George Santos deleted his campaign biography and blamed ‘elitist’ New York Times for his lies about his employment history
Bryan Metzger – December 27, 2022
Rep-elect George Santos removed his biography from his campaign website on Tuesday.David Becker/Washington Post via Getty Images
GOP Rep-elect George Santos admitted he fabricated much of his background before he was elected.
On Tuesday, he removed his biography from his campaign website.
In one interview, he blamed the “elitist” New York Times for his lies about his employment history.
As he faced numerous questions over a series of apparent falsehoods in his resume last week, Republican Rep-elect George Santos said he had a “story to tell and it will be told next week.”
On Monday, he began to do just that via a series of largely friendly interviews — and admitted that whole sections of his biography were fake.
The biography included the lie that he had graduated from Baruch College and that his grandparents had “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine.” The Forward found that his grandparents were born in Brazil.
In an interview with the New York Post on Monday, he came clean about lying about his employment and education history, as well as the fact that he isn’t Jewish.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” he told The Post. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”
“I worked as a customer service agent for six, seven months of my life or so — eight, maybe, in some — at some point in 2011, 2012,” he said. “The moment I put that on a resume, and I put it out there, elitists like the New York Times like to call blue-collar jobs like that ‘odd jobs.’ “
Santos was apparently referencing a story from the Times that noted that the congressman-elect worked at a Dish Network call center around the same time he purportedly worked on Wall Street.
“It’s those expectations, and those negative connotations, from elitist organizations, such as the New York Times that lead people — like me,” he said before abruptly changing course mid-sentence, saying he was “very comfortable in saying, I come from poverty, I come from a family of absolute nothing.”
“The reality is, yes, I omitted, like, past employment history that was irrelevant to the role,” he added.https://www.youtube.com/embed/E20WpTB4ZgA
During his interview with City & State NY, Santos also addressed his prior marriage to a woman; Santos is the first non-incumbent gay Republican ever elected to Congress.
He said he initiated a divorce after deciding to come out as gay.
“At least I had the courage to do it,” he said. “So many people… live in denial for their entire life, or are frustrated, and then eventually become a trans woman in their 60s.”
Santos Blames ‘Bourgeois’ Media for Pointing Out His Many, Many Campaign Lies
Nikki McCann Ramirez – December 27, 2022
george-santos-admission.jpg U.S. Congressman-elect George Santos – Credit: Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM/Getty Images
“Did I embellish my resume? Yes I did. And I’m sorry … but I’m still the same guy, I’m not a fraud.”
New York congressman-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to having engaged in “résumé embellishment” and lying about his education and work history. Santos has been embroiled in controversy following a New York Timesreport that raised discrepancies in the incoming congressman’s background. In various interviews responding to the controversy, Santos has now admitted to misrepresenting his job history, lying about his educational background, and exaggerating his financial position.
Despite repeatedly apologizing for misleading the public, Santos still attempted to deflect blame for his lies onto other entities. Santos pointed the finger at elitism in the media as the motivation behind the exaggeration of his credentials. “I worked as a customer service agent for 6-7 months of my life…elitists like the New York Times like to call blue-collar jobs like that ‘odd jobs’ because it just doesn’t fit their bourgeois-style lifestyle.”
And that, Santos says, is what’s to blame for him making a litany of false statements to voters while seeking office. “It’s those expectations and those connotations from elitist organizations such as the New York Times that lead people like me” to embellish their history.
The investigation by the Times was unable to verify claims by Santos regarding his self-reported work for major financial groups Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as well as his assertion that he had graduated from Baruch College in New York and New York University. In an interview with the New York Post, Santos admitted that he had “never worked directly” with Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. He explained that a financial firm he had worked for, Link Bridge, had done work with the companies and blamed the discrepancy on his “poor choice of words.” “If I was trying to really defraud the people, like everybody keeps saying, I could have just listed bigger — just as big names,” Santos said in an interview with City & State New York.
“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning,” Santos admitted to the Post. “ I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he stated. “I own up to that … We do stupid things in life.”
Santos further denied accusations that he had lied about having Jewish heritage, telling the Post that he “never claimed to be Jewish.” “I am Catholic,” Santos said, “because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” Santos had previously claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors who escaped persecution in WWII.
Regarding questions on discrepancies in his finances, Santos admitted to little besides a history of bad tenancy and never actually having owned property. Addressing claims that he owned more than 13 properties to City & State Santos said he “never claimed to” have owned property himself. “No I do not own property,” he said, “I’ve never purchased property under my name.” Santos clarified that while his family members owned various properties he helped manage, none outright belonged to him.
The revelations have prompted calls from Democrats for Santos’ resignation, including accusations from his future colleagues that Santos “[defrauded] the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume.” However, the incoming congressman plans to see his term through. ”I will be sworn in. I will take office.” Santos told New York’s WABC.
Column: Closing out 2022, Trump has supplanted Nixon as the saddest figure in post-presidential politics
Jonah Goldberg – December 27, 2022
Former President Trump announces a third run for president on Nov. 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)
“The tapes are the real man — mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down,” Gary Wills wrote of Richard Nixon in the 2017 preface to his book, “Nixon Agonistes.” Wills added, perhaps unfairly, that “Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero. He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.”
The passage comes to mind as we close out Donald Trump’s annus horribilis, during which he supplanted Nixon as the saddest figure in post-presidential politics. The Jan. 6 committee, despite its flaws, succeeded in establishing a damning official record (largely told by his own aides) of his attempt to steal the presidency. A special prosecutor is on his case(s). His tax returns are out for all to see.
A week after a disastrous midterm election for his party and his power, he announced he’s running for president again. The party and public shrugged.
Then, he teased a “major announcement” which turned out to be a line of digital trading cards, some of which appear to be little more than Photoshopped images from Google searches with his face pasted on. What Trump described as “amazing ART of my Life & Career!” show him as, among other things, an astronaut, a sheriff and a superhero with laser beams shooting out of his eyes (causing even Russian state TV to snicker).
I can report that Trump was neither an astronaut nor sheriff. If he had heat vision, Mike Pence would now be a pile of ash.
The contrast with Nixon’s post-presidency is poignant. Nixon in exile wrote 10 books, all quite serious, including his memoirs. He clawed back a reputation as a wise man who dispensed advicetopresidents.
