George Santos expulsion calls grow after ethics report reveals OnlyFans spending: Latest

New York Republican Rep George Santos is facing a new motion to expel him from the House after the chamber’s Ethics Committee issued a damning report about the actions of the freshman congressman.

The report found that the 35-year-old had violated ethics guidelines, the rules of the House and criminal laws, and that he had been aware that he was crossing the line.

House Ethics panel chairman GOP Rep Michael Guest of Mississippi filed the motion on Friday. The chamber can take up the motion on 28 November upon lawmakers’ return from Thanksgiving recess.

He claimed that he’s the victim of “dirty” politics after announcing that he won’t seek re-election in 2024.

Mr Santos wrote on X that he wouldn’t be seeking “a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time”.

He later complained that he has suffered a “year from hell” and claimed that he’s a victim of the “poison” from the ethics committee.

Lamenting that he was just trying to “serve my country” by running for Congress, he claimed that his “rights” had been taken from him.

Key Points

• Santos was ‘ultimate beneficiary and knowing participant’ of campaign’s fraudulent reporting

• Santos behind ‘constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff'

• Santos slammed by fellow New York Republicans

• Santos could face post-Thanksgiving expulsion vote

• Santos staffers allegedly plotted to spy on media

‘They gathered 170,000 documents in this investigation'

20:30 , Gustaf Kilander

17 January 2023: Santos receives committee assignments

20:00 , John Bowden

After days of reporters pressing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy about Mr Santos and whether he will be allowed to remain in Congress for two years, GOP leadership reveals that the extent of their punishment for Mr Santos’s countless lies will be assignments to smaller House committees with less desirable areas of expertise.

Mr Santos walks away from committee assignments with roles on two panels: the House Committee on Small Business, and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

10 January 2023: Rep Ritchie Torres and colleague formally request ethics probe

19:30 , John Bowden

Not keen to let his new feud against George Santos go, Mr Torres and his New York ally Dan Goldman file a request for the House Ethics Committee to probe Mr Santos’s improper filing of financial disclosure forms.

11 January 2023: The GOP dam breaks

This marked the day that George Santos finally said goodbye to any immunity he had from attacks originating within his own party.

The Nassau County Republican Party held a press conference formally denouncing him as a member of Congress; it was attended by one of Mr Santos’s fellow GOP members, Anthony D’Esposito, who became the first sitting Republican to call for his ouster.

2 January 2023: Brazilian authorities come back to haunt George Santos

19:00 , John Bowden

Happy New Year! While most Americans ring in the new year with champagne and late-night celebrations, George Santos wakes up the day after New Year’s Day to learn that he is now the only sitting member of Congress to face a serious international criminal investigation.

The New York Times, citing a spokesperson for prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro, reports that authorities intend to prosecute him for allegedly stealing a checkbook from an acquaintance of his mother and using it to make several purchases. The congressman has denied this.

28 December 2022: Nassau County’s district attorney launches a probe

18:30 , John Bowden

Nassau County’s district attorney delivered a sharp statement just before the new year, insisting that “no one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

Again, it wasn’t clear what specific crime Mr Santos would supposedly be investigated for allegedly committing. But the district attorney of Nassau County is a Republican, and therefore her statement served as the first crack to appear in a dam protecting Mr Santos from the wrath of his own party.

“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning. The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress,” Anne T Donnelly said.

George Santos mocked by Fox News host for claiming he didn’t know what OnlyFans was

18:00 , Lizzie Romain

A resurfaced clip shows George Santos denying any knowledge of the content platform OnlyFans, despite an ethics report detailing he spent campaign finance money on the platform in the months before.

In the interview from 30 March 2023, Fox News anchor Lisa Montgomery asked Mr Santos if he had an account. “I just discovered what OnlyFans was about three weeks ago,” he said. “I was oblivious.”

“You just can’t tell the truth”, Montgomery muttered.

The damning report, released on 16 November, found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations” during his 2022 election campaign, including a personal subscription to the influencer platform.

The Republican New York Representative has announced he won’t seek re-election in 2024.

VIDEO: Rep. George Santos won’t seek reelection

17:30 , The Independent

Pressure mounting on Republicans to vote to expel

17:00 , Rachel Sharp

The findings laid out in the ethics report mark just the latest scandal to encircle Mr Santos after he was exposed for lying about a whole host of things on his resume, claiming that his mother died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and being accused of stealing funds raised for a disabled veteran’s dying service dog.

These growing scandals have led many within the GOP to deem him unfit for office.

Earlier this month, the embattled New York congressman survived an expulsion vote in the House of Representatives, brought to the floor by fellow Republican lawmaker Anthony D’Esposito. The resolution needed a two-thirds majority to succeed but fell well short.

