Rep. George Santos of the GOP from New York turned down requests to resign from his campaign team after a routine background check found he had made up some of his histories.
The late 2021 “vulnerability investigation” on Santos, which was commissioned by his staff, revealed no proof of the candidate’s alleged degrees from Baruch College and New York University, according to The New York Times.
The company also discovered documentation of his evictions, a revoked Florida driver’s license, his association with a business suspected of running a Ponzi scheme, and the fact that Santos had been married to a woman while professing to be homosexual.
Some Santos staff members demanded that he withdraw from the congressional election because of the results, suggesting that he may otherwise suffer humiliation.
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The majority of Santos’ campaign crew resigned due to his decision to remain in the race despite his dismissal of the background check findings. By the spring of last year, he had engaged fresh campaign workers.
Before he ran against Democrat Robert Zimmerman, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which tries to elect Democrats to the House, generated 87 pages of opposition research on Santos that uncovered some of the discoveries the research company revealed.
In addition to his links to the alleged Ponzi scheme, the DCCC discovered evidence of his evictions, a pet charity affiliated with him that was not registered with the IRS, and inconsistencies in his financial disclosure forms.
However, despite having access to the Santos DCCC report, Zimmerman’s campaign chose not to use campaign money to do further background checks on Santos. Instead, Santos was attacked by Zimmerman’s campaign for his stances on abortion and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Santos ultimately defeated Zimmerman in the November election, and a month later, The New York Times published a report exposing Santos’ falsehoods.
In an interview with the New York Post, he then confessed to lying about his employment experience and educational background. He also said that he had lied about having 13 properties and that he currently claims to be a happily married gay guy. He had been married to a woman before his first congressional race in 2020.
Congressmen from both the Republican and Democratic parties have demanded Santos’ resignation due to his fabrications. The freshman senator has also been called to resign by New York State Republicans.
The local, state, and federal governments are all looking into how he raised money for his House campaign, and the House Ethics Committee is also likely to look into him.
The investigation into Santos by Brazilian authorities into possible check fraud in connection with a 2008 incident involving a stolen checkbook was also revived.
Santos said he would resign this week if the 142,000 people who voted for him asked him to do so.
