Did NY rep George Santos fake his resume? Here's why GOP Congressman's professional story doesn't add up
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: George Santos, a Republican who will be a member of Congress in January, reportedly earned a degree from Baruch College and has worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, according to his campaign website. However, on Monday, December 19 it was revealed that no one with Santos' name or a variation of it graduated from Baruch in 2010, as per a New York Times investigation report.
Santos' employment at Citigroup or Goldman Sachs was not previously known to either company, as per Daily Mail. The 34-year-old Santos is the first openly homosexual Republican elected to Congress. He initially ran for the Third Congressional District of New York seat in 2020 but lost to Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi. Suozzi chose not to compete for reelection this time and instead ran for governor, losing to Kathy Hochul in the state's Democratic primary. Santos defeated Democratic businessman Robert Zimmerman, who also identifies as gay, by eight points in the November election.
READ MORE
Rashida Tlaib slammed for wearing mask only for cameras, internet calls her 'fraud'
Santos brags on his campaign website about being the son of Brazilian immigrants, having to drop out of prep school, obtaining his GED, and then attending Baruch College to earn a degree in economics and finance. “After graduating, George Anthony began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm,” the campaign website says. According to Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a representative for Citigroup, the company was unable to confirm Santos' employment. She expressed surprise at Santos' purported work title and noted that Citi had sold off its asset management division in 2005 which was five years before Santos claimed to have received his college degree.
Santos added that he was employed by MetGlobal and “was then offered an exciting opportunity with Goldman Sachs but what he thought would be the pinnacle of his career was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated.” Santos claims he then worked for LinkBridge Investors which did have a paper trail for him. He was named as a vice president in a company document and according to his May 2020 campaign disclosure form, he earned $55,000 in salary, commissions, and incentives. Santos accepted a position at Harbor City Capital when he was vying for office; this Florida-based investment company is currently being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly running a $17 million Ponzi scam. The lawsuit did not include Santos' name, as per Daily Mail.
Responding to the allegations made against Santos regarding his employment details, his attorney shared a message which included a Winston Churchill quote. "George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by - a gay, Latino, first generation American and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic party. After four years in the public eye, and on verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches this shotgun blast of attacks. It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations. As Winston Churchill famously stated, 'You have enemies? Good. It means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.'"
Santos subsequently started working for the Devolder Organization, a company owned by his family and disclosed on his financial disclosure forms that he earns a salary of $750,000 which is roughly 14 times what he was earning at LinkBridge in 2020, as per reports. He also asserted that his family was the owner of 13 properties but there is no evidence to support this. According to the New York Times, Santos ran afoul of the law when he was a teenager in Brazil for allegedly stealing the employer's checkbook and using it to make purchases, including a pair of shoes. Santos claimed to have formed a non-profit organization named Friends of Pets United on his campaign website but the Internal Revenue Service has no trace of it.