George Santos (R-NY) and his imaginative (but dishonest) résumé

[AndyinPA]

Keep digging that hole.

[RTH10260]

"Baron Munchausen pulls himself by the hair out of the swamp"

MunchhausenSwamp.jpg (66.97 KiB) Viewed 5930 times

[p0rtia]

New Wikipedia update:

in September 2014 Santos signed a one-year lease on a single-family house in Whitestone[92], around the time he asked a friend for the money to move in with his boyfriend that resulted in the judgement against Santos that he had not paid off as of 2022.[24] He was still living there 14 months later, owing a month and a half's rent. His landlady filed for eviction, and he agreed to leave by December 24, 2015, and pay her $2,250 in back rent. In mid-January 2016, he told Queens Housing Court, in a statement signed under oath, that he was robbed of the money in Queensboro Plaza on his way to pay the back rent to his landlady's lawyer and that police were unable to take a report at the time, telling him to return later. There is no record he ever did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santos

[pipistrelle]

My dog ate my homework. And my back rent.

[RTH10260]

To be a successful member of Congress you must go large to start with.

Stolen from the Political Cartoons thread:

2392457.jpg

[RTH10260]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/statu ... 3486416898

Ritchie Torres@RitchieTorres

Elise Stefanik knew George Santos was a fraud yet she enthusiastically endorsed him for Congress.

The House Republican leadership is complicit in the fraud Santos perpetrated against the public.

RT if you agree Elisa Stefanik can't remain silent and MUST disavow George Santos.

2:54 AM · Jan 1, 2023

CNN interview in tweet:

► Show Spoiler

[raison de arizona]

Buzz in the RWNJ world I’ve heard is that sure Santos lied, but it isn’t anything that Elizabeth Warren and AOC aren’t guilty of, so Anyway, he’s moving in.

[AndyinPA]

I hope he doesn't get too comfortable.

[pipistrelle]

Gold-fringed flag! Sure he's not an admiral?

[Sam the Centipede]

Gold-fringed flag! Sure he's not an admiral?

I'm sure he soon will have been.

[Danraft]

Silver Lining?
Santos is teaching us that the truisms we were taught as children were powerful: you can be anyone you want to be;
don’t let your past define who you will be in the future;
and, if you can dream it you can be it.

[DrConspiracy]

The topic invites "whataboutism" from Republicans, usually something about Hunter Biden's laptop. It led me to compare Trump and Biden.

Joe Biden lied about his college class standing and the extent of a scholarship. He did that at a campaign event. It was 1987. He also said he had "3 degrees," when in fact he had one double major. Also a class paper he submitted copied big sections from a source cited in the paper only once. Biden failed the course and had to take it over (passing with high marks). Biden acknowledged his lies. He said: "I've done some dumb things, and I'll do dumb things again." The ultimate result was that Biden withdrew from the race for president and Biden released copies of his college transcripts, one of only a few presidential candidates to do so.

Donald Trump was interviewed by a New York Times reporter in 1973. We don't know for sure where the reporter got the bit about Trump graduating at the top of his class at Wharton. That lie came from somewhere and the most likely source was Trump himself. Trump did make public statements about how exclusive the school is and how smart he is. Transcripts? Trump's attorney sent a letter to the University of Pennsylvania threatening legal action of his grades were ever released. In 1976 Trump drove a Times reporter around New York showing off buildings as his, ones actually owned by his father.

On the Tax front, we have over a decade of tax returns from Joe Biden, 23 of them so far. In fact every president (I think except Gerald Ford) has released their tax returns. Trump went to the Supreme Court TWICE to keep his tax returns out of the hands of prosecutors and Congress. Now the Trump Organization has been convicted of criminal tax fraud.

[Ben-Prime]

The topic invites "whataboutism" from Republicans, usually something about Hunter Biden's laptop. It led me to compare Trump and Biden.

Amusingly, I had the geek version of this argument in a Star Trek context some time back, and it came down to this:

The Federation cheats. But when it does so, it does so when there are no other options and there is moral angst about it. 'Enemy' civilizations like the Romulans and Cardassians also cheat. But they do so as a first resort, a way of life, with no hand-wringing, and they then try to say the Federation is just like them. But there is a qualitative as well as quantitative moral difference between doing something as a life-saving exigency and feeling bad about it afterwards, and doing it because it's a Tuesday and calling it virtue because the other guy surely would have done it to you first. And saying that you're doing it because everything is an existential threat to your way of life cheapens the meaning of 'existential', 'threat', 'way', and 'life' as words.