But that’s not the poignant part. Nixon was surrounded with a loving family, lifelong friends and loyal aides who gave him the sort of succor that politics couldn’t. His first — and only — wife was the love of his life. Long after Nixon’s death, they cherished his memory. Nixon in exile still enjoyed the respect not just of his friends but of his enemies.
The famouslyfriendless Trump has admitted that he never had much use for real friends. Trump prefers to be surrounded by people who will tell him what he wants to hear, and what he wants to hear is: You’re awesome. Reportedly, this is why he hit it off so well with a neo-Nazi toady who heaped praise on him at that now notorious dinner with the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
This is what makes Trump such a pathetic figure. Wills titled his book “Nixon Agonistes” — a reference to the Milton poem “Samson Agonistes” — because Nixon was a man of struggle, both internal and external, hungry for respect.
Trump isn’t merely hungry for respect; he’s, as the kids say, “thirsty” for respect — respect for his strength, his “very stable genius,” his masculinity and, of course, his money. When Trump read a 2015 column of mine in the New York Post mocking his potential run, he turned to his aide Sam Nunberg and muttered, “Why don’t they respect me, Sam?”
Of course, there are people who respect Trump, but most of them aren’t friends, they’re fans, the sorts of people who don’t get the joke of his trading cards. In 2016, he told a New Hampshire audience: “I have no friends, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “You know who my friends are? You’re my friends.”
Fans are generally the last people to tell you hard truths. Worse for Trump: His definition of fans are people who think he can do no wrong.
The key difference is that Nixon’s hunger for respect was tempered by a reciprocal respect, admittedly flawed, for the presidency, his party, the country and for those closest to him. Nixon spared them all the ordeal of impeachment; Trump was impeached twice, then ran again, lost, and then tried to steal the presidency. He recently called for the suspension of the Constitution to reinstall him, because no impediment to his self-glorification deserves respect.
Nixon’s struggle was complicated because he was complicated. Trump’s struggle is simple because he is simple: All he is is appetite — for fame, power, sex, admiration — shorn of any interior life and unencumbered by exterior attachments.
Wills may have been right that the secret tapes displayed the “real” Nixon. We don’t need secret tapes to know Trump, because the real Trump is always on display for those with eyes to see him. And, finally, the sight is becoming wearying, even for his fans.
Older and unappreciated: Workers over 50 face a rough time on the job
Katrin Park – December 26, 2022
Forget the Great Resignation. The shakeup of Generation Z workers, seeking fulfillment and treating their jobs like a game of musical chairs, will sort itself out over time. They have their whole lives ahead of them to find something that fits.
The larger crisis is what to do with all the older-than-50 workers searching for gainful employment. This is one of the worst times to be a worker in the twilight of a career. Only half of Americans are steadily employed throughout their 50s. Last year, more than a quarter of workers ages 55 to 59 were out of the workforce, which meant that they didn’t have jobs to retire from.
Across the globe, full-time, stable employment that culminated in pensions has become a relic of the pre-pandemic past. In the United States, an increasing number of workers can’t afford to retire, not with inflation and uncertain retirement savings. Now, a worker must wait to age 70 to collect maximum Social Security benefits, and Congress is expected to discuss raising the age for Social Security eligibility next year.
Multiple factors create challenges for older workers
The disappearance of stable employment with a living wage and benefits – once the driver of upward mobility – has added to growing inequality. Global crises like COVID-19, changing business models and emerging technologies have led to the rise of low-quality, temporary jobs.
If workers have physically demanding jobs such as in retail or hospitality, poor health can force them to drop out. Many workers in their 50s also have caregiving responsibilities for older generations, which temporary gigs don’t accommodate. And of course there’s ageism.
A Brookings Institution report found a strong relationship between holding steady employment in one’s 50s and working in their 60s and beyond. So interventions to support older workers must start earlier on, even in one’s 40s. This can be done by improving the quality of low-wage jobs – including through higher minimum wages, greater work schedule flexibility and paid leave – to reduce turnover. That will help people work longer.
Likewise for firms, this is an opportunity to avoid productivity losses in the long run by maintaining a stable workforce. Firms that rely on disproportionately large numbers of hourly workers tend to have higher turnover rates. They are also less likely to invest in employee training and technologies.
Assisting older workers with developing skills that are in demand can help them get jobs again and meet businesses’ needs.
Such efforts are vital to maintain Social Security benefits, projected to be cut by more than 20% come 2034 unless Congress and the president intervene. Without action, monthly benefits would shrink by hundreds of dollars on average, and anyone 55 or younger would never get a full benefit.
And yet, unemployment statistics tend to leave out 50-something workers who are forced into early retirement. That happens because they are not part of the prime-age workforce, and they haven’t yet reached the benchmark ages associated with retirement, according to Beth Truesdale, a sociologist and author of the Brookings paper. Labor force policy and retirement policy should be considered as one system but are not, and these workers fall through the gap.
It’s a gap that’ll only get wider and harder to fill with the passage of time.
Which is alarming, given that an aging population, not a growing one, is the ticking time bomb.
The global population has just hit the 8 billion milestone, with life expectancy soaring and fertility rates dropping. Across the world, people 75 and older are the fastest-growing group in the labor force. Today, 40 million Americans are 65 and older, a figure expected to double over the next 40 years.
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Not preparing for this inescapable demographic shift will result in a shrinking workforce that struggles to support a ballooning number of “retirees.”
To be sure, improving the working conditions of low-wage jobs or training programs alone will not solve the myriad challenges older workers face. Age discrimination persists.
Katrin Park is a freelance writer and a former director of communications with the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Unfortunately, among the more than 40 million Americans 50 and older in the labor force, according to a 2018 analysis by ProPublica and the Urban Institute, half of them are likely to be laid off or forced into retirement regardless of income, education level or geography.
Without stronger legal protection for older workers and changing business models so they value work experience as a competitive advantage necessary for greater productivity, older workers will face fewer opportunities, resulting in higher rates of poverty in old age.
The disappearance of 50-something workers should factor more prominently in future of work debates. Even if all the quirks of Gen Z work habits were resolved tomorrow, a massive demographic work crisis still looms.
This editorial is the sixth in a series, “The Danger Within,” urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.
Whoever shot the small steel ball through the front window of the Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Wash., this month wasn’t taking chances. The person wore a mask and removed the front and rear license plates of a silver Chevrolet Cruze. The police still have no leads.