Now, pressure is mounting on the Republican party to vote to expel him in light of the report revelations.

Others who voted to save Mr Santos in the last expulsion vote told Axios that this time round they will support his removal.

“He’s gone,” one House Republican said.

Santos refuses to stand down in face of expulsion and 23 criminal charges

16:30 , Rachel Sharp

In October, Mr Santos was indicted on 23 federal charges in New York including campaign fraud, credit card theft and lying to the Federal Election Commission. Since then, two of his former staffers have pleaded guilty in the case.

Following the report’s release on Thursday, Mr Santos announced that he will not seek reelection – but continues to refuse to stand down from his role in Congress.

Writing on X, Mr Santos said he wouldn’t be seeking “a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time” as he lashed out at the ethics committee claiming it does not have “a single ounce of ETHICS”.

Santos splashed donor cash on a honeymoon to Las Vegas

16:00 , Rachel Sharp

The committee found evidence that the debt-ridden Mr Santos used the money donors had paid to his campaign to fund his “luxury spending habits” including Botox treatments, OnlyFans payments and shopping trips to Sephora.

Mr Santos allegedly transferred the campaign funds into his own account, then spent $4,127.80 at Hermes and several smaller purchases at OnlyFans.

Over $2,000 of campaign money was spent at casino resorts on the Atlantic City strip while more than $1,500 was spent on Botox, the report finds.

Mr Santos also splashed donor cash on a honeymoon to Las Vegas and a $3,000 stay at an Airbnb in the Hamptons.

“Representative Santos was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits. He occasionally deposited large amounts of cash that he has never accounted for, moved money between his various bank accounts in a highly suspicious manner, and made over $240,000 cash withdrawals for unknown purposes,” the report read.

Santos to hold 30 November press conference on Capitol steps

15:30 , Rachel Sharp

The New York lawmaker has announced that he will hold a press conference on the steps of the US Capitol in two weeks’ time.

“Press conference November 30th at 8am on The Capitol steps, I encourage ALL members of the press to attend. Happy Thanksgiving,” he added.

On Thursday, the House Ethics Committee released its damning report into the freshman congressman following a months-long investigation.

In it, the committee said it had uncovered “substantial evidence” that the GOP lawmaker broke federal laws and that he “knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC; and engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House”.

“In light of the ongoing criminal investigation into Representative Santos, and the ISC’s findings of additional uncharged and unlawful conduct by Representative Santos, the ISC recommended that the Committee immediately refer these allegations to the Department of Justice,” the panel wrote.

Statement from House Ethics Committee chairman

15:28 , Gustaf Kilander

Rep Michael Guest, chair of the House Ethics Committee

VIDEO: Digging into the Santos ethics report

15:00 , Gustaf Kilander

George Santos faces fresh motion to expel after ethics report

14:40 , Gustaf Kilander

New York Republican Rep George Santos is facing a new motion to expel him from the House after the chamber’s Ethics Committee issued a damning report about the actions of the freshman congressman.

The report found that the 35-year-old had violated ethics guidelines, the rules of the House and criminal laws, and that he had been aware that he was crossing the line.

House Ethics panel chairman GOP Rep Michael Guest of Mississippi filed the motion on Friday. The chamber can take up the motion on 28 November upon lawmakers’ return from Thanksgiving recess.

READ MORE

Botox, OnlyFans and a stay in the Hamptons: Key revelations from George Santos ethics report

14:30 , John Bowden

The long-awaited House Ethics Committee investigation into embattled New York Rep George Santos is here, and boy is it a doozy.

A lengthy report from the committee published on Thursday stated that there was credible evidence to indicate that the Republican misused campaign funds for a wide range of personal expenses, committed fraud, and misled the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

It was a damning end to a months-long investigation which had, until now, been Mr Santos’s golden ticket to survive the repeated efforts by his fellow lawmakers — including Republicans from his own state — to kick him out of Congress. Now, his days in Congress are presumably numbered as it is overwhelmingly likely that the House will vote to expel him in the coming days.

Lawmakers tried as much only a few weeks ago, with Mr Santos being saved once again by colleagues who did not wish to set a precedent of prejudging a member under investigation by the Ethics Committee. The New York congressman was already facing numerous felony charges in New York under indictment from the Justice Department.

READ MORE

26 December 2022: Rep Ritchie Torres calls for Santos to be investigated

14:00 , John Bowden

Congressman Ritchie Torres, a fellow New Yorker of the opposite party of Mr Santos, became the first member of Congress to speak about the issue in late December. On the 26th, he called for the House Ethics Committee to investigate the surge in wealth that Mr Santos self-reported.

