George Santos Congressional Bid Ends Exactly How It Started: In Chaos

George Santos just pulled another fast one on… well, anybody who still believed in George Santos.

The disgraced former lawmaker dropped his renewed bid for Congress on Tuesday, claiming that he didn’t want his run for New York’s 1st Congressional District to be “portrayed as a reprisal” against his apparent Long Island nemesis, Representative Nick LaLota.

“Although Nick and I don’t have the same voting record and I remain critical of his abysmal record, I don’t want to split the ticket and be responsible for handing the house to Dems,” Santos wrote in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It is clear that with the rise of antisemitism in our country we cannot afford to hand the house to Dems as they have a very large issue with antisemitism in their ranks…”

But Santos’s latest FEC filing tells a different story: one in which the ousted congressman raised exactly $0 in the first quarter of his campaign.

Critics quickly picked up on the detail online, including LaLota himself, who snarkily wrote back that Santos was “taking a plea deal.”

“You wish you useless feckless RINO,” Santos barked. “Keep spreading misinformation… Show us that time sheet of yours from when you were at the BOE and Law school at the same time… We are waiting for you to refute but then again you can’t…”

The reputed hustler—who was caught fabricating his entire résumé and lying about his relation to Holocaust survivors, being “Jew-ish,” his connection to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, and the kidnapping of his niece, among many other things—is currently facing 23 counts related to illegally receiving unemployment benefits, aggravated identity theft, and credit card fraud. His next court proceeding is scheduled for August 13, with a trial expected in September.

Still, there’s always a chance that Santos might return.

“It’s only goodbye for now, I’ll be back,” he wrote on Tuesday.