Front Burner - Have Congressman George Santos’ lies caught up with him?

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Shortly after George Santos was elected to Congress in 2022, the New York Times found that he had fabricated almost every aspect of his life story – personally and professionally.  On Wednesday, this once rising star was hit with 13 charges including fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds. Santos, echoing the words of former President Donald Trump, calls it a "witch hunt." Despite calls for him to resign, he vows to continue to serve in Congress and pledges he will run again in 2024.  Today, Washington Post national reporter Azi Paybarah joins us to explain Santos' lies, the criminal charges he now faces, and how the American political star-making machine can sometimes attract fraudsters. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Alex Panetta. I've covered politics a long time, and I will swear on the following. Many politicians are straight shooters. Many embellish, you know, like they exaggerate a little bit.

Some, unfortunately, lie. Some lie a lot. And then there's George Santos, a Republican congressman from New York. A man in his own category. Such a prolific teller of tall tales, he's practically elevated it to an art form. Like a Pablo Picasso of political fabulism. If I disappointed anyone by resume embellishment. I'm sorry. Among the claims embellished his graduation from Baruch College. Santos tells the New York Post, I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning.

The records, I believe, show that even though Santos's campaign site has said that his mother died years after 9-11, but was in the South Tower on that day. She was apparently in Brazil until 2003. You said there in that letter that you are, quote, a proud American Jew. How do you how do you explain that? My heritage is Jewish. I've always identified as Jewish. I was raised a practicing Catholic. I think I've gone through this. In the campaign, I'd say, guys, I'm Jew-ish. Remember, I was raised a practicing Catholic. I think I've gone through this. In the campaign, I'd say, guys, I'm Jew-ish. Remember, I was raised Catholic. His education, his work resume, his family history, you name it, they were constructed around colossal lies.

Some of his justifications were so wild that Saturday Night Live mocked him, in part, just using his own words. No, you even lied about being Jewish. No, I said I was Jew-ish, which is honestly iconic. And now, allegedly, it's all caught up with him. Santos has been accused of criminal lies, of financial crimes. Yesterday, he was arrested on federal charges. He's accused of 13 criminal counts, including campaign finance fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds, and falsifying federal forms.

Santos is now out on a half-million-dollar bond. He's pleaded not guilty. Now I'm going to have to go and fight to defend myself. The reality is, it's a witch hunt. So to go through the many lies and now the criminal accusations against George Santos, I'm joined by Ozzy Pabra. He's a Washington Post national reporter covering campaigns and breaking political news. Hi, Ozzy.

How are you? Doing well, thank you. So, before we count the heads of this Hydra-headed scandal, I just want to establish who George Santos seemed to be before this controversy. So, coming out of his win in the New York congressional race last year, who do people think he was? People thought he was George Santos. Son of immigrants, bootstrap, startedstrap, started from very humble beginnings, became wildly successful in the private sector, and just wanted to get back.

Good morning. Shabbat shalom to everybody. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. My name is George Santos. I'm a first-generation born American like many in our great nation. My parents came to this country in search of the American dream. Today, I live that American dream. Only in this country, only in this country can the little boy born in a basement apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City become a United States congressman at 34. Well, it turns out that almost every part of that is not true. His bootstrap story, well, was more brute than strap, perhaps, because his finances are not entirely clear. He turns out to not have worked for the places that he said he worked. And it turns out the name he gave people to identify himself when he was running for Congress, different than when he was growing up.

He never went by George, never went by Santos. I knew him as, you know, Anthony DeVolder from Jackson Heights, Queens. And I can't even underscore this point enough. When he was asked at one point, what name did you use in high school? Because there's a question about what high school he attended what about high school where'd you go where did i go to high school i went to two different high schools we'll save that for the next so you'll show me your ged he says he's not sure he says he's not sure the name he used in high school because he was quote a minor so when you talk about like how out of the ordinary some of the lies that George Santos has told, not just the big financial ones, but the small ones that just leave you wondering, why?

And why. So it's December of last year, before he's even sworn in. Reports start surfacing that question basically every aspect of who Santos said he was. And today I want to lay out some of the major lies one by one with you. And so let's start off with what did Santos say specifically about his education that we found out wasn't true? He said he graduated from Baruch College and New York University, that he had an undergraduate degree and a master's degree, that he knew about business and finance. Today I stand very proud with the bachelor's and master's degree, that he knew about business and finance. Today, I stand very proud with the bachelor's and master's degree, all New York educated, Beirut College and NYU for my MBA. And he said he briefly attended a very prestigious prep school that is very well known in New York

for producing like world leaders. He said he briefly attended that before getting a GED. Not true. Not true at all. He did not go to the universities. He did not get a college degree. The university records do not reflect anyone with that name having attended NYU. While a spokesperson for Baruch College could not find anyone with his name or birthday ever attending the school. And no shade on people who do not have college degrees. But when you say you do and you don't, that's the problem. He admitted to that, but he is still maintaining he attended the prep school, even though they have no record of him under any name. There's a claim that you said you attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York.

