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George Anthony Devolder Santos (born July 22, 1988) is an American politician and businessman from the state of New York. A member of the Republican Party, Santos was elected to represent New York's 3rd congressional district in 2022, a district covering part of northern Long Island and northeast Queens. Both Santos and his 2022 opponent, Robert Zimmerman, are openly gay, a first for a U.S. congressional election. He is the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican and the first Brazilian-American elected to Congress. Santos is a pro-Trump right-wing extremist who has appeared with MTG speaking to neo-Nazi political parties like Freedom Party of Austria and Alternative for Germany. Santos attended Trump's Jan 6th rally and claims to have bailed out some Jan 6th arrestees although that has not been verified.
After Santos was elected to Congress, and before he took office, reporting by The New York Times and later other news outlets revealed significant issues with Santos' biographical claims.
- Santos claims to have been living as openly gay and married to a man for the last decade
- but according to public records, Santos was a married to a woman until they divorced in 2019.
- Santos moved out of his Queens address in August but never changed his address and was still falsely registered at that address at the time of the election. New York mailed Santos' certificate of electoral victory to this old address, where the landlord was throwing out his mail.
- Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010, earning a bachelor's degree in finance and economics. Santos also claimed to have received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from New York University, but NYU has no record of his attendance.
- After, obtaining a high school equivalency at the age of 21, Santos moved with his nurse mother to Rio de Janiero until he was caught stealing from his mother's patients and fled back to America before his court date.
- There's no indication Santos actually attended any higher education.
- Santos claimed to be of Jewish descent, his family fleeing Ukraine ahead of the Nazis.
- In fact, his family immigrated from Belgium in 1863. No evidence of Jewish or Ukrainian ancestry can be found.
- Santos claimed that his mother was the first female executive at a major financial institute in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Santos claimed his mother barely survived 9/11.
- Actually, his mother was a nurse with no known connection to the 9/11 attacks beyond living in Queens at the time.
- Santos claimed to have made his money as a Wall St. financier and investor at CitiGroup, Goldmans Sachs, MetGlobal, and LinkBridge.
- None of these companies ever employed Santos in any capacity.
- Santos clearly has access to million of dollar, he spent much of it on his campaign, but there's now no indication of how Santos actually made his millions.
- Not honestly, apparently.
- Santos ran a charity from 2013 to 2018, claiming to raise money for rescue animals.
- No application for tax-exempt status was ever filed.
- All indications now are that Santos simply kept the money.
- According to his financial disclosures, Santos was sole owner and managing member of the Devolder Organization, which he said was a family-owned company that managed $80 million in assets. On financial disclosure forms, Santos called Devolder a "capital introduction consulting" firm. Although based in New York, the company was registered in Florida (Santos claimed to be a Fla resident), where it was dissolved in 2022 for failing to file annual reports. During his 2022 campaign for Congress, Santos lent his campaign more than $700,000, and reported receiving a salary of $750,000 and dividends of between $1 million and $5 million from Devolder, even though he also listed the company's estimated value as in the same range. Despite the claims about the company's size, Santos's financial disclosure forms did not list any clients using the company's services.
- Santos claimed that one of his companies lost four employees in the Pulse Nightclub Shooting.
- But this claim, too, appears to be entirely untrue.
- Santos has made no public appearance since the NYTimes broke this story three days ago and his whereabouts are unknown.
- It is not known whether Brazil will ask for extradition.
- It is not known whether police will investigate the source of Santos' wealth.
- The Republican Party majority is slim and McCarthy is counting on Santos' support for his election to Speaker. No Republicans are calling for Santos to step down although some are calling for further fact-finding.
- It is not known how many other Republican candidates won seats without any apparent vetting or background check.
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Politics