Who is George Santos? The first gay republican deputy and son of Brazilians should take office on January 3rd with an extra novelty. The Trumpist New York candidate, 34, who won in an affluent district near Manhattan, is a fictional character. He sometimes identifies himself as George Devolder, the surname of his mother, Fatima, who died in 2016; others, like Anthony Devolder, the middle names. He campaigned as George Santos, claiming he had overcome “abject misery”.
On Saturday, just before a devastating report was released documenting a career as a serial liar, Santos joined the Long Island Jewish Coalition to light candles on the first night of Hanukkah, the festival also known as the festival of lights.
On Wednesday (21), the Jewish publication Forward posted an article denying the opening of the biography on the elected deputy’s campaign page, that his grandparents fled the persecution of Jews in Ukraine, emigrated to Belgium and then to Brazil. The Forward revealed that Santos’ grandparents were Paulo Horta Devolder, born in 1918, and Rosalina Caruso Horta, born in 1927, before the Nazis came to power. They baptized their daughter with the name of a Nossa Senhora and the page of Fátima Devolder, on Facebook, is full of saints and Catholic iconography.
Since the report came out in the New York Times, reporters have been after the politician, without success. He gave a sign of life on Tuesday (20) in a document filed by the government of Florida, resurrecting the company (orange?) He named as the source of his sudden enrichment. In two years, Santos reportedly went from earning $55,000 a year to earning $3.5 million with the Devolder Organization. The address listed is the home of an executive he worked with at a company sued by the federal government for a pyramid scheme, a financial fraud estimated at $17 million.
In addition to lying about his background, the companies he worked for, having founded an NGO and owning 13 properties, Santos said he lives with his husband Matt and four dogs. But there is a marriage license of George Anthony Devolder Santos with Uadla Santos issued in Manhattan on August 2, 2012.
The Daily Beast website revealed that the American cousin of Viktor Vekselberg, one of the most notorious oligarchs allied with Vladimir Putin, poured US$ 38,200 in donations to the campaign to elect Santos. The deputy posted attacks on Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion in February, and the connection sparked spy speculation. But if George Santos is a kind of Manchurian candidate, he seems to have been programmed by Trapalhões.
I spoke with a Republican establishment source who knows Santos and says he was an obvious fabulista, an exhibitionist who took friends on shopping sprees.
Where did the US$700,000 that Santos says he loaned to his own campaign come from? And why did the facts only become public after the election? Earlier, another unnamed Republican had suggested to a reporter that Santos was a Mr. Ripley, the character in several Patricia Highsmith novels, a bisexual imposter who murders a friend and assumes his identity. Ripley becomes a millionaire, but the novel suggests he’ll spend the rest of his life paranoid. Santos only has one documented passage through the Niterói police for theft, but he hardly ever sleeps at night.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
