In our politics
lead another
day, another accusation of George Santos
being a mendacious con man.
Today, the embattled New York Republican
congressman is denying claims
that he used a fake animal charity
to con two military veterans
allegedly stealing $3,000.
Santos helped
raise for life
saving treatment
for one of the veterans
beloved and dying service dogs, Sapphire.
CNN's Ivan McCann
joins us with details
on this awful story.
I mean,
he literally was taking advantage
of a homeless veteran
trying to get money to help his dog.
Well,
that's what
it certainly sounds like, Jake.
The Navy veteran was connected
with Santos, who at the time,
as our viewers know by now,
he goes by different
names, is going by different names.
He is going by the name
Anthony Duvall Elder,
which also Armstrong
Sapphire had a tumor.
Santos posted on Facebook
using the name George of Alder.
So another name,
they're soliciting funds through
go fund me for the vet in his dong.
Now, the Facebook post
Santos wrote in part said,
Will you help this baby
and her daddy stay together
for a few more years?
Does he not deserve to have her?
Let's all come together
to help this family of two stay healthy.
But one also off.
He tried to retrieve the money.
He just kept
getting the runaround from Santos
and Santos
never transferred the $3,000
to the veteran.
Now, Santos told the news
outlet Semaphore
that this story, first reported
by Patch was fake
and that he had no clue who this is.
And CNN reached out to Santos as well.
We will tell you
when we hear back from him.
But it sounds very devastating,
Jake, even. What do police have to say?
What does
go fund me have to say
and I hesitate to ask
because I think I know the answer.
Whatever happened to Sapphire?
So Sapphire
unfortunately died about six months
after the last contact with Santos,
also said
he didn't get very far with the police
when he alerted them.
Asaf was forced to panhandle
for the money
to pay for her euthanization.
He described this
as really devastating and dehumanizing.
Go Fund Me tells us
they did remove the fundraiser
from its platform
after receiving a report about it.
In a statement, they said,
when we received
a report of an issue
with this fundraiser in late 2016,
our trust and safety team
sought proof of the delivery of funds
from the organizer.
The organizer failed to respond
which led to the fundraiser being removed
and the email associated
with that account prohibited
from further use on our platform.
This is not an isolated incident
involving Santos.
This appears
to be
part of a long pattern of deception.
Jake, even McCann, thanks so much.
Let's discuss Casey.
If you wrote a villain in a movie
who cheated a homeless veterans
dying dog, the studio would say this.
That's that's too broad.
Nobody would do that.
They'd send notes back.
And yet,
I mean, according
to this homeless veteran,
that and there's evidence
that's what happened with
Congressman Santos.
I mean, I got to be honest.
I don't even know what to say.
Like, I just don't like you
and I both do this for a living.
We talk and cover.
We report on talk about cover politics.
This story is quite
literally beyond the pale.
I mean, it is horrible.
This poor dog, this poor man,
anyone who's ever been in a
in a situation where they've loved
an animal
knows what
it's like to have
that kind of a connection.
And in this case,
the circumstances
just really underscore
I mean, this is all that this man had.
And Jorge Santos
took advantage of him, reportedly.
So there was I'm thinking about
congressional pseudonyms
I'm thinking there's Pierre de facto,
which was when Mitt Romney's
burner account.
There's Carlos Danger,
Anthony Weiner's pseudonym for Jake.
Remember, but well,
I'm just saying, like it comes to mind.
And now we have because
Anthony Devolver, I guess, was his.
But Nancy Pelosi forced Weiner to resign.
You know what I mean?
She's like, no more This is embarrassing.
At what point does this
and I know the margins stand,
but at what point do you think
Kevin McCarthy's like,
this is such a distraction
from what we're trying to achieve?
Well, look,
first of all, I hope
he maybe we can have a new go.
Many people now know who this veteran is.
Let's maybe we can get some money
by buy him a new dog
and see if he's a wounded veteran.
Let's get him some money.
Anyway, if you can handle for anything,
he should be taken care.
Absolutely.
And Santos has a right to defend himself
and he's under investigation.
There's there's ethics, people
looking at some of the things he's done.
There's some foreign legal entanglements
he's involved in.
I think the speaker's position is
let's let that play out.
We don't need to jump ahead of that.
He was elected
by the people of his district,
and they're
he has constituents to represent.
And so until we know anything else,
look, the bigger picture to me is
this is a freshman congressman
on the Small Business Committee
This is not the end of the world.
This is not someone
who's in charge of nuclear secrets.
So let's let this play out
a little bit and find out
exactly what has happened.
And then I think either
Congress may take a role
that the Ethics Committee
or the voters are going to take care of.
It played out in fairness.
I mean, we have learned a lot about
my community
and the Ethics Committee investigate
Well, I think
you get into a dangerous place
when you start saying
if someone's lied about their background,
we can just throw them out of Congress.
That that's a really dangerous precedent
to set.
There's a lot of Senator
and members of Congress
right now
that we would throw out of Congress
and President United States
claim to be going to my ears,
you know,
liaison for the Six Days War
and that he was appointed
to the Naval Academy
and that he went to the
Tree of Life Synagogue
when he didn't go there.
And they just on
and he was a coal miner
and he was a truck driver.
And so, you know, he's the United States,
and he has inflated his resume.
He stole Neil Kinnock's entire life story
at one point in his life.
So like deep cut back to
1988.
Yes. What do you think.
No.
I mean in some ways
politically it's a problem
for Republicans because he's an avatar,
albeit an extreme avatar of the chaos
this really beset the party. Right.
And it's all connected.
The reason
that that Kevin McCarthy is in
this conundrum
is because he has a narrow majority,
a narrower than expected majority
and it's
because they can't appeal
to independent voters a broader
swath of the electorate.
And then you hold up
if you're a Democrat,
you hold up saying so
that's not going to get
you any more votes. What do you think?
I mean, it's
not just that
it's a headache
now for Kevin
McCarthy is that it's going to continue
to be a headache for him
because these stories have been
so colorful and audacious
that they're just sort of catnip,
I think, both for reporters
and obviously for the investigators
who are
who are looking at him at both
the state, local
and federal level right now.
So it's just such a distraction.
And I think one other thing about this
story is that, again,
because some of George Santos's cons
have been
so frankly funny,
the volleyball story is hilarious.
I think that you can explain
what the volleyball story is
because people see he lied
and said that he was the star
of the volleyball team at Baruch College,
a college that he did not attend.
He certainly was not
on the volleyball team for.
That's pretty funny.
But in this case, you know, he hurt
real people.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the one thing, too,
I will say,
and as much as we have sort of talked
about the
how ridiculous
the dog story is and how awful,
I mean, he stole money from this man.
Right. Right.
I mean, that fundamentally is a crime.
You know,
I mean, obviously,
the details of it
have to be sorted through
by the proper authorities.
But that is the place where I mean,
yes, people inflate their resumes.
They say, oh, I did this thing
or I went to this place.
That's not the same thing
as somehow
finding hundreds
of thousands of dollars
to fund your campaign
and have no explanation
for where it came.
Yeah, right.
That stuff is at the end of the day,
if George Santos is going
to get thrown out of Congress, it's
going to be because of things like that.