The bar’s owner, Marley Rall, thought the motivation seemed clear: The attack followed social media posts from conservatives angry about the bar’s Drag Queen Storytime and Bingo, slated for the following weekend.
The Taproom sits in a two-story office park a 15-minute drive from downtown Seattle. It has a little outside patio and about two dozen local craft beers on tap. Dogs are welcome. A sign on the door reads: “I don’t drink beer with racists. #blacklivesmatter.” Now there’s also a note with an arrow pointing to the hole in the window reading: “What intolerance looks like.”
Over the past two years, criticism of the bar’s long-running monthly Drag Queen Storytime had been limited to nasty voice mail messages and emails. But talk on right-wing message boards has turned much darker, Ms. Rall said. One post this month about the Taproom event read: “Drag Queen Storytime Protest. STOP Grooming Kids! Bring signs, bullhorns, noisemakers.”
Ms. Rall knew how protests like this could escalate. There was an incident in 2019 at a library drag queen story hour about 10 minutes from the bar, where members of the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups got into a shouting match with supporters of the event.
Was the shot at the Taproom a warning? She had no way to know, so she kept the event on the calendar.
Sitting in a corner of the Taproom a few hours before her story time was set to begin, Sylvia O’Stayformore said she didn’t care if the Proud Boys showed up to an event that was aimed at teaching children empathy. Protesters or not, she had a show to put on. “I’d never be intimidated by all this,” she said.
On Monday, protesters vandalized the home of a gay New York City councilor with homophobic graffiti and attacked one of his neighbors in protest of drag queen story hours held at libraries.
The protests use the language of right-wing media, where demonizing gay and transgender people is profitable and popular. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host who rails against transgender people and the medical facilities that serve them, has the highest-rated prime-time cable news program in the country. Twitter personalities with millions of followers flag drag events and spread anti-trans rhetoric that can result in in-person demonstrations or threats. Facebook pages of activist groups can mobilize demonstrators with ease.
Some Republican lawmakers are using the power of the state in service of the same cause. Several states are trying to restrict or ban public drag shows altogether, amid a record number of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills introduced this year. Republican politicians also used a barrage of lies about trans people in their campaign ads during the midterm elections, funded to the tune of at least $50 million, according to a report released in October from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
This campaign isn’t happening in a vacuum. Levels of political violence are on the rise across the country, and while some of it comes from the left, a majority comes from the right, where violent rhetoric that spurs actual violence is routine and escalating. At anti-L.G.B.T.Q. events, sign-waving protesters are increasingly joined by members of the street-fighting Proud Boys and other right-wing paramilitary groups. Their presence increases the risk of such encounters turning violent.
In a series of editorials, this board has argued for a concerted national effort against political violence. It would require cracking down on paramilitary groups, tracking extremists in law enforcement, creating a healthier culture around guns and urging the Republican Party to push fringe ideas to the fringes. Every American citizen has a part to play, and the most important thing we all can do is to demand that in every community, we treat our neighbors — and their civil liberties and human rights — with respect.
One way to do that is to call out and reject the dehumanizing language that has become so pervasive in online discussions, and in real life, about particular groups of people. Calling L.G.B.T.Q. people pedophiles is an old tactic, and it makes ignoring or excusing any violence that may come their way easier. While direct calls for violence are beyond the pale for most Republican politicians, and the causes of specific violent acts are not easily traced, calling transgender people pedophiles or “groomers” is increasingly common and usually goes unchallenged.
Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, released a TV ad recently in which he said: “The radical left will destroy America if we don’t stop them. They indoctrinate children and try to turn boys into girls.” A conservative activist group recently ran ads in several states, including one that said, “Transgenderism is killing kids.” This year, as Florida lawmakers debated the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted on Twitter: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity.”
The silence from a great majority of Republicans on the demonization of, and lies about, trans people has indeed meant complicity — complicity in what experts call stochastic terrorism, in which vicious rhetoric increases the likelihood of random violence against the people who are the subject of the abusive language and threats.
Drag queen story hours aren’t the only current target for right-wing extremists. On Aug. 30, an operator at Boston Children’s Hospital, a pioneer in providing gender-affirming care, answered the telephone at about 7:45 p.m. and received a disturbing threat. “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital,” the caller said. “You better evacuate everyone, you sickos.” It was the first of seven bomb threats the hospital received over several months. The most recent came on Dec. 14.
After extremists posted online the address of a physician who works with trans children at the hospital, the doctor had to flee the home. “These have been some of the hardest months of my life,” the doctor said.
Around the country, at least 24 hospitals or medical facilities in 21 states have been harassed or threatened in the wake of right-wing media attacks, according to a tally this month by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. To protect their employees, some hospitals are stripping information about the transgender services they provide from their websites. The messages that appear to trigger these attacks are often outlandish lies about what care these medical facilities actually provide. As a result, many hospitals feel they have no choice but to protect their staff, even if it means making the care they provide less visible. Removal of official information creates a risk that more disinformation could fill the void.
Given the transnational nature of extremism, these threats can come from anywhere. The F.B.I. arrested three people in connection with the various threats against Boston doctors. One person lived in Massachusetts, another in Texas and the third in Canada.
Data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence, puts the harassment of hospitals into a wider, troubling context. Acts of political violence against the entire L.G.B.T.Q. community have more than tripled since 2021; anti-L.G.B.T.Q. demonstrations have more than doubled in the same period. And the nature of the intimidation is changing: Protesters dressed as civilians have been replaced by men in body armor and fatigues; signs have been replaced by semiautomatic rifles.
Even dictionary publishers have become targets. This year, a California man was arrested for threatening to shoot up and bomb the offices of Merriam-Webster because he was angry about its definitions related to gender identity.
GOP Sen. Mike Lee said that ‘Rudy is walking malpractice’ after Giuliani left him an accidental voicemail on January 6
Sonam Sheth – December 23, 2022
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
GOP Sen. Mike Lee described Rudy Giuliani as “walking malpractice” following the Capitol riot.
Lee texted then national security advisor Robert O’Brien after getting a voicemail from Giuliani that was intended for GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville.
In the message, Giuliani urged Tuberville and “our Republican friends” to delay Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee described former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as “walking malpractice” in a late-night text to then national security advisor Robert O’Brien.
That’s according to the January 6 select committee, which released its full 845-page report on the deadly Capitol siege late Thursday.
“You can’t make this up. I just got this voice message [from] Rudy Giuliani, who apparently thought he was calling Senator Tuberville,” Lee’s text said. “You’ve got to listen to that message. Rudy is walking malpractice.”
GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was one of several lawmakers Giuliani tried to contact before Congress resumed its joint session to certify Joe Biden’s victory following the Capitol riot.
“I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you,” Giuliani said in the voicemail intended for Tuberville.
Lee’s text to O’Brien was buried in an endnote in Chapter 7 of the report, titled “187 Minutes of Dereliction.” He texted O’Brien at 10:55 p.m. ET on January 6, per the endnote.
It’s one of dozens of times Giuliani is mentioned in the committee’s report, which paints a damning portrait of how the former New York mayor and his cohorts relied on dubious and conspiratorial theories to try to nullify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and install Trump for a second presidential term.
Bill Stepien, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, told the committee that he was so uncomfortable with Giuliani’s post-election antics that he locked Giuliani out of his office and instructed his assistant not to allow the former mayor to enter.
“I told her, don’t let anyone in,” Stepien testified. “You know, I’ll be around when I need to be around. You know, tell me what I need to know. Tell me what’s going on here, but, you know, you’re going to see less of me. And, you know, sure enough, you know, Mayor Giuliani tried to, you know, get in my office and ordered her to unlock the door, and she didn’t do that, you know.”
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani exposed and took down the mafia not just here in America, but also in Italy,” Ted Goodman, a communication and political advisor to Giuliani, told Insider in a statement. “He rooted out corruption in government, prosecuted some of the largest insider trading cases on Wall Street, and cleaned up the streets of New York. Partisan politics aside, he is unquestionably one of the greatest prosecutors in American history.”
Some of the claims Giuliani and his allies made were so outlandish that even Trump found them hard to believe.
For instance, the committee’s report describes one phone call, on November 20, 2020, between Trump and the GOP-linked lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked closely with Giuliani on election litigation.
Powell spouted baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud during the call, including one claim that the voting tech company Dominion Voting Systems had colluded with the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — who died in 2013 — to tilt the election in Biden’s favor.
According to testimony from Trump’s top communications aide Hope Hicks, the president muted himself while Powell was detailing these allegations during their call. Hicks testified that Trump laughed at Powell and told others in the room, “This does sound crazy, doesn’t it?”
Giuliani is currently facing possible disbarment as a Washington, DC, ethics panel reviews his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
His “misconduct” after the election was “so serious that it should never be allowed to happen again,” disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox said last week.
The DC Board of Professional Responsibility determined in a preliminary finding that Giuliani violated at least one ethics rule by filing a legal challenge in Pennsylvania seeking to throw out millions of votes in the state. The decision is not binding, and the hearing committee will consider alternative sanctions proposals before putting out a report with a final recommendation.
Giuliani vehemently defended himself throughout the proceedings, accusing the disciplinary counsel of engaging in a “personal attack” without presenting proper evidence. He also told Robert Bernius, the chairman of the panel overseeing the hearings, that Fox’s statements were an “outrage.”
Note: This story has been updated with a statement from Giuliani’s representative.
‘Openly Gay’ Rep.-Elect George Santos Didn’t Disclose Divorce With Woman
Roger Sollenberger – December 22, 2022
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Republican congressman-elect George Santos is under new scrutiny after a New York Times report earlier this week uncovered a string of apparent outright fabrications at the heart of some of the most fundamental facts of his life, but that backstory may also be notable for what Santos did not include—a publicly undisclosed marriage.
Santos, who claims he has “never experienced discrimination in the Republican Party,” broke barriers this year when he became the first openly gay non-incumbent GOP candidate elected to Congress.
But according to court records obtained by The Daily Beast, Santos appears to be the subject of a previously unacknowledged Sept. 2019 divorce with a woman in Queens County, New York. The divorce—which Santos has not discussed publicly—adds new uncertainty to his already shaky biographical and political claims.
“I am openly gay, have never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade, and I can tell you and assure you, I will always be an advocate for LGBTQ folks,” Santos told USA Today in October, responding to criticism about his support for Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay Bill” signed into law this year by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Less than two weeks after his divorce was finalized, Santos filed the official paperwork to launch his 2020 campaign. And while his 2022 campaign bio mentions his husband, who according to Santos lives with him and their four dogs on Long Island, he’s kept this previous marriage out of the public eye entirely.
It’s entirely possible that Santos, who claims he has “never experienced discrimination in the Republican Party,” has been living comfortably as an openly gay man for, as he says, more than a decade. People get married for countless reasons. But Santos’ situation is curious because he never disclosed his divorce to voters, and never reconciled his prior marriage to a woman—which ended just 12 days before he established his first congressional campaign—with his claims of being an out and proud gay Republican.
Santos, 34, made his first bid for Congress in 2020, losing to Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) before toppling Democratic opponent Robert Zimmerman this year. But following a New York Timesinvestigation that suggested Santos had fictionalized key elements of his resume, he’s already facing calls to resign, as well as a possible ethics investigation.
The colleges Santos says he attended don’t have a record of him; Citigroup and Goldman Sachs don’t either, though he claimed to work there; the IRS has no record of his nonprofit; he still faces “unresolved” legal trouble in Brazil; his past business ventures appear flimsy; and even his address was called into question.
In response to the Times report, Santos’ attorney Joseph Murray released a statement that, while stopping short of denying the accusations, painted his client as a victim, because he “represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by—a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party.”
The Times story set off a rapid-fire round of criticism that extended not just to the congressman-elect, but to Democratic opposition researchers, Republican vetters, and media who had not called attention to the now-glaring holes in his story before the election.
While those details went largely unnoticed during the campaign, the Times investigation prompted reporters and internet sleuths around the country to dig deeper into Santos’ past—or what they could find of it.
It’s unclear why Santos has not disclosed his apparent marriage and divorce, but it doesn’t fit well with his current biography.
He has previously told U.S. and Brazilian media that he was engaged to a man, a fellow Brazilian whom Santos has identified as a pharmacist, and his campaign bio claims he lives on Long Island with his husband. (The Daily Beast could find no public record of the man’s work in that field, nor could we find a marriage record.)
But New York court records show that, in 2019, someone named George Devolder Santos, with a second initial of “A,” finalized an uncontested divorce with Uadla Santos Vieira Santos. Public records searches only reveal one person in the United States with that name.