26 December 2022 (evening): Santos is eviscerated by Tulsi Gabbard

Apparently unsatisfied with the grilling he received in local New York media hours earlier, Mr Santos appeared on Fox News for the first time. Clearly expecting a friendly interview, the congressman-elect was instead subjected to a reprimanding from former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, sitting in for Tucker Carlson.

“Do you have no shame?” she questioned him at one point during the excruciating confrontation.

George Santos laments his ‘year from hell’ after ethics report release

13:30 , Rachel Sharp

George Santos has complained that he has suffered a “year from hell” following the release of a scathing House Ethics Committee report which found that he spent campaign donations on OnlyFans and Botox.

The embattled congressman and serial liar took to X late on Thursday night to paint himself as a victim of “dirty” politics and “poison” from the ethics committee.

Lamenting that he was just trying to “serve my country” by running for Congress, the man who has been exposed for lying about everything from 9/11 to being Jewish claimed that his “rights” had been taken from him.

“My year from Hell,” he began.

“Running for office was never a dream or goal, but when the opportunity to do so came I felt the time to serve my country was now.

“Looking back today I know one thing, politics is indeed dirty, dirty from the very bottom up. Consultants, operatives, the opposition, the party and more… the one thing I never knew was that the process in Congress was dirty. I will continue to fight for what I believe in and I will never back down.

“What the “ethics committee” did today was not part of due process, what they did was poison a the jury pool on my on going investigation with the DOJ. This was a dirty biased act and one that tramples all over my rights.”

READ MORE

26 December 2022: Santos spills the beans

13:00 , John Bowden

After days of crying foul and denouncing reporters as political hatchet-men through his attorney, George Santos finally came clean. Turns out, those journalists weren’t lying or launching “attacks” — Mr Santos really did lie about working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, he really did lie about being Jewish, and he really did lie about attending college.

But those lies, he said, were mere attempts to “embellish” his resume — a practice he faulted Americans of all political shades for supposedly engaging in.

And he remained adamant about serving two years in Congress, despite the criticism.

22 December 2022: The New York Attorney General’s office announces a probe

12:00 , John Bowden

Letitia James’s office joined the fray just one day after The Forward’s investigation was published, with prosecutors clearly feeling the pressure to examine whether any of Mr Santos’s actions had risen from the level of mere dishonesty to criminal fraud or worse.

No official charges have been filed against Mr Santos, and it remains unclear what criminal charges he could actually face.

21 December 2022: The Forward dives in

11:30 , John Bowden

Just two days after the Times published its investigation, Jewish-American news agency The Forward went public with its own findings.

At the top of the list was a lie that Mr Santos had apparently told just a month earlier: That he is Jewish. That ended up being a lie he had told on multiple occasions, in multiple forms. It even expanded, in some instances, to claiming that his maternal grandparents had fled from the Holocaust.

Such things are easily verifiable, and a review of several genealogy websites by The Forward revealed that Mr Santos’s maternal grandparents were born in Brazil.

While far from the only fiction he told to get elected, this may prove to be the most damaging (if not surely the most offensive) of the congressman’s fictions. It has already led to his blacklisting from future Republican Jewish Coalition events, as well as condemnations from across the political spectrum.

19 December 2022: The New York Times jumps on the story

11:00 , John Bowden

In an expansive investigation, the Times summarises its findings in a headline: George Santos’s background is “largely fiction”.

The first revelation of Mr Santos’s lies came in the form of an avalanche. In this one story, he was accused of lying about working for two different companies, attending a college, and even potentially about managing a “family firm” and controlling millions in assets.

Mr Santos couldn’t (or wouldn’t) answer for most of the revealed falsehoods, which led other reporters at competing outlets to smell blood in the water.

8 November 2022: George Santos wins his second bid for Congress

10:00 , John Bowden

Following a defeat in 2020, George Santos finally saw success in his bid to join the House of Representatives in 2022, following more than a year of campaigning. New reports indicate that he was fundraising at Mar-a-Lago and in other GOP circles as early as mid-2021 with the help of operatives for Rep Elise Stefanik, chair of the House GOP conference.

He was swept to victory easily, with Democrats in the state spending little to oppose him.

6 September 2022: The North Shore Leader begins probing Santos’s finances

09:00 , John Bowden

Just two months before he would go on to be elected as a member of Congress, George Santos was the subject of a story in a small Long Island-area newspaper called The North Shore Leader. With no suggestion of how it occurred, the Leader pointed out that Mr Santos’s financial disclosure forms had indicated a shocking surge of wealth in just two years’ time.