Is that true? Did you attend that school? I attended it for a brief period of time and then went back to the public school system and then dropped out of the public school system and attained a GED. I was always very truthful of not completing high school due to financial difficulties. I mean, a spokesman for the school told CNN there's no record of you ever attending. Why would that be? I challenge to see what name they're looking under if you look at my entire... Okay, now a bit about his family history. What did we learn about Santos' claim that his grandparents had fled the Holocaust? That one has changed over time. So Santos has said that his grandparents started in Belgium and then fled during World War II because of the Holocaust. They ended up settling in Brazil that his parents later immigrated to the United States so that his family background

is of Jewish heritage mixed with Brazilian culture. Immigration records have clouded that claim. Now, he says he's taking a DNA test and going to release those results. This is the one that I'll battle to my grave to the point that I've already ordered I'll battle to my grave to the point that I've already ordered those DNA test kits. And I've done four of them so far, and I'm just waiting for their returns. And I'm very curious to share those with everybody, because I grew up with the story was my grandfather was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, migrated to Belgium, met my grandmother in 1940 or 1941. They fled to Brazil where they falsified a lot of their documents to claim they were born there. But when people, especially people in New York, when you say you have family members who fled because of the Holocaust, there's usually like a pretty clear understanding of where and when. And when there's documentary evidence to

contrast that it becomes very very problematic for people to look past that here yeah no kidding especially in new york city i mean it's just incredible so santos also said his mother had died in one of the world trade center towers on 9 11 what actually happened to his mom she died many years after september 11th and to give him some credit, there are people who were exposed to toxic chemicals and the and the debris from 9-11 that died afterwards. It leads to a lot of health complications. It's horrific. But what he told people and what he led them to believe was that she was in the tower, that she was there when it was attacked my mom was a 9-11 survivor she was in the south tower um and she made it out she got caught up in the ash cloud

my mom fought cancer till her death and people assumed the logical consequence of that is that she died there well he even told some people who i who i've interviewed that that he remembers her being covered in ashes my god right well it turns out according to immigration records she may not have even been in the country let alone new york on that date yeah and to put a further point on it he also raised money from a church in queens to help pay for her funeral costs and he even had a gofundme page like an online fundraising to help pay for those funeral costs and one one person I interviewed said just days after he raised that money and had that funeral for her, that he invited this person on a ski trip to the Poconos. Now, I don't know about

the finances, but the timing of it adds to the kind of curiosity and skepticism about him. Well, he has been connected to two criminal cases in the past. Can you walk us through the case in Brazil? What was he charged with? He was charged with purchasing clothing items, using a check that he stole from a person that his mother was caring for as like a home health attendant and apparently uh he was charged with it but then he left the country well now those charges have been revived and he is working on a deal with the prosecutors there where he essentially admits to that exact accusation yeah and then there's a case in

the u.s involving atm fraud i think how is he connected to that atm caseation. And then there's a case in the U.S. involving ATM fraud, I think. How is he connected to that ATM case? There was a colleague of his who I believe was arrested and was being charged with skimming ATM cards. And this person filed an affidavit, legal document, you're supposed to be telling the truth, where he says he learned how to do this from George Santos and that George Santos was really the person behind this operation. ATM fraud. Okay. All right. Now moving on to his work resume,

what financial institutions did he say he worked at? I believe it was Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. And the thing is, they said, no, we have no record of him working here. His campaign bio mentioned stints at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs have any records of his employment. He later defended that claim by saying, well, I worked with those companies. I was employed somewhere else, but I worked with them. We can debate my resume and how I worked with firms such as Goldman and Citigroup. Is it debatable or is it just false? No, it's very debatable. is it just false? Is it debatable or is it just false?

No, it's not false at all. It's debatable. You know, it just shows you that he is holding on to a veneer of legitimacy amidst this very public refutation of the facts. He also said a company he worked for had lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016. I happened to, at the time, have people that worked for me in the club. My company at the time, we lost four employees that were at Pulse nightclub. So this is a deja vu.

How did he back up that claim? He said that he was told that they were going to work at the company. He never named who they are. He never named the company and here's what's amazing he has been caught with so many other falsehoods so many other accusations that people like basically forget to ask him about that one no kidding and there's i mean they're less serious ones too i mean he claimed to be a producer for a broadway musical on spider-man turn off the dark the one where performers got broken bones and there was the music from bono

and the edge went what was the story there? In any room that he walks into, whatever needs to be said to impress that person, he will essentially say. That's sort of been his track record. He was in a private meeting with the Republican leader of Nassau County, which is at the heart of the congressional district he was running in. And sort of unprompted, he says that he was a volleyball player in college, a championship volleyball player in college, a championship volleyball player who worked so hard that he ended up getting knee problems from it.

