Newly-elected New York congressman George Santos introduced himself to people as Anthony Devolder, it has emerged, with video from 2019 showing him using his alternative identity.
Santos, 34, is proving an early headache for Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a stream of revelations flow forth about the lies he told on the campaign trail and the inventions on his resume.
In 2019, at a Walk Away LGBT event, Santos stands up during the question and answer session and says: ‘My name is Anthony Devolder, and I am a New York City resident. I have recently founded a group called United for Trump.’
He then asks the panel how trans people can escape the ‘media narrative’ of conservatives not supporting LGBTQ rights.
At a subsequent event, during his unsuccessful 2020 campaign to unseat Democrat incumbent Tom Suozzi, the host at the Queens Village Republicans Club expressed surprise that he was referred to as George Santos.
‘Folks, another important speaker, another congressional nominee,’ the host said.
‘George Santos. George, who we know is a friend – he’s known as Anthony Devolder to me. So I don’t know where George Santos came into the thing, but that’s what it says here.’
Later on, the host calls him ‘George, Anthony, whoever you are.’
Santos, whose parents immigrated from Brazil, explains to the audience: ‘I’m a victim of circumstance. My parents were Latino. So it’s George Anthony Devolder Santos. Commonly known as Anthony.’
George Santos is seen in 2019 at a LGBTQ event introducing himself as ‘Anthony Devolder’
Freshman GOP Rep. George Santos of New York continues to face growing calls to resign after admitting to fabricating much of his professional and personal background. He is seen on Wednesday inside the Capitol
Santos’ alter-ego was exposed as the New York Times revealed how many of his lies had been exposed pre-election.
But GOP members and their Democrat rivals were unwilling or unable to stop the then-aspiring lawmaker from campaigning, with many believing he’d fail to beat his Democrat incumbent rival – only to be proven wrong.
Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College and New York University – which was not true.
He said he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but both companies denied having any record of his employment there.
Santos had been evicted multiple times, had a suspended driving license, and was married to a woman despite being openly gay and living with a man.
The host of the Queens Republican Village event in 2020 said he had no idea why Santos was not using his usual name of Anthony Devolder
Santos, whose parents were born in Brazil, said that his full name was George Anthony Devolder Santos, and he usually went by Anthony
Santos is facing increasing pressure to resign, but McCarthy, who endorsed Santos and assisted his campaign, is standing by him.
McCarthy told reporters on Thursday that Santos has ‘a long way to go to earn trust’ and that concerns could be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.
Dan Conston heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC. He told associates he was worried Santos’s lies would be exposed
But he emphasized that Santos is a part of the House GOP conference, and said he was not seeking to remove him.
‘The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference,’ he said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Yet on Friday, The New York Times reported that one of McCarthy’s top aides had even expressed concern before the election.
Dan Conston, who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC, told lawmakers, donors and other associates that he was worried information would come out exposing Santos as a fraud, two sources told the paper.
It is unclear whether McCarthy himself was informed.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that he would not demand George Santos’ resignation, claiming that ‘voters’ have a say in who represents them
Kristin Bianco, a Republican donor, said that Santos told her Donald Trump endorsed him – which he had not.
‘We’re just so tired of being duped,’ Bianco texted Mr. Santos in early 2022, after he refused her request to produce his resume.
Santos replied, according to the Times, that he found the request ‘a bit invasive as it’s something very personal.’
In December 2021, a research firm which was commissioned by Republicans to conduct a ‘vulnerability report’ – identifying areas which the Democrats might use to attack him – found a long list of inconsistencies.
The report found some worrying issues – involvement with a company, Harbor City, accused of a Ponzi scheme; eviction records; business records; and a suspended Florida driving license, which led to questions about whether he was a legal New York resident and as rich as he claimed to be.
It did not discover the false academic record, suspicious marriage or claims to have worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
Yet the report was so troubling almost his entire team quit, The New York Times reported.
A new team was hired, and new strategists took over.
They vowed to campaign on Santos’s policies, rather than his track record.
Calls for Santos to step down are mounting.
On Thursday, two New York Republicans – Representatives Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler – told CNN that Santos was unfit for the job.
Rep. George Santos of New York in the House chamber with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia
‘There’s no way I believe he can fully fulfill his responsibilities,’ Molinaro said.
Lawler said, ‘I think it’s clear, like I said, he has lost the confidence of people in his own community, so I think he needs to seriously consider whether or not he can actually do his job effectively and right now it’s pretty clear he can’t.’
Lawler later said in a statement, ‘I believe he is unable to fulfill his duties and should resign.’
Santos is refusing to address the questions, and on Thursday only said: ‘I was elected by the people.’
Leaders of the Nassau County Republican Party on Wednesday called for Santos to resign.
‘Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for his immediate resignation,’ chairman Joseph G. Cairo said at a news conference on Long Island, adding that the congressman’s campaign was made up ‘of deceit, lies and fabrication.’
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, has also been outspoken in demanding Santos’ resignation.
‘America is a very compassionate and forgiving country, and there is a road back for George Santos. It starts with his resignation,’ said Blakeman.
‘It starts with him trying to rebuild his life not on lies but on substance.
‘But so long as he sits in Congress and stains that institution, I don’t see him being able to rehabilitate himself, and I don’t think he’s going to get a second chance.’
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The lies George Santos has told and the stories he has spun – so far: From fabricating family links to the Holocaust, 9/11 killing his mother, working on Wall Street, recovering from a brain tumor, being of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, and starting a charity
By Katelyn Caralle
Santos says he is of Ukrainian Jewish descent
In one interview, Santos said his family name on his mother’s side was the historically Jewish name ‘Zabrovsky.’