“Controversial US congressional candidate George Santos has finally filed his Personal Financial Disclosure Report on September 6th - 20 months late - and he is claiming an inexplicable rise in his alleged net worth to $11 million,” wrote the paper’s reporter, Maureen Daly.

“Two years ago, in 2020, Santos’ personal financial disclosures claimed that he had no assets over $5,000 - no bank accounts, no stock accounts, no real property. A net worth barely above “zero”, Daly reported.

It was an important story, but drew little notice either from other journalists or local Democratic Party officials.

‘A disgusting politicized smear’

08:00 , Bevan Hurley

On 16 November, Mr Santos’ pursuit of re-election came to a grinding halt after the House Ethics Committee released its report on Mr Santos. The report said it found “substantial evidence” that Mr Santos broke federal laws.

Mr Santos “knowingly” filed false or incomplete reports with the FEC, used campaign funds for personal purposes, engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC, and engaged in “knowing and willful violations” of the Ethics in Government Act related to his financial disclosures, the Committee wrote.

The embattled New York Republican quickly took to X to defend himself. He called the report a “disgusting politicized smear,” adding “I’ve come to expect vitriol like this from political opposition but not from the hallowed halls of public service.”

Finally, in his rambling X post, he announced that he would not be running again in 2024. “I am humbled yet again and reminded that I am human and I have flaws, but I will not stand by as I am stoned by those who have flaws themselves,” Mr Santos wrote.

Arrest and indictment

07:00 , Bevan Hurley

Late afternoon on Tuesday 9 May, Mr Santos was criminally charged by prosecutors in New York’s Eastern District, accused of defrauding donors by spending “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

Mr Santos allegedly lied on financial disclosure forms he filed to the House by overstating his income from and failing to disclose income from another, while also lying about his earnings from his company, the Devolder Organization.

He also stands accused of insurance fraud for applying for Covid employment benefits in New York while still employed in Florida.

Following Donald Trump’s playbook, Mr Santos called the charges a “witch hunt” and said he intended to run again for Congress.

Some Republicans have called for Mr Santos to leave Congress immediately. Mr McCarthy has said he will “look” at the charges.

In October, the Justice Department handed down a 23-count superseding indictment, adding 10 new felony charges into the mix. He has pleaded not guilty.

Federal officials accused Mr Santos of stealing campaign contributors’ identities to make more than $44,000 in credit card purchases.

Political positions

06:00 , Bevan Hurley

Mr Santos has claimed in interviews that he was exactly the kind of candidate that could grow the Republican Party’s reach with younger voters.

He aligned himself strongly with Donald Trump and the Maga wing of the Republican caucus, attending the former president’s indictment on criminal charges in New York last month.

Other than platitudes about wanting to be a “voice for every community in the district”, Mr Santos does not set out any ideological vision on his campaign website or in statements.

In February, he was spotted wearing an AR-15 lapel in Congress after a spate of recent mass shootings.

He described abortion as “barbaric” in a 2022 speech to the Whitestone Republican Club.

He introduced several pieces of legislation in early 2023; including bills to raise the cap on state and local tax deduction and cut federal funding to countries that persecute LGBTQ people.

Mr Santos raised eyebrows in April, when he introduced the Medical Information Nuanced Accountability Judgment Act, which would ban the government from mandating certain vaccines.

The acronym, MINAJ, was thought to relate to Nicki Minaj’s comments in 2021 that her cousin’s friend had become impotent and suffered swollen testicles after taking the Covid-19 vaccine.

Credit card scams and unpaid rent

05:00 , Bevan Hurley

Revelations about Mr Santos’ alleged grifts and schemes continued to emerge.

In February, it was reported that New York City housing court records showed that Tiffany Lee Devolder Santos owed $39,050 in back rent to the landlord.

Mr Santos had reportedly failed to pay rent in the Queens apartment he shared with his sister before being elected to Congress in a state of disrepair.

The next month, a Brazilian man — Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha — who was deported from the US after being convicted of credit card skimming fraud reportedly told federal authorities that Mr Santos was the mastermind of the scheme.

Trelha claimed Mr Santos had taught him how to skim card information and clone cards in Seattle in 2017.

Trelha claimed Mr Santos visited him in jail in Seattle after his arrest and threatened him not to reveal his part in the scheme to authorities.

Responding to the allegations at the time, Mr Santos told reporters that he was “innocent”.

In January, Mr Santos also claimed to have been the victim of a mugging and assassination attempt in New York.

Santos’ lies revealed post-election

04:30 , Bevan Hurley

A bombshell New York Times report on 19 December revealed to a broader audience for the first time many of Mr Santos’ fabrications and lies about his employment and education history.