Uadla Santos and George Santos did not reply to calls or questions sent via text message to numbers associated with them. (A deed for a $750,000 house purchase in Union County, New Jersey, this June lists Uadla Santos as the buyer, and says she is married; she is the only purchaser listed on the property documents.)
George Santos, whose middle name is Anthony, sometimes uses Devolder, his late mother’s maiden name. He incorporated it into his campaign—“Devolder Santos for Congress”—as well as his own supposed financial services company, the Devolder Organization.
Santos has shifted between different combinations of those four names over the years, sometimes embracing his father’s Santos surname, other times going by his mother’s Devolder.
Santos’ mother died in 2016, according to an online crowdfunding campaign Santos launched to raise money to cover “the costs of the wake.” The GoFundMe page lists “Anthony D Santos” as the beneficiary—and Anthony Devolver of Sunnyside, New York, as the organizer—and the fundraising campaign remains open.
Santos’ campaign bio page claims his mother was “the first female executive at a major financial institution,” though the specific institution is unnamed. The bio also says “George’s mother was in her office in the South Tower” on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
“She survived the horrific events of that day, but unfortunately passed away a few years later”—about 15 years later.
And on Wednesday, Jewish outlet The Forward added still more intrigue, suggesting Santos may also have been untruthful when he claimed during the campaign—including on his website—to have Jewish ancestry. The report led incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to declare his future colleague a “complete and utter fraud.”
But the divorce revelation, and the apparent secrecy around it, complicates a central piece of the image Santos has burnished as a dynamic and culturally revolutionary figure.
In an election season where many of his fellow conservatives spouted nonsensical allegations of pedophilia among Democrats, targeted benign drag brunches as epicenters for “grooming,” and inflamed a hateful anti-gay and anti-trans movement—as attacks on the LGBTQ community skyrocketed—Santos made history as the first non-incumbent gay Republican to ever be elected to Congress.
But after achieving that victory, and just two weeks before his barrier-breaking inauguration, Santos’ relationship with the truth is facing tests he somehow dodged for two campaigns.
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts.
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
Nick Fuentes’ lawyer told the panel in February that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The latest on the report and the files:
Cassidy Hutchinson felt inspired to testify after reading book on Watergate
After transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s initial testimony to the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, in which she answered “I don’t recall” to several of the committee’s questions, she said she felt an internal dilemma.
She ordered two copies of a book detailing the Watergate scandal and the involvement of Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to former President Richard Nixon. Butterfield delivered blockbuster testimony to the Senate Watergate committee at the time, revealing the White House’s taping system.
After she read the book, Hutchinson said she found inspiration in Butterfield. “And I wasn’t by no means trying to compare what I knew to what Butterfield knew at all.” Hutchinson said.
“And it was after I read this I was like, if I’m going to pass the mirror test for the rest of my life, I need to try to fix some of this,” Hutchinson told the committee.
– Ken Tran
Cassidy Hutchinson scheduled an interview with the committee without lawyer’s knowledge
After her first interview with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt guilty and thought she had more information to offer to the committee, but with “Trump world” attorney Stefan Passantino serving as her lawyer, she didn’t know how to schedule another interview without him knowing.
Hutchinson sought advice from another former White House aide, Alyssa Farah Griffin. The two decided on a plan for Farah Griffin to serve as a backchannel to the committee and provide them information on what to ask Hutchinson – without Passantino’s knowledge.
“I think that I can do this as long as like the committee thinks that they can really keep this low key and low profile and not let Stefan know that I’m back channeling for this interview,” Hutchinson told Farah Griffin, to which she agreed.
The committee’s request for another interview caught Passantino off guard and he was “genuinely shocked,” Hutchinson said. During breaks in the interview, Passantino asked Hutchinson, “How do they have all of this? How do they know that you know all of this?”
– Ken Tran
‘He knows you’re loyal’: Meadows aide called Jan. 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson ahead of testimony
The night before Cassidy Hutchinson was set to testify for a second time before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, she received a phone call from a top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Ben Williamson, formerly a senior adviser to Meadows and deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump, told Hutchinson that Meadows asked him to pass along a message.
“Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family. Let me know how it goes.”
The exchange was previously reported, though the caller was unnamed.
The call “sparked an anxiety thought” that Meadows perceived her as disloyal, Hutchinson told the committee. She said that after her deposition, Williamson called her again on Signal but she did not pick up.
– Ella Lee
Cassidy Hutchinson felt ‘target on my back’ about misleading committee
Cassidy Hutchinson said her final break with “Trump world” lawyer Stefan Passantino came June 9, when she sent him an email discontinuing their relationship and switched lawyers to Bill Jordan and Jody Hunt.
Hutchinson said she felt uncomfortable through three interviews answering committee questions about Trump’s clash with the Secret Service with “I don’t recall,” when she did recall. When asked to return for another interview, Hutchinson said she “knew that there would be a target on my back with this,” she said.
“I followed his bad legal advice; I took his bad legal advice. I will own that,” Hutchinson said. “But my character and my integrity mean more to me than anything.”
– Bart Jansen
Cassidy Hutchinson said Trump tried to ‘wrap his hands around’ his Secret Service agent’s neck but she was advised not to tell the committee about it
Former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee how White House security chief Anthony Ornato told her after Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally on the Ellipse that Trump had “tried to wrap his hands around Bobby’s neck and strangle him because he wouldn’t take him to the Capitol.” She was referring to Trump’s main Secret Service agent, Bobby Engel, who was in the presidential limousine with him when the president was told the Secret Service thought it was too dangerous to drive him to the Capitol to accompany an angry mob he had sent there during his fiery speech that morning.
Her closed-door testimony on Sept. 14 goes beyond her bombshell public testimony weeks earlier, when she said Trump lunged at the agent and tried to redirect the steering wheel. She also testified that when she recounted this to defense lawyer Stefan Passantino, whom she later fired and accused of trying to silence her, he said, “No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.”
Passantino, who has denied wrongdoing, also told her to say she didn’t recall entire incidents even if she recalled a lot of detail, Hutchinson testified – including pardons sought by Trump associates and suspicious interactions between GOP lawmakers and her former boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol. When she expressed worry that she’d be perjuring herself if she claimed not to recall such details, Passantino told her, “‘I don’t recall’ is the best answer to any of that,” Hutchinson testified.
