Dem
51
GOP
49
As long as were visiting New York, let's check in with Rep.-elect Jay Gatsby... er, George Santos (R), whose biography continues to unravel. We already wrote about his (apparent) lies about his education, his business background and his charity work. Since then, even more of his story has been called into question.
To start, Santos told many tales about his family's past, and how they fled persecution from the Nazis during World War II. The specific details "evolved" a bit over time, but eventually he settled on a narrative that his grandparents were Jews living in Ukraine, that they began to be persecuted by Nazis, and that they relocated to Belgium and then Brazil, thus escaping the Holocaust. In the early stages of the campaign, Santos said his grandparents converted to Catholicism at some point, but he eventually decided they were Jewish, and he emphasized repeatedly how proud he was of his Jewish heritage.
The problem here is that there's no proof for any of this. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which has been covering Jewish news for over a century, knows a little something about how to research such things. And they found that while there are no traces of Santos' relatives in Europe in the 1930s or 1940s, there is firm proof that his grandparents were born in Brazil. It is at least theoretically possible they were born in Brazil, moved to Europe, and then moved back to Brazil, but that would be highly unusual, to say the least.
And then there is Santos' sexual orientation. Despite being an opponent of legislation meant to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, he has regularly talked about being an openly gay man, and having lived as such for the past decade. According to his campaign biography, he's married to a pharmacist named Matt. Santos also said that his husband was terminated from his job because they were caught partying at Mar-a-Lago without masks at the height of the pandemic.
One wants to be careful when questioning a person's claims about their sexual identity. After all, there are many reasons that a person might be LGBTQ and choose to represent themselves otherwise. That said, The Daily Beast took a look at this part of Santos' story, and found some... interesting things. First, the Rep.-elect was married to a woman until 12 days before launching his first campaign for the House, something that he's never once mentioned during his runs for office. Second, there is no record of him marrying since then. And third, there is no record of anyone with his (alleged) husband's name working as a pharmacist in New York.
There are enough red flags here that even LGBTQ publications like LGBTQ Nation are writing that they smell a potential rat. Recall that Santos has already been proven a liar in other cases, including his claim that he lost several gay employees in the Pulse shooting. Add in his hostility to LGBTQ rights, his deliberately hidden straight marriage, and a gay marriage that has produced no paper trail whatsoever, and it sure looks like he might be a poseur, trying to neutralize the fact that he was facing a gay opponent in 2022.
Santos said yesterday that he is going to "tell his story" next week. This oughta be good. Meanwhile, the office of New York AG Letitia James is "looking into" the allegations against Santos. That is not likely to go anywhere; it's not illegal to run for Congress as a gay Jewish Latino dog-loving businessman who graduated from Baruch College, even if you're few or none of those things. That said, if the AG finds that Santos committed any sort of financial malfeasance, or that there are questions about his citizenship status, or that he isn't legally a resident of New York, then he would have some trouble on his hands. Note that there's been no suggestion, as yet, that any of these things are the case. This is merely a list of the kinds of things that would allow the AG's office to take action against Santos. If James needs to serve Santos with a summons, he says he lives on Long Island (really). Presumably, his home there is located in West Egg, right? (Z)