A flood of further embellishments soon followed, including the 9/11 -related death of his mother, claims he had been a producer on the failed Broadway production of Spider-Man, how he had cheated associates out of clothes and cash, and had stolen $3,000 that had been raised to save a disabled veteran’s pet dog.

A pressure group formed by citizens in his 3rd Congressional District began holding protests outside his campaign office to try to force his expulsion from Congress.

As Mr Santos’ pile of scandals grew, he threw himself behind Kevin McCarthy’s campaign for Speaker of the House.

Mr McCarthy welcomed the support given his razor-thin majority, and refused to take action on any of the mounting ethical scandals, even as a growing number of New York Republicans called for him to be removed from Congress.

At the State of the Union in February, Mr Santos had an altercation with Mitt Romney after the Utah Senator told him he didn’t belong in Congress and “should be embarrassed.”

“Tell that to the 142,000 who voted for me”, Mr Santos reportedly replied.

Following the speech, Mr Romney called the New York Republican a “sick puppy.”

In March, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into whether Mr Santos had “engaged in unlawful activity”.

‘He’s most likely just a fabulist’

04:00 , Bevan Hurley

Soon after his 2020 election defeat, Mr Santos began raising money for the next congressional race.

New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who is now the third-ranking Republican in the House, endorsed him in 2021.

Later that year, a vulnerability study commissioned with Mr Santos’ approval found alarming revelations, and many of his staffers resigned, according to the Times.

Among other things, it found he had falsely claimed to have been endorsed by Mr Trump, along with many of the lies about his job history and personal wealth that have since been revealed.

Congressional leaders learned of his deceptions by 2022. According to the Times, Dan Conston, the leader of the Kevin McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, tried to circulate the report’s findings to prominent donors.

Two pieces of luck helped paved the way for his election to Congress in 2022: Thomas Suozzi, the 3rd District’s incumbent lawmaker, announced he would not seek re-election and redistricting amounted in a new congressional district map gerrymandered to add a swathe of Republican areas.

Mr Santos again ran unopposed for the Republican nomination, and faced Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the general election, the first House race between two openly gay candidates.

Still, Mr Santos went on to take the district that November by eight points.

Early political career

03:30 , Bevan Hurley

Mr Santos’ murky and ever-changing biography makes it difficult to parse fact from fiction during his early forays into politics.

In 2018, he began volunteering for the campaign of Republican Vickie Paladino, who was running for state Senate. He reportedly boasted of his ties to Wall Street donors who could contribute, but did little actual work.

The next year, he reportedly made his first attempt to get elected to Congress, but failed to secure enough signatures to get on the Queens County Republican Committee.

That month he launched his campaign for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020 against Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi.

No other candidates put their names forward. When pressed by reporters why he lived out of the district, he claimed to reside at an address that turned out to be his treasurer’s.

He lost the general election by about 46,000 votes, but still exceeded Republican expectations for the strongly Democratic district. He refused to concede the election.

Mr Santos spoke at the Stop the Steal rally at the ellipse in Washington DC on the day of the Capitol riots on January 6, claiming his election had been stolen. A roommate would later claim that Mr Santos had worn his stolen $520 Burberry scarf to the rally.

In 2020, while running for Congress, he began working at Florida investment firm Harbor City Capital, which was later accused in a civil lawsuit by the Security and Exchange Commission of running a $17m Ponzi scheme.

He has publicly denied any involvement in the alleged fraud.

‘Sue me’

03:00 , Bevan Hurley

While living in Brazil, Mr Santos also reportedly performed as a drag queen named Kitara Ravache as a young man.

In January, Brazilian drag artist Eula Rochard posted photos to social media herself with a person wearing a red dress, bright red lipstick and dangling chandelier earrings who she identified as Mr Santos.

Journalist Joâo Fragah also said he had interviewed Mr Santos in costume.

A Politico investigation later found that a user on Wikipedia named Anthony Devolder claimed to have participated in drag shows in Brazil as a teenager.

Mr Santos issued a furious denial of the claims on social media, at a time when his Republican Party was vilifying and seeking to ban drag queens from performing in some states.

He called allegations that he “‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false.” However, the next day, Mr Santos appeared to admit that he had participated in drag. “I was young and I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life,” he said.

He moved back to New York in 2011, working as a bilingual customer services representative at a call centre for Dish Network, a satellite TV firm, in Queens, where he would have earned about $15 an hour.

Mr Santos exhaled a stream of lies over a series of interviews: he alleged to have graduated from NYU business school, played as a star vollyeball player at Baruch College, attended the elite private school Horace Mann in New York, but failed to graduate due to financial difficulties, and worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. These claims have either been disproven or not substantiated.