– Josh Meyer
Kevin McCarthy, John Ratcliffe expressed concerns over Mark Meadows as advisor to Trump
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy both expressed concerns over White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ advisory role to Trump in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, according to former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Ratcliffe told Hutchinson he had conversations with Trump where he went back and forth between accepting his loss and then denying the results of the election. “I’m just a little worried that Mark’s not giving him good advice,” Ratcliffe told Hutchinson.
McCarthy echoed similar sentiments in his own conversations with Hutchinson, telling her, “I talk to the president sometimes, and he admits he lost the election, but then he’ll immediately say he didn’t lose and there’s actually a way that he’s going to stay in office.”
“I can only imagine that’s coming from Mark. Mark’s lying to him, Cassidy,” McCarthy said.
– Ken Tran
Publix supermarket heiress pledged up to $3M for ‘Million MAGA March’ on Jan. 6
Publix heiress Julie Fancelli was prepared to contribute as much as $3 million to a rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that organizers were calling the “Million MAGA March,” according to interview transcripts released Wednesday by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren sent her a proposal roughly two weeks earlier and within days, Wren texted a colleague to report that she was at Fancelli’s house and had secured the money.
“Guess what the budget is she just gave me for our bus project?” she wrote, according to texts described by investigators. “$3 million…”
The colleague, Trump aide Taylor Budowich, replied with “lol”s, and “probably could do it for that,” before remarking, “rich people are so odd.”
Fancelli did not answers investigators’ questions about the exchange or many others, pleading the Fifth Amendment. She did tell investigators she never intended to fund anything but a peaceful rally.
– Donovan Slack
Cassidy Hutchinson feared ‘Trump world’ lawyers would try to silence her about what she knew about Jan. 6
Former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee that she was desperate to raise money for her own defense about any potential role in the alleged Trump insurrection plot because she feared she was being railroaded into accepting “Trump world” lawyers who would protect the former president’s interests at the expense of her own.
Hutchinson, who later fired her Trump-affiliated counsel Stefan Passantino and delivered bombshell live testimony at a Jan. 6 committee hearing, told committee members on Sept. 14 she interviewed dozens of independent lawyers after being subpoenaed but couldn’t afford the required legal retainers of $125,000 or more. In desperation, she testified, Hutchinson drove from Washington to New Jersey and “begged” her father for financial assistance, saying, “You have no idea what they are going to do to me if I have to get an attorney with Trump world.”
Later, Hutchinson testified, her fears intensified when former Trump associates steered her to Passantino, the former top ethics lawyer in the Trump White House, and he told her not to print out her calendars or try to remember key dates and conversations. “Look, we want to get you in, get you out,” Hutchinson quoted Passantino as saying. “We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary. … But the less you remember, the better.” Passantino has denied any wrongdoing and said he did his best to represent Hutchinson.
– Josh Meyer
‘The president could have tried to strangle you’: Cassidy Hutchinson recalls conversation with Anthony Ornato
A few months after she left the White House, Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, said she reached out to Anthony Ornato, former White House deputy chief of operations, after having “a really hard day.”
“I remember waking up that morning and just feeling like this heaviness with everything that happened in that period,” she said according to a transcript of the testimony. “And I knew that Tony (Ornato) would be somebody that I could talk to because Tony and I did confide in each other about a lot of things working at the White House.”
After assuring each other about how they shouldn’t blame themselves about the “movements in the Capitol,” Hutchinson recalled how Ornato had ended the call with a reference about Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his car to force the motorcade to go to the U.S. Capitol. She had previously testified that Trump had tried to “lunge” toward the chief of his security detail Robert Engel’s “clavicles.”
“It could be worse. The President could have tried to strangle you,” Hutchinson recalled Ornato as saying.“I remember just laughing and being like, “That’s true. At least he didn’t try that,” she said.
– Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Mark Meadows met with National Archives in December 2020 to discuss transition
Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met with the chief U.S. archivist in December 2020 without former President Donald Trump’s knowledge to discuss Trump’s presidential library and the document-retention protocol for the administration’s end, according to a transcript of testimony from Jan. 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
According to Hutchinson, Meadows said Trump was left in the dark on the Dec. 9, 2020 meeting because the former president didn’t want his staff to begin working on a “post-election period” yet. Asked whether he agreed with Trump’s thinking, Meadows quipped “Well, I had the meeting, didn’t I?,” Hutchinson said.
“I understood that comment to mean that Mr. Meadows knew it was the right thing to do, to begin having meetings discussing an end of the Trump administration, but also that he needed to keep also trying to balance the interests and ensure that the President wasn’t going to get angry at him,” Hutchinson told the panel. “He was sort of trying to do this a little bit more quietly.”
The FBI uncovered classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this year, which is a subject of a special counsel investigation concerning the former president.
Legislative recommendations are expected to aim at preventing another attack. The committee already endorsed an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which Congress will be voting on this week as part of a spending package.
Five House Republicans including Jordan released a rival report Wednesday blaming Democratic congressional leaders and law enforcement for failing to protect the Capitol.
Former Parler CEO grilled on content moderation by panel
John Matze, a co-founder and former CEO of the alternative social media platform Parler, faced questioning by the committee investigating the Capitol attack on the platform’s efforts to moderate violent rhetoric before and after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.
In a May interview, Matze was asked when aggressive language on the platform went from protected speech to unprotected speech worthy of investigation by law enforcement. He primarily pleaded the Fifth Amendment to questions asked by the committee.
Questions asked by the committee indicated Parler employees were aware the events of Jan. 6, 2021 could turn violent. One employee sent a Parler post, not detailed in the interview, to the FBI along with the message, “More where this came from. Concerned about Wednesday.”
The committee also asked Matze questions about the presence of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters on the social media platform, which he declined to answer.
– Ella Lee
Jan. 6 committee told DOJ to prosecute Trump
The committee on Monday recommended the Justice Department charge Trump with four crimes: inciting the insurrection, obstruction of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make false statements.
The committee also recommended Ethics Committee investigations of four House Republicans for defying subpoenas: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Jan. 6 committee witnesses sidestepped questions on fake elector scheme
Questions about a plot to use slates of fake electors in battleground states to overturn the 2020 election were sidestepped under questioning by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald and national committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, in February testimony before the committee, pleaded the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times in their interviews with the panel, refusing to answer questions over whether they signed fake certificates pledging Nevada electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.
In one set of questions not answered, a committee investigator asked McDonald about a Nov. 4 text message to an individual named Steve suggesting McDonald was in direct contact with the then-president.
