Did George Santos once claim that he was an actor on Hannah Montana?
The Santos story only gets weirder the deeper you go.
In November of 2022, Republican George Santos and Democrat Robert Zimmerman competed for
a recently vacated congressional seat in New York.
The final result was tight, but Santos was ultimately declared the winner with 53.8%
of the vote.
Within days, however, The New York Times ran a story suggesting he possibly falsified some
of his professional background.
The paper had kicked off an investigation into the claims made by Santos during his
campaign and found that they didn't have to look far to find ones that they couldn't verify.
For starters, Santos said he had worked at both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but there
were no records for him at either.
Furthermore, his supposed alma mater, Baruch College, had no record of him ever attending.
But it was only just the beginning.
Over the coming weeks and months, more damning revelations about Santos's alleged past would
come to light.
"I'm not a facade, I'm not a persona."
George Santos has made a ton of claims that have been found to be bogus, starting with
his family heritage.
Santos claimed that his family had the surname Zabrovsky, which was supposedly dropped after
World War II.
"A lot of names and paperwork were changed in the name of survival.
So I don't carry the family last name.
That would've been Zabrovsky."
However, when CNN worked with a genealogist to do some digging, they found that wasn't
the case at all.
Furthermore, they found no traces of either Ukrainian or Jewish heritage in his family
tree.
Additionally, the news outlet found no evidence that his mother fled European socialism.
In fact, Santos's mother was born in Brazil, as was his father.
When the paper investigated the claims that he went to an elite private school called
Horace Mann, a school spokesperson said they had no evidence that Santos ever attended.
In addition to Goldman Sachs and Citigroup being unable to confirm he was employed there,
the hospitality tech company MetGlobal was silent on whether or not Santos had worked
there.
A slew of other claims have turned out false, too, including his insistence that four of
his employees were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.
Santos also falsely claimed that he was at the January 6 riots, that his mother died
as a result of 9/11, and that his grandparents survived the Holocaust.
One of the things that George Santos apparently didn't lie about was the time he spent as
an employee of a company called Harbor City Capital.
According to The Washington Post, when he was appointed as the company's regional director
of New York, they described him as "a perfect fit."
For what?
The bottom line is that the year after he was hired, the company was accused of being
a Ponzi scheme.
Santos says he was unaware of anything shady going on.
However, The Post's own investigation suggests that he had been shown evidence of what was
going on behind the curtain and continued to work there.
They also found that many of his future campaign donors and cohorts were met through Harbor
City Capital.
After all, Harbor City Capital dealt with the kind of high-rollers that an up-and-coming
politician would love to meet.
Among those who lost an amount of money that can only be described as "a boat-load" was
Andrew Intrater.
Intrater told The New York Times that Santos had convinced him to invest a mind-blowing
$625,000 into the company.
Part of Santos's sales pitch was that he and his family had $4 million tied up in Harbor
City Capital.
Intrater also shared documents, claims, and text messages from Santos, all of which contained
false information.
However, Intrater only discovered that information was phony when it was too late.
When The New York Times took a look at George Santos' campaign funds, the newspaper found
a whopping $365,000 that was unaccounted for.
Although legal experts said there wasn't necessarily anything illegal going on, it was Bill McGinley,
a former lawyer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who said the accounts
didn't "make any sense."
There was, however, a very widespread trend that became almost immediately apparent.
Campaigns are required to document expenses over $200, and anything under that is off-limits
to the Federal Election Commission.
In Santos' books, dozens of entries were recorded at $199.99.
They covered things like meals, parking, Uber rides, hotel spending, and payments made to
retail stores like Target and Best Buy.
There were even a series of $199.99 travel expenses paid to Amtrak and Delta Airlines,
raising some serious questions about what, exactly, was going on.
Campaign Legal Center Director Saurav Ghosh explained to The New York Times:
"It again falls into the category of reporting that is so ludicrous that it's completely
wrong, and suggests that they're covering up how they actually spent their money."
When The New York Times got a copy of the background check George Santos' own people
ran on him, they found that his marriage was deemed "questionable."
Why?
When Santos was elected, he became the first openly gay, non-incumbent elected to Congress
for the Republicans.
However, even as friends and family said that Santos had always identified as gay, it was
revealed that he was previously married to a woman.
Santos would later explain on City & State that he had a "complicated life."
"Yeah, I did marry young, and I married a young woman at the time, and we pretty much
were in love.
I set myself free, and I set her free."
While Santos said that it took him a while to come to terms with his sexuality, those
who knew him say otherwise.
Pedro Vilarva lived with Santos in 2014, while Santos was married.
However, Vilarva left when he found out that Santos was wanted on counts of check fraud.
It's not entirely surprising, then, that LGBTQ+ activists began calling on the House Ethics
Committee to investigate Santos's marriage and his claims.
In 2017 George Santos flew to Seattle to attend a bail hearing for a man who he claimed was
an old family friend.
Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha was being arraigned after his arrest for ATM fraud, allegedly
spending three days skimming credit and debit card information from ATMs in Seattle.
The audio recording of the trial was first published by Politico.
Fast forward to March of 2023, when Trelha sent a letter to the FBI and the Secret Service.
In it, he wrote:
"I am coming forward today to declare that the person in charge of the crime of credit
card fraud when I was arrested was George Santos/Anthony Devolder.
Santos taught me how to skim card information and how to clone cards."
Along with the declaration, there was also the fact that Trelha had rented a room in
a Florida apartment Santos owned.
Furthermore, there were allegations that Santos had an entire warehouse dedicated to his skimming
operations.
A third roommate also came forward to support the accusations.
George Santos, it turns out, only started going by that name when he started cementing
his political persona.
That was in 2019.
Before that, he was widely known as Anthony Devolder.
The name change apparently came about the same time he formed a Facebook group called
"United for Trump 2020."
Furthermore, when he announced his congressional campaign as "George Santos," he reportedly
had to explain to his followers,
"I'm a victim of circumstances.
My parents were Latino, so it's George Anthony Devolder-Santos."
Meanwhile, he used both names — and variations of those names — on social media.
And yes, it gets even weirder.
Politico uncovered a now-deleted Wikipedia bio for a person named Anthony Devolder last
updated in 2011, and it seems to contain what they describe as boasts about Santos's supposed
show business career.
In it, the congressman is described as appearing on the TV show "Hannah Montana" and the movie
"The Invasion."
Few things will win hearts faster than the idea that someone is helping animals in need.
From 2013 to 2018, George Santos claimed to be doing precisely that.
In fact, he claimed that his charity, Friends of Pets United, had helped more than 2,500
animals.
However, Friends of Pets United never seems to have been officially registered as a charity
and has no social media or web presence.
Several people who worked with the charity have come forward with questions.
One such person was Regina Spadavecchia, who worked for a Bronx-based animal rescue.
Spadavecchia worked with Santos for a fundraising event, but instead of the thousands she was
expecting, she got a check for $400.
Spadavecchia told The New York Times,
"If you're doing fundraising in my name, and you're claiming you can make a couple of thousand,
and you're sending me $400, then something's off."
Then, there's the heartbreaking story of retired Navy vet Richard Osthoff.
His service dog, Sapphire, developed a tumor that needed immediate and expensive surgery,
so he was directed to Santos's charity.
He set up a GoFundMe for Sapphire, but Osthoff says he never saw the money.
Sadly, there's no happily-ever-after.
Sapphire never got her surgery and died within months.
The case has since gained the attention of the FBI.
It wasn't just American authorities who raised questions about George Santos.
When he became one of the country's most high-profile congressmen amid a lot of questions, the Brazilian
government noticed.
Needless to say, they had some questions for him, too.
Their interest was pertaining to a 2008 case where Santos was accused of stealing a checkbook
belonging to a person in the care of his mother.
Santos then allegedly used those checks to purchase a variety of things, including clothes
and shoes.
A statement from Brazilian prosecutors said they were going to reopen the case, since
Santos's whereabouts were now known.
Although Santos denied involvement or wrongdoing, he ultimately made a deal with Brazilian authorities
to settle the matter.
He agreed to pay around $5,000, with about $2,800 of it going directly to the victim.
"I made a mistake.
And I think humans are flawed and we all make mistakes."
When federal charges were filed against George Santos in the spring of 2023, they included
counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making false statements
to the House of Representatives.
Although his camp was initially quiet, it was soon reported that Santos had pleaded
not guilty to all 13 charges.
Meanwhile, there was the question of what would happen to Santos' seat in Congress.
The Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, told CNN that he would be reviewing
the evidence in its entirety before making a decision on whether or not to remove the
freshman congressman.
Other colleagues, meanwhile, were less kind.
A Republican congressman from New York, Mike Lawler, called for Santos's resignation.
Meanwhile, another Republican representative from New York, Nicole Malliotakis, told CNN,
"I would love to see someone new run, because […] the sooner Santos leaves, the sooner
we can get someone in there that is not a liar."
Clearly, the question everyone who's been following the George Santos story wants to
know is this: Is any of it true?
Well, according to New York Magazine's deep-dive into the story, Santos's true statements can
be boiled down to a single thing.
The magazine wrote:
"As he has claimed, Santos is a 34-year-old Republican born in Queens who will represent
New York's wealthiest congressional district.
Other than that, pretty much everything is under scrutiny."
Santos is known for giving countless reporters and interviews the run-around.
So that's why it's particularly shocking that during an appearance on Piers Morgan's show
in February of 2023, he admitted it straight up.
"I've been a terrible liar."
He also dropped a little bit of a truth bomb.
When an incredulous Morgan asked if he honestly thought no one was going to find out his falsehoods.
Santos responded,
"Well, I'll humor you this.
I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then."