In February, the non-profit Reclaim the Records obtained court records showing he married a Brazilian woman in 2012. His former wife, who has not been identified, filed for divorce in 2019.

He has since said he is married to a Brazilian man, whom he identified by the first name of Matt. He reportedly told Brazilian publication Piaui in November 2020 that his husband’s name is Matheus Gerard.

A ‘first generation American’

02:30 , Bevan Hurley

Given his prodigious propensity for telling fibs, basic details of Mr Santos’ personal history, such as his real name, marital status, and precisely where he was born merit a healthy dose of skepticism.

According to his congressional website, Mr Santos is a “first generation American” born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in July 1988. His parents were both Brazilian immigrants – Fátima Devolder, who worked as a housekeeper, and Gercino Antônio dos Santos Jr, a house painter. He has a younger sister, Tiffany Lee Devolder Santos.

Former co-workers who worked with Mr Santos at Dish Network in College Point in 2011 and 2012 told Patch that he used to tell them he was born in Brazil. Then, he was known as Anthony Devolder or George Devolder.

His true birthplace is significant because the Constitution requires members of Congress to have been US citizens for seven years before their election. Mr Santos has claimed in interviews that he is a dual citizen of Brazil and the United States.

Tiffany Bogosian told the Washington Post that even at a young age, Mr Santos would fabricate parts of his biography. She put this down to his impoverished background, and said he had still been learning English while at junior high and was bullied during his time there.

From 2008 to 2011, Mr Santos lived in Brazil where his mother was living at the time.

In 2008, Mr Santos was accused by Brazilian authorities of using a stolen checkbook and fake name at a clothing shop outside Rio de Janeiro. Citing court documents, the New York Times reported that Mr Santos told police in 2010 that he and his mother had stolen a checkbook from a man that she used to work for, and used it to make $1,300 in illegal purchases of clothes and shoes.

In March, Mr Santos admitted the crime and agreed to pay the victim back as part of a non-prosecution agreement, CNN reported.

On the campaign trail, Mr Santos repeatedly claimed that he is of Jewish descent and that his grandparents were European Jews who fled Hitler.

Jewish cultural groups and online sleuths later unearthed records showing his grandparents were born in Brazil.

Mr Santos later clarified to the New York Post that he had said he was “Jew-ish”.

From resume lies to criminal charges: A timeline of George Santos’ many scandals

02:00 , John Bowden

Facing a mountain of scandals and lies, George Santos announced on 16 November that he would not seek re-election.

His decision came in the wake of a damning report by the House Ethics Committee, which found that the embattled New York Republican engaged in “uncharged and unlawful conduct.”

Mr Santos has in fact been charged, too. In May, he was arrested and charged with 13 federal criminal counts, including wire fraud, money laundering, and theft of public funds. A superseding indictment was later handed down in October, increasing the federal charges against Mr Santos to 23.

In addition to the myriad of legal troubles, Mr Santos has also been accused of lying about his personal history. He has claimed that he played as a star volleyball player at Baruch College, worked at Goldman Sachs, has ancestors who fled the Holocaust, and that his mother died during 9/11; none of these claims have been substantiated.

Dogged by surely one of the oddest scandals to hit American politics in the last few years, Mr Santos has been facing calls for his expulsion and resignation even before he was seated as representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Let’s take a look back at how Mr Santos’ scandal-plagued political career evolved, from the beginning to now.

From resume lies to criminal charges: A timeline of George Santos’ many scandals

VIDEO: George Santos: The imposter in Congress | On The Ground

01:30 , Richard Hall

The incredible rise and dramatic fall of George Santos

01:00 , Bevan Hurley

Congressman George Santos’ tenure has been anything but dull — his rise to power and fall from grace have been equally mired in controversy.

After less than two years in Congress, his list of lies and scandals appears to have finally grown too long for him to defend anymore, as he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2024 after the release of a damning House Ethics Committee report.

The committee said it found “substantial evidence” that Mr Santos had broken federal laws after finding “additional uncharged and unlawful conduct,” which included using campaign funds to make purchases at Hermes, Sephora and OnlyFans.

READ MORE

False FEC reports

00:30 , John Bowden

No campaign-related fraud is complete without lying to the Federal Election Commission, and Mr Santos is accused of doing that too. This remains an issue being played out publicly in New York court, where two of his former campaign staffers have now pleaded guilty to finance-related crimes in connection with his campaign. One pretended to be a staffer for Kevin McCarthy. Another, his treasurer, is accused of filing false reports to the FEC detailing the congressman’s fictitious loans and other questionable spending. She has testified in court filings that Mr Santos knew about her activities; he has denied this.

