New Republican Congressman Appears to Have Fabricated a Whole Lot of His Résumé
Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) claims to have graduated from a college and worked for financial firms that have no record of him being there, among other big lies.
Politics

Newly elected Republican Rep. George Santos (N.Y.) sold a nice-sounding story to voters: Born to Brazilian immigrants, he went from attending a public college in New York City to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor,” in charge of his family’s real-estate portfolio of 13 New York properties. Santos, 34, is openly gay and said he was the “full embodiment of the American dream.”
Santos defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman by eight points in the race for New York’s 3rd Congressional district, which represents parts of Long Island and Queens, in a bit of an upset. (In 2020, Santos lost to Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) by more than 12 points, but then Suozzi retired.) But according to a damning new report in the New York Times, it appears that Santos just…well, made up giant chunks of his résumé.
Santos claimed he’d worked at both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither company had records of him ever working there. Baruch College in Manhattan told the Times it found no record of anyone with that name and birthdate graduating in 2010 as Santos had claimed. (Santos’ bio on the National Republican Congressional Committee website also says he attended New York University, but NYU could not find any records of his attendance.)
The Times couldn’t find records of any of his family’s 13 properties, and Santos didn’t disclose them as required on financial forms for his two campaigns. Santos says the family company, the Devolder Organization, pays him a $750,000 salary plus dividends, but he didn’t disclose on the forms where the money comes from. The paper also learned that Santos was criminal charged for check fraud in Brazil after he stole someone’s checkbook when he was 19.