‘My grandfather was born in Kyiv and left in the late 20s and migrated to Belgium where he met my grandmother and then started a family,’ Santos told Fox Digital in February. ‘We don’t carry the Ukrainian last name, for a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refuges or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names or paperwork were changed in the name of survival.’
George Santos was revealed to be a pathological liar after he won the 2022 midterm elections to represent New York’s 3rd congressional district. His lies and fabricated stories span almost every topic from his education background to his family’s heritage
Reports indicate that there have been no successful efforts to find any Jewish or Ukrainian heritage in his family tree according to the Forward.
Santos said in a separate interview in 2020 that he was raised by ‘a white Caucasian mother, an immigrant from Belgium. But Santos’ mother, Fatima Devolder, was born in Brazil, according to her obituary in 2016.
Additionally, newly resurfaced tweets show that Santos, who is Brazilian-American, claimed in July 2020 on Twitter that he was biracial, meaning ‘Caucasian and black.’
Santos’ claims his mother died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks
Santos wrote in a July 2021 tweet that he was ‘blocking’ an account with the handle ‘9/11 was a victimless crime’ because his mother was a victim of the terrorist attack.
He wrote, ‘9/11 claimed my mother’s life… so I’m blocking so I don’t ever have to read this again,’ after the user responded to a tweet from Santos regarding immigration.
An obituary for Santos’ mother, however, states that she died in December 2016, which is more than 15 years after the attack took place.
He also confirmed the real date in a December 2021 tweet where he said: ‘December 23rd this year marks 5 years I lost my best friend and mentor. Mom you will live forever in my heart.’
Santos’ campaign website said his mother ‘survived the tragic events of September 11th’ in the South Tower office of the World Trade Center and died ‘a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.’
A New York Times report had described Santos’ mother as a ‘domestic worker’ or ‘housekeeper.’
His campaign website described his mother as a top executive.
‘George’s work ethic comes from his mother, who came from nothing, but worked her way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution,’ the website states.
The congressman-elect said in a 2021 tweet that, ‘9/11 claimed my mother’s life,’ however Fatima Devolder died in 2016 of cancer and it’s unclear if it was 9/11-related. It’s also unclear if she was an executive or a housekeeper
Santos said he attended a prestigious New York prep school
The Representative-elect said that he attended Horace Mann School – an elite private school in the Brox where tuition costs $59,800 per year.
‘He began Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, however, did not graduate from Horace Mann due to financial difficulties for his family,’ read a 2019 biography during his first campaign for Congress, which Santos lost.
‘He obtained a GED during his senior year,’ it added.
The school said, according to CNN, that he never attended.
‘We’ve searched the records and there is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended Horace Mann,’ spokesperson for Horace Mann Prep School Ed Adler said.
CNN reported late Wednesday that the New York Republican never attended Horace Mann School (pictured), an elite private school in the Bronx
Former call center worker Santos’ resume includes time at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup
Santos said that he worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup but now says he used a ‘poor choice of words’ when describing his relationship with the two firms.
The incoming congressman worked at a DISH Satellite call center from October 2011 to July 2012.
He also worked for LinkBridge, where, in an attempt to justify his lie, Santos said that he did business with Goldman and Citi and made ‘capital introductions’ between clients and investors.
Santos said he ‘never worked directly’ for either firm.
George Santos (right) poses with his then fiancé at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve
Santos’ claim his family-owned real estate portfolio of 10+ properties
Santos posted on Twitter in February 2021 that ‘my family and I’ had not received any rent on 13 properties allegedly owned by him.
A review property taxes owed or paid for in New York state shows no evidence of ownership.
He claimed to have a brain tumor
On March 30, 2020, at the start of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, an interview with Santos was published on YouTube titled ‘George Santos: A Corona Story.’ The video has since been set to private
In the video, according to Newsweek, Santos tells two men, one wearing a ‘Guns and Freedom’ hat and the other seated by a ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag, that he had ‘battled a brain tumor.’
Discussing his health Santos said: ‘I have an immunodeficiency and I also have acute chronic bronchitis. I also battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago and I had radiation done which really lowers your immunity in general.’
Claimed that he lost four employees in Pulse nightclub massacre
During an interview with WNYC, Santos alleged that four ‘people that work for me’ were killed during the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which left 49 dead.
No connection has yet to be establish between any of the victims and Santos.
Said he was the founder of a charitable foundation
Santos said he founded a tax-exempt animal rights group, Friends of Pets United, which rescued more than 2,500 cats and dogs.
But no records relating to the group’s charitable status could be found by the IRS, nor could either the New York or New Jersey attorney general’s offices uncover documentation confirming Friends of Pets United had been registered as a charity.
Public records, however, show that Santos was previously married to a woman named Uadla Vieira, a native of Brazil, until 2019
In 2016, he claimed $2,250 was stolen in a mugging on his way to pay rent – but cops have no record of the incident
Santos claimed that in 2016 he was mugged on his way to pay his apartment rent in Queens.
In a sworn statement battling eviction, he said $2,250 was stolen. According to Gothamist, he wrote: ‘I have been mugged at approx 1:15 p.m. on 01/15/16 on Queens Boro Plaza, as I was on my way to pay the lawyer.
‘I have gone to the checks cash location located on 31st and 23rd Ave in Astoria to request a stop payment.
‘I am unable to provide a police report today as I was requested to go back Tuesday to pick it up.’
The NYPD, however, have no record of the incident, the outlet reported.
Santos eventually moved out of the apartment as a result of the case and paid the rest of what he owed in rent.
