This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated January 13, 2023
Congressman-elect George Santos’s seemingly endless list of lies keeps growing. Or maybe it was Anthony Devolder or Anthony Zabrovsky – two of the known aliases Santos has used – who made these false claims.
Anthony Zabrovsky was the name he used to fundraise for a pet rescue group he claimed was a tax-exempt charity, which IRS records proved was untrue. The organizer of the group stated that he never shared the proceeds of his fundraising.
Zabrovsky is also what Santos claimed was the Ukrainian Jewish last name of his maternal grandparents who survived the Holocaust, though records show they lived in Brazil and had no connection to Ukraine or Jewish roots. Yet Santos said he is “a proud American Jew,” something he now admits is not true. He had also stated that he is, but there is no evidence of that either.
This was not embellishing one’s resume. His deceit, of matters both big and small, seems pathological. But in the post-Trump Republican Party, this should not be a surprise. Neither should the silence from most GOP leaders. Santos is just like Trump. In fact, most of his lies are ones that Trump has also pedaled.
Santos claimed his mother was “the first female executive at a major financial institution” and worked in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks, something unsupported by any facts and his own statements that she was a domestic worker. In 2021 he tweeted that “9/11 claimed my mother’s life,” but then four months later tweeted about his mother’s passing in 2016. He also claimed that four of his employees were victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, though none of the victims ever worked for any companies Santos has been involved with.
Trump has also tried to capitalize on tragedy, making statements about 9/11 that were provably false. Whether it was his claim that from his Trump Tower window more than four miles away he witnessed people jumping from the towers or that he personally helped at Ground Zero or that he lost hundreds of friends in the attack, Trump’s political supporters have never questioned his brazen lies about his hometown’s darkest day.
Santos had said he graduated from Baruch College and NYU. Both schools confirmed he did not. Trump’s boast that he graduated top of his class were proven to be a fabrication when the University of Pennsylvania’s student paper showed that he did not even graduate with honors.
Santos’s claims that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been shown to have been lies and his statements about his own consulting firm are riddled with inexplicable mysteries. The recent release of six years of Trump’s tax returns made revealed that the only year he paid an amount in taxes you would expect from a billionaire was because he saw a windfall from his late father, and in most of the other years, he paid either nothing or less than a thousand dollars in taxes because he had huge losses. So, either he is an absolutely terrible businessman or he is pretending he is a failure to avoid paying taxes, either of which is a lie.
Similar to Santos’s shady pet charity fundraising, Trump’s tax returns show that he gave nothing to charity, contrary to what he has stated, including that all of his presidential checks were donated. Trump and his family have been banned from operating any charities in New York and had to pay millions in fines for illegally misusing charitable funds.
Santos’s financial disclosures are troubling, as he does not list any of his businesses clients, cannot explain how he his firm starting pulling in millions in less than two years, and the 13 properties he has publicly stated he owns have been omitted from filings, though records show there are no 13 such properties. To boot, his campaign finances conveniently show dozens of $199.99 expenses, conveniently just under the $200 threshold that requires receipts.
Trump’s campaign finances have been notoriously questionable and his curious ties to Russian oligarchs are another parallel to Santos, who received tens of thousands in campaign contributions from the money manager of a Putin-linked Russian oligarch. Santos has also been vocal in criticizing Ukraine.
If George Santos were a Democrat, his party would have already condemned him and forced him to resign. Republicans seem unwilling to even look into his lies, let alone call for him to step down.
