; the "charity" was unregistered.
 * His résumé sent to the New York Republican Party in 2020 had some true bits but also lots of bullshit:
 * Met Global Inc. (2014-2016) — business development manager
 * Goldman Sachs — project manager
 * LinkBridge Investors (2017-) — vice president
 * Producer of the "Spider-Man Musical" (2022) on Broadway

Actual

 * With his mother, Santos was a paid bingo player in Brazil in 2008 — bingo is considered illegal gambling in Brazil.
 * Customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network (2011-2012)
 * He worked at HotelsPro, a subsidiary of MetGlobal, in Florida in an unknown capacity, for at most 9 months in 2016
 * Santos under the name Anthony Devolder worked as a sales freelancer for LinkBridge in 2017
 * From 2020-2021, Santos (under the name Anthony Devolder) was employed at Florida-based Harbor City Capital and became the New York Regional Director. This was at the same time as his first campaign for Congress. In one 2020 interview, Santos claimed that he managed a $1.5 billion fund with 12%-26% annual return. In 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Harbor City Capital, calling it a "classic Ponzi scheme". Santos, as of February 2023, has not been named in the lawsuit.

Drag queen
Santos performed as a drag queen named Kitara Ravache while living in Brazil. There is nothing wrong with drag or cross-dressing, but there is something wrong with being a drag queen then later joining a political party (GOP) that is actively trying to demonize and criminalize cross-dressing.

Crimes
In 2010, Santos confessed to a crime that he committed in Brazil in 2008, stealing the checkbook of a man whom his mother was caring for. As of 2023, the case against Santos remains unresolved due to his fleeing Brazil for the US. In 2023, he again confessed to the crime and additionally agreed to pay restitution in order to avoid prosecution.

In 2016, Santos was accused of stealing $3000 that was raised on GoFundMe and was intended to pay for surgery for a homeless veteran's dying service dog. GoFundMe subsequently blocked Santos' email address. As of February 2023, Santos is under investigation for this by the FBI.

In 2018, Santos was charged with theft in Pennsylvania for writing bad checks to purchase puppies from Amish farmers. Santos' childhood friend, lawyer Tiffany Bogosian, arranged to have his criminal record expunged in 2020, likely based on false information that he provided her (just in time for his first Congressional run).

A former boyfriend of Santos, Leandro Bis, accused him of suggesting that they marry in 2013 so that Bis could obtain permanent residency in the US. Santos later planned an engagement party to Pedro Vilarva in 2014. Santos was actually married to Uadla Vieira from 2012 to 2019, but Santos' allegedly offering marriage for residency to Bis throws the legitimacy of his marriage to Vieira into doubt. Equality Forum, an LGBTQ organization, submitted a letter to the Congressional ethics committee that requested that they investigate whether Santos had a felony (8 USC Section 1325(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act) by participating in a fraudulent marriage.

Two of Santos' former roommates accused him of stealing one of the roommates' $520 Burberry scarf when they saw a video of Santos wearing it while speaking at a January 5, 2021 "Stop the Steal" rally.

The SEC criminal complaint against Harbor City Capital may yet involve Santos, particularly because of his making fantastical financial claims in his sales pitches ("He was saying if you give me $300,000, I am going to make you money. I’m going to make you $3 million").

There is strong evidence that Santos committed crimes in connection with this 2022 election campaign,   and Santos is being investigated by the Federal Election Commission as well as the Department of Justice.

As of February 2023, Santos is also under investigation for as yet unknown crimes by the Nassau County District Attorney and the New York State attorney general’s office.

In March 2023, Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, who had been convicted of credit card skimming in 2017 and subsequently deported to Brazil, declared under oath that Santos was the mastermind behind the fraudulent scheme. Santos had been interviewed by the Secret Service in 2017, but was not arrested.

In May 2023, the United States Justice Department charged Santos with a 13 count indictment, including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making false statements to the House of Representatives. Santos had claimed in October 2022 that Democrats were "soft on crime" — oops!

Breaking the Overton window
Santos has the distinction of pushing the deceit so far that it has actually drawn some tepid condemnation from within his own Republican Party. Anna Paulina Luna, fellow Congressional freshman, has drawn nary a Republican complaint for her ethnic impersonation, possible stolen valor or other fabrications. Similarly, there were no noticeable Republican complaints about Lauren Boebert's fabrications or crimes. The misdeeds of these two miscreants was clearly just considered a nudge at the Overton window, and hence acceptable to the Republican Party.

In contrast, several New York State elected Republicans have called on Santos to resign. Empty suit Senator Mitt Romney squeaked up and told Santos to his face during the 2023 Presidential State of the Union Address, "You don’t belong here." Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on the other hand is chained at the hip to Santos; McCarthy cannot risk causing further chaos in the House and jeopardizing his own speakership to which he was narrowly elected after unusually protracted voting. McCarthy cannot risk alienating or losing a single Republican member of the House in his lust for power, and Santos is clearly the most vulnerable. on January 18, 2023, McCarthy initially gave Santos two committee assignments, Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Santos was not qualified for these, nor was he qualified for anything else, but McCarthy was unjustly optimistic that there wouldn't be blowback and Santos' lack of qualifications was hardly exceptional for Republicans in the House. by January 31, Santos had resigned both committees, but not his post in Congress, remaining defiant. Although McCarthy seemed fine with Santos being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), McCarthy also planned to remove most of the power from the OCE.

House work
In January 2023, Santos displayed the "OK Hand Sign" while on the House floor to indicate that he is a member of the alt-right and to confirm his eternal trolling.

Surprisingly, Santos has introduced two bills in the House of Representatives as of April 2023. The first, also surprisingly, could actually benefit his constituents, the SALT Relief Act, which would remove a tax deduction cap from properties in highly-taxed properties that disproportionately affected people in regions who voted against Trump (e.g., New York, New Jersey and California).

Less surprising was his anti-vaxx-inspired second bill, the MINAJ Act, named after musician Nicki Minaj, who in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic wrote the widely-mocked, "My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen,” Minaj wrote on Twitter at the time. “His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied." The bill would prohibit the federal government from "any mandate requiring an individual to receive a vaccine that has not been authorized for marketing for at least ten years unless a public health emergency is declared.".

Ironically, one of the crimes that Santos allegedly committed — theft of public money for claiming unemployment insurance during the COVID pandemic — is related to a House bill that he had cosponsored, "Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act". The Act, if it were to become law, would incentivize states to prosecute misuse of COVID relief funds.