Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has not only been caught lying about massive amounts of his personal past, he also used an entirely different name just four years ago.
At a 2019 Q&A session for a “Walk Away LGBT” event in New York City, Santos introduced himself as Anthony Devolder. The event was held by supporters of former President Donald Trump (R) who wanted to convince voters to “walk away” from the Democratic Party and become Republicans.
At the event Santos asked a conservative transgender woman how she thinks other conservatives can educate other trans people not to believe “media narratives,” presumably about Republicans being anti-transgender (which they are).
Santos’s full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos. The same year that he appeared at the “Walk Away LGBT” event, Santos was also married to a woman named Uadla Santos Vieira Santos, who he married in 2012. He married her under the name George A. Devolder Santos.
While it’s not unheard of for people to use different parts of their full names, Santos’s use of a different name raises eyebrows considering that he has lied about so much of his past history.
In December, Santos admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and owning 13 properties.
It now seems that he also lied about being Jewish, his grandparents fleeing Nazi persecution in Ukraine (they were both born in Brazil), his mother becoming ‘the first female executive at a major financial institution’” (she worked as a cook and house cleaner), attending the Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, having four previous employees who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, and his mother having died in connection to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
Santos’s campaign paid a staffer nearly $100,000 to pretend to be McCarthy’s chief of staff and get money from donors. His campaign is also under investigation for possible campaign finance violations. Records show that he may have donated $700,000 to his own campaign without revealing the source, something that is forbidden by federal law.
Santos has said that he will not resign even though calls for his resignation have come from the Republican Party chairs of both New York and Nassau County (where Santos’s district lies), the New York Conservative Party, and four of Santos’s Republican House colleagues. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said he won’t ask for Santos to resign either.
Santos is currently under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly (R), Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz (D) and the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York.