Year in review • The George Santos saga
Former Congressman George Santos In Nov. 2022, two years after he lost his first campaign for Congress, gay Republican George Santos was the surprise winner in the race for the congressional seat representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District, making history by coming out on top in the first general election congressional contest between two openly LGBTQ candidates.
But even before he was declared the winner, questions about his background and his finances had begun to surface. The month before, September 2022, Long Island newspaper The North Shore Leader had begun to raise questions about Santos’ finances, after his personal financial disclosure report claimed assets totaling $11 million, significantly more than his net worth as declared in his 2020 congressional campaign.
The same month he won election, Santos’ lies started building up. First he told the Republican Jewish Coalition that his election meant there would be three Jewish Republicans in Congress (he is actually Catholic), then he told WNYC that he “lost four employees” in the 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando (none of the Pulse victims ever worked for or with him).
Then came the New York Times’ bombshell investigative report exposing even more of his lies: officials with both Baruch College and New York University say Santos never attended either school, much less graduated from them, and officials with both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs told the Times they had no records of Santos ever working for either company.