I wrote the above sentiment -- I could find the exact quote, because I have it a log somewhere, but what's up there is close in tone if not in exact phrasing -- back in 2008-ish. I wish I had really known at that time how prophetic it would truly be to post-Bushian politics. It was on point before that, but not to this degree.

[realist]

Or perhaps Santos will just state he is speaker in his bio. LOL

Funny on one level but considering who they are, it would not surprise me. There is Trump, after all.

"Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
My 2023 prediction: Once it is clear that McCarthy won't have the votes, House Republicans will unite to make George Santos the Speaker"

[tek]

Might as well. They're gonna be voting on vacating the speakership every week.

Whomever is currently in the seat will be spending so much time trying to keep his job that he won't be able to DO his job.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

If Nancy Pelosi had sought the speakership in the same desperate way McCarthy has, I'm sure she would have been called some mysoginistic terms.

[AndyinPA]

Can't really speak to over 200 years of Congressional history, but I'm not sure anyone has ever wanted it as badly as he does. And that's part of the problem. He wants the title; he's not interested in anything else.

[raison de arizona]

Brazilian Authorities Will Revive Fraud Case Against George Santos
A 2008 court case had been suspended because Brazilian law enforcement officials could not find Mr. Santos.

The matter, which stemmed from an incident in 2008 regarding a stolen checkbook, had been suspended for the better part of a decade because the police were unable to locate him.

Nathaly Ducoulombier, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro’s prosecutors office, said that with Mr. Santos’s “whereabouts identified,” a formal request will be made to the U.S. Justice Department to notify him of the charges, a necessary step after which the case will proceed with or without him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/nyre ... razil.html

[somerset]

Brazilian Authorities Will Revive Fraud Case Against George Santos
A 2008 court case had been suspended because Brazilian law enforcement officials could not find Mr. Santos.

The matter, which stemmed from an incident in 2008 regarding a stolen checkbook, had been suspended for the better part of a decade because the police were unable to locate him.

Nathaly Ducoulombier, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro’s prosecutors office, said that with Mr. Santos’s “whereabouts identified,” a formal request will be made to the U.S. Justice Department to notify him of the charges, a necessary step after which the case will proceed with or without him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/nyre ... razil.html

The US and Brazil do have a mutual extradition treaty in place

https://www.congress.gov/treaty-documen ... ongress/42

[Suranis]

Can someone serve in congress while in Jail in Brazil?

[p0rtia]

Georgie boy was mighty lucky his faux-life blew up over the holiday week when people were on holiday and various offices were closed.

But hey, baby, we're in 2023 now!

[AndyinPA]

[RTH10260]

As His Life of Fantasy Comes Into Focus, George Santos Goes to Washington

Michael Gold and Grace Ashford
Mon, January 2, 2023 at 1:40 PM GMT+1

In two years, George Santos went from being a little-known also-ran to a beacon of the Republican Party’s unexpected resurgence in a deep-blue state.

But a swirling cloud of suspicion surrounds Santos, just as he is poised to take the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to swear to serve Constitution and country.

Santos has admitted that he fabricated key parts of his educational and professional history, after a New York Times investigation uncovered discrepancies in his résumé and questions about his financial dealings. Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether he committed crimes involving his finances or misleading statements. Now, new reporting shows that his falsehoods began years before he entered politics.

Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

Santos would join Congress facing significant pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Santos has been hard to reach. He has not answered telephone calls, text messages or emails asking him to respond to the Times’ reporting. Santos’ lawyer responded last week to an email asking about his campaign’s unusual spending, saying it was “ludicrous” to suggest the funds had been spent irresponsibly. Santos did not answer an email sent to him and his lawyer on Friday asking for comments about new reporting on the discrepancies in his past.

Members of his own party have called for more detailed explanations of his behavior, and Nick LaLota, also a Republican representative-elect from Long Island, New York, has called for a House ethics investigation.

Rep. James R. Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News on Thursday that he was “pretty confident” that the House Ethics Committee would open an investigation into Santos. He added, “What Santos has done is a disgrace. He’s lied to the voters.”




https://www.yahoo.com/news/life-fantasy ... 58513.html

(original: NYT)

[Dr. Ken]

[Greatgrey]

Santos is gonna be the new Madison Cawthorn