But the House investigation makes it clear that Mr Santos’s own campaign staff described their finances as a “black box” controlled and viewed only by Mr Santos and the treasurer, Nancy Marks. Despite his public statements to the contrary, the subcommittee report described him as “highly involved in his campaign’s financial operations”, and also faulted him for ignoring warnings from his own campaign staff about Ms Marks and financial irregularities within the campaign’s spending reports.

“Even if Representative Santoswas not aware of all of the other errors in his campaign reports relating to other receipts and disbursements, he had his own concerns and was repeatedly advised by multiple members of his team about concerns regarding Ms. Marks, but he failed to take meaningful action,” the report found.

Santos could become only sixth member to be expelled from House

00:00 , Gustaf Kilander

Misuse of campaign funds

Thursday 16 November 2023 23:30 , John Bowden

This is perhaps the widest variety of crimes Mr Santos is alleged to have committed — though not by much.

The congressman “was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits,” according to the investigative subcommittee. He used campaign funds to pay off those credit card debts in part, according to the Ethics Committee, while also making direct deposits from campaign accounts into his personal bank account.

He supposedly used these funds — transferred to his private accounts through various means — to make purchases at luxury brands including Hermes, on OnlyFans and for expensive meals.

VIDEO: George Santos Will Not Run for Re-Election

Thursday 16 November 2023 23:00 , Gustaf Kilander

Fraud, fraud and more fraud

Thursday 16 November 2023 22:45 , John Bowden

At the very top of the list is a staggering stretch of dishonest financial behaviour. The congressman is, in short, accused of lying about loaning his own money to his 2022 congressional campaign, then “paying himself back” for those fake loans with real money.

Those fake loans topped $500,000 — no small amount. But that’s not the only fraud Mr Santos is accused of engaging in; he is accused of deceiving donors into giving money to RedStone LLC, ostensibly to support his campaign; in reality, that money was also used, according to the Ethics Committee, as a kind of slush fund for Mr Santos’s personal use.

He and his campaign are also accused of obtaining donors’ credit card numbers and stealing their identities.

A damning end to a months-long investigation

Thursday 16 November 2023 22:29 , John Bowden

A damning end came to a months-long investigation which had, until now, been Mr Santos’s golden ticket to survive the repeated efforts by his fellow lawmakers — including Republicans from his own state — to kick him out of Congress. Now, his days in Congress are presumably numbered as it is overwhelmingly likely that the House will vote to expel him in the coming days.

Lawmakers tried as much only a few weeks ago, with Mr Santos being saved once again by colleagues who did not wish to set a precedent of prejudging a member under investigation by the Ethics Committee. The New York congressman was already facing numerous felony charges in New York under indictment from the Justice Department.

He will not run for re-election, according to a lengthy tirade posted to Twitter moments after the Ethics Committee report was released. Even that statement is a total reversal of a declaration he made to CNN’s Manu Raju less than a month ago in an interview.

In that same statement Thursday, he called for Americans to call a Constitutional Convention to radically reform Congress. This is unlikely to occur, and particularly so if it is championed by a congressman who has now admitted to fabricating nearly the entirety of his background and is known to have lied about everything from being descended from Holocaust survivors to seeing his mother die on 9/11.

Santos accused of using campaign funds for OnlyFans and other key revelations from Ethics report

Thursday 16 November 2023 21:30 , John Bowden

The long-awaited House Ethics Committee investigation into embattled New York Rep George Santos is here, and boy is it a doozy.

A lengthy report from the committee published on Thursday stated that there was credible evidence to indicate that the Republican misused campaign funds for a wide range of personal expenses, committed fraud, and misled the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

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Santos ‘should have resigned a long time ago'

Thursday 16 November 2023 21:00 , Gustaf Kilander

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement that “George Santos’s pattern of dishonest and illegal conduct is outrageous and continues to get more so”.

“He should have resigned a long time ago. It is to the House Ethics Committee’s credit that it conducted a serious investigation and uncovered even more wrongdoing by Santos. Enough is enough, Santos needs to resign today,” he added.

Santos was ‘ultimate beneficiary and knowing participant’ of campaign’s fraudulent reporting

Thursday 16 November 2023 20:30 , Eric Garcia

Mr Santos began to come under serious scrutiny almost as soon as he flipped a district that includes parts of Queens and Long Island that had voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 as Republicans barely gained the majority in the US House of Representatives.

News reports shortly thereafter that he had fabricated multiple parts of his life story, including where he went to college, his employment history and even his ethnicity.