What does that have to do with getting an endorsement from a local political club? I don't know, but he says it to impress the person right in front of him. Amazing. And one of my favorites about this guy was his charity workup. And he said he founded a charity called Friends of Pets United. Is that even really a thing? So apparently people who knew him before he got into politics said there was some work that he did with animals trying to help them, which is a laudable thing. But claiming that you have like a charity,

charities in the United States have to report their incomes and documentation in order to not get taxed in the way that a private company would do when they're seeking to make a profit. But what happened to the tax records to the social media? I wasn't in charge of any of that. It was never set up as a charity even. Well, I wouldn't know that. I was the operator. I was the guy putting cats out of the streets into my car, taking them to get. So when he presented himself to the public and said, I did this work and I have this charity, there's an idea that you managed legal paperwork to establish a recognizable entity. He didn't do that. He should be ashamed of himself, but he doesn't have shame. He does. He's a psychopath. He should be ashamed of himself, but he doesn't have shame. He's a psychopath. Richard Ossoff claims Santos helped to raise thousands of dollars for a cancer treatment for his therapy dog and then never came through with the cash.

I was so livid that I realized that this guy is now a serving congressman. He doesn't deserve that job. The dog, Sapphire, never received the treatment and later died. Okay, so this anthology of falsehoods, I mean, it just goes on and on. There's some weird ones. He apparently told a roommate he was a model. He claimed he used to attend the Met Gala. He said he survived an assassination attempt but gave no details. Are there any others that stick out in your mind?

Oh, he said in a radio interview that a Democratic Congress member said in a room of like 50 people that the democrat was going to vote for his first republican ever it was going to be george santos he said this on a radio interview i spoke to that former congressman not true and and even in 2021 he lost his first election but he went down to new member orientation by claiming that he was that he won on election night and that the ballots were coming in and he was inevitably going to be the winner. He went down there and he claimed the day before the U.S. Capitol was attacked, he claimed that he was a victim of election fraud.

If you're from New York, you know what they did to me. They did to me what they did to Donald J. Trump. They stole my election. Now, it starts as like a farce, but when you see what happened to the U.S. Capitol and then you claim that you too have been wronged, it has a much-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Well, I'm happy you brought that up because, yeah, we've been talking about some of the

zanier stuff, but there are serious issues at play. But I also want to talk about another serious issue, and that is where he actually got his money from. There are several accusations. One is actually working as a Ponzi scheme. You give people a return on the money they gave you simply by taking money that other people gave you. Where it's just hand over fist, you're just trading money around looking like it's an investment return. New York Congressman George Santos is facing new questions about his work for a firm that allegedly perpetrated a $17 million Ponzi scheme.

Were you aware that it was a Ponzi scheme, sir? No, I have no idea. You should ask the CEO of the company, not me. I have no idea. That company is Harbor City Capital. Santos worked as the firm's New York regional director before it was alleged to be a classic Ponzi scheme and shut down by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He claims that he does work in the field of capital introduction.

And he described in a recent interview, if you have a company and you want investors, you hire him. He then finds people that have a lot of money. And he says, hey, I know you're interested in boats, yachts, investing in newsrooms. Here's a place you can put your money to do what you want to do. And for that introductory work, he takes a flat fee. And then the two parties themselves work out whatever deal they want to work out. That's how George Santos describes it. There may be some paperwork and some taxes that need to be filed and that kind of thing. And based on his track record, it's not clear that he's done any of those properly. Okay. Now here's where you start

to ask broader questions about the political system. Like how is it possible that everyone missed this? I mean, what does it say about the way parties vet candidates? What does it say about the way journalists report on politicians? Let me start with the party vetting process. What happened there with the Republican party or the Democratic Party, for that matter? How did they not raise this during a campaign? The local Republican Party has acknowledged they need to do a better job vetting candidates. They can't just take people at face value. The Democratic Party has had a few different answers. One is that they knew about it, but people just weren't paying attention or they knew parts of it. The National Democratic Party released awful research that pointed at some of these things.

