Letitia James Puts New GOP Congressman Under Urgent Investigation

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Republican George Santos, who was elected to Congress to represent a portion of Long Island in New York in this year’s midterm elections, is facing serious questions about the basic reality of many claims he and his campaign made about his background, and now, the team of New York state Attorney General Letitia James is looking into Santos’s case.

Bios for Santos have claimed he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, besides attending school at New York University and Baruch College. There is no record at any of these four institutions matching Santos’s descriptions of time he spent there. He even said he ran an animal rescue charity, but there are no records with the IRS of a barely present organization he led ever holding the tax-exempt status he claimed, and the beneficiary of an event in which Santos was involved in that field in 2017 told The New York Times they never got the money. Santos has claimed he was making a $750,000 annual salary from a financial services company involved with investments called the Devolder Organization, but there’s what is apparently no public indication the company exists. There’s no website, LinkedIn page, or otherwise discoverable asset the Times could find, and he didn’t identify any clients on his financial disclosure forms filed in recent months with the House.

That’s despite requirements under the rules of financial disclosure forms for individual sources responsible for more than $5,000 in income to be ID’ed when putting together these filings. Violations of those requirements could constitute a federal criminal offense if the underlying actions are found to be knowing and willful.

As for the New York attorney general, available details indicate her look at the newly elected and soon-to-be seated Congressman isn’t a formal criminal or civil probe, although it could progress there. “The matter has not advanced to an investigation but is rather characterized as a review of the claims raised in news reports and by Santos’ political opponents,” according to ABC reporting. “The attorney general has a particular interest in charities and charitable giving and about political fundraising.” Reports said Santos loaned around three-quarters of a million dollars to his own Congressional campaign during this election cycle, so where’d that money come from?

Some of Santos’s potentially false or deceptive claims are bizarre. He stated four employees of his died in the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a claim for which there’s no evidence. He has alleged grandparents of his fled from Europe to Brazil as Nazis took over Germany, but there are no records supporting that notion. He has even characterized himself as a gay man who has been out — meaning public, at least with some around him, with his sexual orientation — for a long time, but he was married to a woman in a relationship ending in divorce weeks before running for Congress the first time back in 2020. While there are obviously a lot of different ways that portion of the story could go, it raises only further questions — and with Santos using his claimed orientation in campaigning, he has made it relevant.