The report said that Mr Santos was the “ultimate beneficiary and knowing participant” of much of his campaign’s fraudulent reporting since they allowed him to meet benchmarks to receive national party support.

Santos behind ‘constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff'

Thursday 16 November 2023 20:00 , Eric Garcia

The House Ethics Committee launched its investigation into Mr Santos earlier this year to find whether he engaged in illegal activity during his 2022 congressional campaign.

In May, the committee expanded its investigation.

“He used his connections to high-value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings,” the report said. “And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.”

Santos slammed by fellow New York Republicans

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:30 , Gustaf Kilander

Mr Santos, who has evaded two votes to oust him from the House, was severely criticised by his New York Republican colleagues.

“George Santos should end this farce and resign immediately,” Rep Mike Lawler told Semafor. “If he refuses, he must be removed from Congress. His conduct is not only unbecoming and embarrassing, it is criminal. He is unfit to serve and if he had any dignity, he would resign today.”

Fellow New York GOP Rep Nick LaLota told the outlet that Mr Santos “was never running for re-election” and noted that he thinks the legal and ethics investigations into him would end before election season.

“The question now is: Will he take a plea deal that includes resignation before November 28th when the House returns to session and can expel him?” he asked.

Santos could face post-Thanksgiving expulsion vote

Thursday 16 November 2023 19:00 , Gustaf Kilander

The chair of the Ethics panel, GOP Rep Michael Guest, told CQ Roll Call that he was set to file a motion to expel Mr Santos this week, meaning that a vote on the matter may be held following Thanksgiving break.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep Susan Wild, said, “I intend to vote yes on any privileged expulsion resolution ... as the work of the Committee is now complete, and I am no longer obligated to maintain neutrality as a Member of the Ethics Committee,” according to HuffPost.

Santos staffers allegedly plotted to spy on media

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:45 , Gustaf Kilander

Santos ‘managed to cultivate a strong office culture rather quickly'

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:30 , Gustaf Kilander

McCarthy said in January that it was ‘unfortunate’ that Biden has more power than Santos

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:15 , Gustaf Kilander

Santos appears to have lied about cooperating with Ethics panel

Thursday 16 November 2023 18:00 , Gustaf Kilander

Read Santos’s full statement

Thursday 16 November 2023 17:50 , Gustaf Kilander

George Santos

Santos GOP rival says he’s ‘finally taking a step in the right direction’

Thursday 16 November 2023 17:16 , Kelly Rissman

Kellen Curry, a Republican running for the GOP nomination in Mr Santos’s district, told The Independent: “George Santos is finally taking a step in the right direction, but our country is at a crossroads.”

“Our troops have been fired upon over 50 times since the Hamas attacks on Israel, our southern border is being overrun by illegal immigration with the help of terrorists, and our spending addiction continues to rob the next generation of prosperity and opportunity,” he added. “Today marks the beginning of a renewed focus on the issues that matter, instead of the distraction of the last 11 months. NY-3 constituents are calling for experienced, next generation leaders to serve in Congress who will fight to keep us safe, control spending, and bring people together around a shared vision of getting America back on track. I’m humbled to step forward to be that leader.”

House Ethics Committee report finds ‘substantial’ evidence that George Santos broke federal laws

Thursday 16 November 2023 16:54 , Eric Garcia

The House Ethics Committee said that it found what it considered “substantial evidence” in its report on Rep George Santos (R-NY) that the embattled freshman Republican broke federal laws in a report it released Thursday morning.

The House Ethics Committee--a bipartisan committee made up of equal members from both parties--released its report on Thursday after a months-long investigation into Mr Santos.

In a press statement on the report, the committee alleged that Mr Santos “knowingly” caused his campaign committee to file false and incomplete reports to the Federal Election Commission; used campaign cash for personal expenses; engaged in fraudulent conduct with Redstone Strategies, a company he co-owned; and committed “knowing and willful violations” of the “Ethics in Government Act.”

“In light of the ongoing criminal investigation into Representative Santos, and the ISC’s findings of additional uncharged and unlawful conduct by Representative Santos, the [Investigative Subcommittee] recommended that the Committee immediately refer these allegations to the Department of Justice,” the committee said in a statement.

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George Santos won’t seek re-election after damning ethics report

Thursday 16 November 2023 16:53 , Gustaf Kilander

Republican New York Representative George Santos has announced that he won’t seek re-election in 2024 following the release of a damning ethics report.

The freshman congressman made the revelation to Semafor on Thursday.

In a lengthy statement on X, Mr Santos wrote that wouldn’t be seeking “a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time”.

The House Ethics Committee said in a statement on Thursday that Mr Santos “knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC; and engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House”.

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