Here's where it's very important to remember the context. Think back to 2020, which feels like 100 years ago. Donald Trump was still president. Joe Biden was challenging. Biden wins. Trump refuses to concede. In that context, people saw this huge clash, this test of the democratic system in America. Not a lot of focus was happening on an individual house race. Not a lot of focus was on an individual house race in a swing-ist district in a reliably blue state like New York, let alone this particular candidate's resume. Remember, it wasn't the policies that were raising attention. It wasn't his claims of where he went to school. It was like the resume. It's so far down on what people were thinking at the time,

especially after the attack on January 6th. And lastly, Santos sort of admitted in an interview with Piers Morgan, when Piers asked him, like, why did you do this? Santos essentially said, I'll humor you this. I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then. And I guess. Right. Well, that's honest. Stupid. So you thought actually that they're not going to find out? No, I didn't think so. But that still doesn't answer the question of why like you could you could drive a car coated in marmalade if you want to it just doesn't but you don't have to it's ridiculous like it's such a patently absurd way to live your life in this case why did he lie did he explain or does anyone have a theory about why he actually made this stuff up

i would like to defend people who drive their cars with Marmalade, but I can't. I just came up with that off the top of my head. Sorry. It's great. Craziest thing I could think of. So part of it, he wants the people in front of him to like him. Human impulse. Now, he's also described himself as a person who started very humbly, not having a lot of money growing up. By some accounts from people I spoke to,

he actually is like a smart, charismatic guy who does these things that are inexplicable. Here's some speculation, but like if you are a smart, motivated young person who wants something better than what you have direct access to, you go out and you find other ways to get there. What's the simple explanation for why you met? Why would you lie about something like that? Expectation on on society the pressure

couldn't afford it uh decided i wanted to run for office although i had built a very credible business career and i just didn't have that part of my biography that i could not give anything did you not think that you'd be cool some people very famously in the music industry we have how many people who say look i dropped out of college I went through this other route and I ended up in the music industry because of, in part because I had to, you know, in politics, you get stories about people who may have dropped in and out of school, went into the military and moved forward in a more recognizably constructive way. What Santos did is sort of leapfrogged many of those steps that people take. And in part, is sort of leapfrogged many of those steps that people take.

And in part, it was by positioning himself as like this conservative partisan. And he went to conservative spaces. He went to conservative outlets. He wasn't talking regularly to mainstream media outlets. And in those spaces where people are perhaps more prone to think of the ideology rather than the facts, he said what people wanted to hear. Republicans, after the Santos stories started to unfold, said, hey, look, Republicans aren't the

only one that have this problem. You know, there was a Democrat from Connecticut who said he served in Vietnam when that's not actually true. He apologized and he sort of went forward. The difference between other people's lies and Santos's is the scale and the fact that he has steadily repeated those lies in the face of obvious facts, big or small, and that he is trying to explain away his falsehoods by claiming it's a political attack, which is an echo of Donald Trump. And it's exposing some of the worst and weakest elements of the political and reporting in the United States right now. Yeah, well, I referred to him as like a Picasso, but you could like to use the New York analogies like the 1927 Yankees of falsification.

It's just like a one after another. Right. But look, I guess it's kind of caught up with him. If these allegations are accurate, we can't vouch for whether these specific allegations are true, you know, innocent until proven guilty. But what was he charged with? It has ranged from fraudulent political contribution solicitation scheme, basically taking political contributions under false pretenses, misusing campaign finances. Basically, people gave him money to run a campaign and used it for other purposes, which is a remarkable charge since you're allowed to use campaign funds for a lot of things. You have a dinner with one person, you can call it a meeting, right? There's a fraudulent application for unemployment benefits. I mean, this charge comes out as Republicans are trying to increase the penalty for a crime like that. Oh, he's also being accused of providing false statements to the House of Representatives on his financial disclosure reports. You know, you can lie to reporters all day long, but when you start filing

government documents, there's like a little checkbox, you know, you can lie to reporters all day long, but when you start filing government documents, there's like a little checkbox, you know, like I swear that everything on this document is accurate. And he apparently blew right past that. So it's counts like that of lying about where his money came from and what he spent it on and trying to cover it. And yeah, and allegedly using it for himself. Let's talk about political implications.

So, you know, to be clear, Santos is voraciously defending himself. He pleaded not guilty. He says he wants to keep his seat for now. Well, look, the way I look at it, I'll be a chairman of a committee in a couple of years. If you just look at the standards of Congress, look at the Senate. But, you know, we're at a moment where Republicans need every vote they can get. You know, there's this debt ceiling vote that could be coming up with a potential financial crisis if this debt ceiling crisis isn't resolved. Are Republicans going to turf him and lose this vote or will they let him sit there while this case plays out?

Because the House is so narrowly divided between Democrats and Republicans and Santos's seat is one of the few that gives Republicans control. and Santos' seat is one of the few that gives Republicans control, they have no incentive to remove him before a conviction in court. He's a duly elected member of Congress right now, and they're just going to let that happen. Santos would never put on committee, so he won't serve on committee. He'll go through his time of trial and we'll find out how the outcome is. So whether or not the United States defaults for the first time ever on its debt may rely on the vote of one of the most well-documented liars and fraudsters who has been accused of mismanaging his own money and stealing other people's money.

It's like nobody could have written this story with more irony. To quote a legendary film, Only in America. Great, great film. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Anytime, anytime. I'm Alex Panetta. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. Talk to you again tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.