Trump’s tax plan that limited how much homeowners could deduct in state and local property taxes. His First Bill: The representative wants to raise the cap on the so-called SALT deduction - a move that would partly undo President Donald J.House Committees: Representative George Santos said that he would temporarily recuse himself from sitting on congressional committees as he faces multiple investigations over his lies.When Democrats did vet him two years later, they failed to find some of the most egregious fabrications that prompted members of Mr. Santos as a nonviable threat, and conducted no opposition research at all while cruising to victory. In 2020, the party incumbent, Tom Suozzi, dismissed Mr. Santos would be exposed in the heat of a general election campaign.īut Democrats struggled to do so. Santos’s falsehoods were garden variety political embellishments others thought Democrats would do their dirty work for them and Mr. They neglected to get the attention of more powerful leaders or to piece together shards of doubt about him, and allowed him to run unopposed in the 2022 primary. Santos publicly, the Republicans looked the other way. īut in each case, rather than denounce Mr. And the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Mr. Another former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices. Well-connected supporters suspected him of lying and demanded to see his résumé. Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of his own party. Interviews with more than two dozen associates, adversaries and donors, as well as contemporaneous communications and other documents reviewed by The Times, show that Mr. State, local and federal prosecutors are now investigating his activity. He has vowed to serve out a two-year term in Congress. Santos himself has admitted to some fabrications, but insists he was merely embellishing his qualifications. Santos’s congressional office did not respond to a similar request for comment. Santos, Joe Murray, said “it would be inappropriate to respond due to ongoing investigations.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Santos, 34, managed to keep almost all of it from the public until after he was elected, when an investigation by The Times independently unearthed the problematic claims documented by researchers and others that they missed.Īfter The Times sent a detailed list of questions for this story, a lawyer for Mr. It remains unclear who else, if anyone, learned about the background study’s contents at the time, or if the information made its way to party leaders in New York or Washington. The report did not offer conclusive details, but some people briefed on the findings wondered whether the marriage was done for immigration purposes.
Santos, who is openly gay, had been married to a woman. All of it was in the report, which also said that Mr. Multiple evictions and a suspended driver’s license.
Involvement in a firm accused of a Ponzi scheme. Santos was spinning an elaborate web of deceits, and that the candidate himself had been warned about just how vulnerable those lies were to unraveling.įraudulent academic degrees. The episode, which has not been previously reported, is the most explicit evidence to date that a small circle of well-connected Republican campaign professionals had indications far earlier than the public that Mr. Santos disputed key findings and vowed to continue running, members of the campaign team quit, according to three of the four people The New York Times spoke to with knowledge of the study. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race, and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing.
Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier. In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him.Ĭampaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on.
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