“Was on the phone to President, Mark Meadows, Giuliani, and they want full attack mode,” the text read, suggesting McDonald would participate in a “war room meeting” shortly after with the three.
Two Michiganders – Kathy Berden, a GOP national committeewoman, and Mayra Rodriguez – also declined to answer most substantive questions from the committee about a plot to subvert the election results.
– Ella Lee
Jeffrey Clark: Jan. 6 investigation ‘political,’ not ‘legislative’
Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who drafted a letter for Trump’s attorney general to send urging state officials to review their 2020 election results for fraud, refused to answer substantive questions from the committee. But that didn’t stop him from giving lawmakers a piece of his mind.
“I think that this is exclusively a political inquiry, not a legislative one,” Clark told the panel at his second deposition Feb. 2. “It also has, I think, pretenses and an underlying purpose of invading the executive sphere, in terms of law enforcement.”
His lawyer, Harry MacDougald, told the panel Clark received a call threatening to chop him into pieces in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. MacDougald said lawmakers should be embarrassed for implying Clark is guilty of crimes such as treason because he refused to testify.
“My point is that this whole process has gone off the rails,” MacDougald said. “People have lost their minds.”
– Bart Jansen
Nick Fuentes ‘subject and possibly a target’ of criminal investigation: lawyer
Nick Fuentes of Berwyn, Illinois, founder of the America First Foundation advocating American nationalism, Christianity and traditionalism, was among dozens of witnesses who declined to answer substantive questions from the committee under his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
His lawyer, Tom Durkin, told the panel at his Feb. 16 deposition that Fuentes had been notified he was “a subject and possibly a target” of an investigation by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Fuentes hosts a streaming show on the internet and is a white nationalist, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists. He recently dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Thompson expressed confidence in the special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate who organized and financed the Capitol attack beyond the hundreds of rioters who have already been charged. But the committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and is in the midst of sharing those transcripts with the department.
“There were people that we deposed that Justice had not deposed,” Thompson said. “There were electors in various states that Justice couldn’t find. We found them.”
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee posts files on 34 witnesses who were interviewed
The committee posted files Wednesday on 34 witnesses interviewed during the investigation, an initial signal of how much information the panel will be passing along to the Justice Department for its criminal investigation.
But the release was scant so far. Thirteen of the files, dealing with people such as Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis and broadcaster Alex Jones, remain sealed.
Witnesses in the rest, such as Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, Trump lawyer John Eastman and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, refused to answer substantive questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
– Bart Jansen
Chapman School of Law professor John Eastman testifies on Capitol Hill in 2017. Eastman was also a former lawyer for former President Donald Trump.
Watchdog predicts more Jan. 6 ‘bombshells’
One government watchdog expects the final report – expected to run as long as 800 pages or more – will help fill in blanks that remain, even after nearly a dozen committee hearings.
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in an NBC op-ed on Wednesday the report would included “hundreds of pages packed with evidence, witness statements and bombshells.”
But he argued nothing will be as important as the conclusion announced Monday that Trump, “as a matter of law, incited an insurrection against the authority of the U.S. government.”
Trump tried to contact a witness after a June hearing, committee members have said. Some of Trump’s fundraising proceeds went to pay lawyers for witnesses, one witness was offered a job but it was rescinded.
“The witness believed this was an effort to prevent her testimony,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Monday.
Still, witness tampering was not among the charges the committee recommended to prosecutors but full details remain elusive.
– Donovan Slack
Did Trump loyalist Hope Hicks incriminate the former president?
“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” Hicks said.
She is among more than 1,000 witnesses who cooperated with the investigation while about 30 people refused to answer questions under their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transcripts for Hicks and other witnesses will be released after the final report and could shed more light on the investigation.
“Next to Dan Scavino, she was Trump’s most trusted aide and one of the only people he listened to,” said Stephanie Grisham, a Trump White House press secretary. “Her constant proximity to the president makes her not just valuable as a witness, but vital.”
Findings accused Democratic leaders of seeking to avoid “optics” of a large police presence at the Capitol after Black Lives Matter protests the previous year. Capitol Police lacked training and equipment to deal with a riotous mob, according to the report, which echoed findings of an earlier Senate report.
The GOP lawmakers who wrote the rebuttal are Jordan and Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas. The five were nominated to serve on the committee, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Calif., rejected Banks and Jordan, and the others withdrew.
– Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee released an executive summary of the report Monday
The House panel on Monday released a 160-plus page executive summary of the report and showed video testimony of some of the approximately 1,000 witnesses it has interviewed during the course of its 18-month investigation.
And it voted to forward to the Justice Department its recommendations that former President Donald Trump be charged with four criminal violations stemming from his effort to overturn the 2020 election results and set loose a mob of his supporters on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when lawmakers were certifying the electoral results showing that Trump had lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
“I expect our final work will be filed with the clerk of the House and made public later this week,” Thompson said Monday. “Beyond that release, the select committee intends to make public the bulk of its non-sensitive records before the end of the year.”
“The transcripts and documents will allow the American people to see for themselves the body of evidence we’ve gathered and continue to explore the information that has led us to our conclusions,” Thompson said.
– Josh Meyer and Bart Jansen
Jan. 6 committee members list: Who is on the House panel?
Rep. Adam Kinzinger at the Capitol in April. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
In January 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a Q&A with Illinois’ five freshmen in the U.S. House. Among them was Republican Adam Kinzinger, who had run for Congress after three tours in Iraq. When the quintet were asked, “Whom do you admire from the other side of the aisle?” four of them offered names. Kinzinger did not. Instead, he gave an answer that, in retrospect, feels as if it were written by Sophocles: “Those who are committed to serving their country.”
This week the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol published its final report and referred President Trump for prosecution. It also referred John Eastman, who devised the legal framework for the attempted coup, to the Justice Department. After more than a thousand interviews, a million documents and countless hours, this chapter of the book of Trumpism is finally closed.
For the seven Democrats on the committee, the journey has been long, but at least they can finally go home.
But for the two Republican members, who chose country over party, “home” is now a complicated word.
This is particularly true for Kinzinger, who announced in 2021 that he was not seeking reelection after his district was redrawn — although it is worth mentioning that had he run again, he would have faced the wrath of Donald Trump for voting to impeach him. During the Jan. 6 investigation, Kinzinger sold his house in his home state of Illinois and temporarily moved his family to Texas. He’s now trying to decide where “home” is — both literally and figuratively.
