The Talented Mr. Santos

On December 1st, 2023. George Anthony Devolder Santos was expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming only the 6th person in U.S. history to do so. He was voted out by a margin of 311 to 114, including 105 Republicans. The 105 Republican votes are the most amazing part. It's not like he is their first candidate to have a long list of fraud, including federal charges. 

Normally I would give a little bio about the person I'm doing an article on. In the case of Santos, it's impossible to know which facts are true. So here is what we know. A man claiming to be George Santos was born July 22nd, 1988, in Queens, New York. He was very close with his mother and aunt but had a strained relationship with his father possibly due to him being gay. Santos has always been an activist for the rights of the LGBT community, which is his only redeeming quality. According to his biographer, Mark Chiusano, Santos had a reputation in his family for deceit and theft while growing up. 

In 2008, Santos moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where his mother was living at the time. Although Santos and his mother were poor, Santos often bragged about his father's wealth as a high-value executive in New York City. This would be a regular pattern throughout Santos's life up until the current day. Despite being an LGBTQ activist, Santos became a supporter of Jain Bolsonaro, (known for his Open Homophobia) who was a Federal Deputy at the time. Bolsonaro eventually became President of Brazil and an ally of Donald Trump.  

Santos would return to New York City in 2011 after being arrested for check fraud in Brazil. Santos would keep his father's last name, Devolder, and continue to work low-paying sales jobs until 2020. His low pay would not stop him from bragging about his non-existent wealth. He also began committing multiple acts of fraud which would later catch up to him.  

in 2020, Santos ran for the United States House of Representatives in New York's Third District against Democrat incumbent, Tom Suozzi. Although he lost by a 55.9 to 43.4 margin, Santos had done better Than expected. This impressed some members of the Republican Party. After losing, George Santos graciously accepted defeat and congratulated his Democrat opponent. Just kidding. He followed his hero Donald Trump's lead and refused to accept the election results.  

After losing, Santos began to solicit money for additional staff and a recount. Despite Suozzi’s Victory being Certified. Santos continued to spout conspiracy theories. At one point, Santos refused to leave a Congressional orientation session for new members. on January 5th, 2021. Santos spoke at a “Stop the Steal rally”, claiming he was cheated as well as Trump. Santos would later deny being at the January 6th rally and called it “a sad and dark day.” He also admitted that Biden won the election. 

In November of 2021, Suzuki announced he would not seek reelection, which improved Santos's chances of winning a 2022 seat. In September of 2022, the North Shore leader, a Long Island newspaper began to look into Santos’s past. An October editorial exposed Santos as a fraud. This was first media outlet to look into Santos. They would not be the last. 

In November of 2022, Santos defeated his Democrat opponent Robert Zimmerman by an 8-point margin. His election made him the first LGBT non-incumbent Republican elected to federal office. Unfortunately for Santos, his House of Cards was about to fall. In the Google-Information Age, political candidates can't keep their entire past a secret. Santos would find out the hard way. 

When the Republican Party and multiple media outlets began to investigate Santos, they found massive amounts of financial fraud. It was also proven that almost every accomplishment George Santos bragged about never happened. This included his education level and his qualifications. The many investigations from both parties would prove that even by Republican standards, George Santos was grossly unfit for office. He was also a major liability for the Republican Party. 

By January 2023, four congressmen including Anthony De Esposito, Nick Langworthy, Nick LaLota, and Brandon Williams called for Santos to resign. They would be joined by almost every New York Congress member from both parties. The Republican Party announced that if Santos ran in 2024, he would do it without their support. 

In Santos's brief time in Congress, he aligned himself with the #Walk Away Foundation. This is a group that tries to get members of the LGBTQ community to vote Republican. He also called police brutality a “made-up concept”.  He said that abortion was “barbaric” and compared it to slavery. After the Hamas attack on Israel, Santos said “I think every inch of the United States at this point should be mapped out again and completely checked. I don't care if we go into a police state for a couple of months.” The rest of his campaign was spent being Trump's bootlicker, insisting he was innocent. 

George Santos is currently facing a long list of charges that include: 

9 counts of wire fraud, Three counts of money laundering, Two counts of theft of public funds, Two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, One count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, One count of making false statements to the FEC, Two counts of falsifying a record or document, Two counts of aggravated identity theft, One count of unlawful monetary transactions over $10,000 and a Partridge in a pear tree. 

 Many people wonder why Santos thought he could get away with this amount of fraud. Most likely, he thought, it wouldn't matter. Santos saw his hero, Donald Trump, other Republicans, and some Democrats getting away with crimes every single day. These people would get reelected despite their crooked paths, and Santos probably figured he could do the same. 

It reminds me of the 1980s anti-drug commercial where the father finds his son's drug stash and asks him where he learned it. The son says to his father “I learned it from watching you.” George Santos learned from other politicians that it was possible to get away with almost anything. 

I don't believe for a second that 105 Republicans voted Santos out due to their conscience. They did it because Santos was a liability that they could not cover up. An advantage of running for office on the Republican ticket is that you can get away with almost anything as long as you’re anti-abortion, Pro-gun, And pro-Trump. As long as almost half the population thinks those three things are the most important issues, we will continue to see candidates like George Santos. They will just get better at covering their tracks.