“There are a lot of factors for us to consider,” Kinzinger told me this week, besides housing costs and schools. “I don’t know where we’re going to settle down. We’ll see.”
Yes, we shall.
About all of it.
While the committee’s lengthy final report provides damning evidence against the former president as well as his co-conspirators, its recommendation to the Justice Department is similar to that of the Mueller report, in that evidence is all it can provide. It is up to the Justice Department to decide what to do with it, if anything.
Kinzinger said the committee’s investigation was different from the one conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election, because the attorney general didn’t try to get out in front of the Jan. 6 committee’s messaging and its process was transparent. But the congressman does acknowledge he may have to live with the fact that charges won’t come.
“I always assumed everyone in politics had their version of a red line, that one thing they won’t do,” he said. “My faith in the people who become politicians has become really damaged. I now look more realistically at politics.”
I told him that sounded sad.
He said it was sad.
“It’s been a dark couple of years for me,” he shared. “This has been all-consuming. I went into this job at 32 as a Republican because I believed in the mission, and now I don’t know what the mission is. Ukraine is way more divided politically than we are. But you see what happens when their freedom is threatened. They are willing to die for it. We have what they are fighting for, and we are trying just as hard to get rid of it.”
Strong words from someone who voted for President Trump in 2020 and sided with his agenda more than 90% of the time.
And therein lies the rub with a political figure like Kinzinger. His participation in the Jan. 6 committee is appreciated by the left, but his voting record is pure right.
“Trump basically inherited a Republican agenda and went with it,” Kinzinger said of his own voting record. “I can’t think of any vote that I regret.”
Kinzinger voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act but supported the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Biden signed into law last week, codifying federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriage.
Son of a third-grade teacher and the director of a Christian outreach program for the homeless, Kinzinger has out gay staffers and says he’s disappointed to see his party’s regression on the issue.
“I think to them it’s just about owning the libs,” he said. “If your neighbor is transgender, that’s not your issue. Let them be. At the end of the day, it’s America. Live your life however you want.”
As lovely as that sounds, it’s hard for me to see a congressman who so frequently sided with Trump as a “live and let live” kind of person. Nor would I characterize voting for Trump in 2020 — given everything we then knew him to be — as a “live and let live” vote. I pressed Kinzinger on that one.
“I was a big sissy,” he said. “I thought, [Trump] is not going to win Illinois anyway, so it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t vote for him in 2016 and was heavily criticized for it, so I voted for him in 2020 just to have one less thing people could come at me with.
“I’m telling you this because it’s important to tell people that there’s nobody that’s perfect in resistance or courage. Self-governance is the hardest form of government.”
Kinzinger was not aware just how far Trump’s rot had reached until Jan. 6, 2021. He was not aware how far people were willing to go to serve Trump until the investigation unearthed frightening details, like the never-issued executive order that would have seized voting machines.
Then there was the correspondence of Trump’s White House chief of staff.
“All of Mark Meadows’ text log was shocking, but the biggest personal shock was seeing how much Ginni Thomas was texting him,” he said of Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia, a conservative activist. “Who saw that coming?”
Who saw any of this coming?
Back in 2011, when Kinzinger told the Tribune that he admired “those who are committed to serving their country,” who knew a decade later he would have this historic opportunity to prove it?
Of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Kinzinger said: “He disappointed me because I know him. I was friends with him. I used to think he was a great politician with a moral compass. I now see he’s just a politician without a moral compass.
“The day before impeachment I thought there would be 25 [Republican] yesses.”
“People would later call and say, ‘I just can’t do it’ or ‘I want to run for Senate’ or something like that. It was such a foreign way of thinking. It was a lesson about people for me.”
Where he will apply this hard-earned lesson is a mystery.
If you ever wondered why the forefathers feared a two-party system, look no further than Kinzinger, a decorated war hero who doesn’t have a party — or even a state — to call home.
Clearly the country is indebted to both him and the other Republican on the committee, Rep. Liz Cheney, and yet both were forced out of office by the business of two-party politics. There are many issues he and I disagree on. Where two hopeful fools like us find common ground is our unrelenting belief that America will fulfill her promise.
“I truly believe in this country,” Kinzinger said. “Democracy is not defined by the bad days, but how it recovers.”
Democrat who lost to George Santos calls on him to resign following NYT report
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – December 20, 2022
Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, 2022. (Photo by Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images)
The Democrat who lost to GOP Rep.-elect George Santos in the race to represent New York’s Third Congressional District is calling on Santos to resign after the New York Times published a bombshell investigation suggesting that he fabricated key parts of his résumé during the campaign.
“The reality is Santos flat-out lied to the voters of NY-03,” Robert Zimmerman, who lost to Santos by 8 points in last month’s midterm elections, said in a statement late Monday. “He’s violated the public trust in order to win office and does not deserve to represent Long Island and Queens.
“Santos’ failure to answer any of the questions about these allegations demonstrates why he is unfit for public office and should resign,” Zimmerman added. “It demonstrates why there must be a House Ethics Committee, Federal Elections Commission, and U.S. Attorney investigation immediately.”
Democrat Robert Zimmerman concedes to Republican George Santos in Great Neck, N.Y., on Nov. 8. (William Perlman/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
The Times report published on Monday found that Santos may have misled voters about his college graduation, his criminal and employment history, his family-owned business, his animal rescue charity and his relationship with four victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.
In a statement, Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, said that his client “represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party.”
“After four years in the public eye, and on the verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican-led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches this shotgun blast of attacks,” Murray continued. “It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”
The statement — which ended with a quote erroneously attributed to Winston Churchill — did not directly address the allegations that appeared in the story in the Times.
George Santos, R-N.Y., at a conference in Las Vegas last month. (Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images)
If Santos were to resign, a special election would be called to fill his seat.
The revelations in the Times article also raise questions about why neither the Zimmerman campaign nor the Democratic Party, which lost control of the House of Representatives in the midterms, were unable to uncover the apparent holes in Santos’s biography before the election.
“This story is not a shock,” Zimmerman said, insisting that his campaign “worked to raise many of these issues” uncovered by the Times.
New York state Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs defended the Zimmerman campaign, telling CNN, “It’s unfair to blame the campaign for opposition research work that it did because the resources of a campaign are not as significant as a paper like the New York Times.”
“The important thing is to focus on George Santos,” Jacobs added. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”
