mickeyrat said:

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-business-queens-ae463f9ef3497ce4479f9fe5f2defde1

 

2022 Midterm elections Queens

Rep.-elect George Santos silent amid questions about resume

By DEEPTI HAJELA

34 mins ago

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York Republican who won a U.S. House seat in November is under pressure to explain himself amid evidence he fabricated parts of his life story.

During his campaign, George Santos, 34, boasted impressive academic and professional credentials and portrayed himself as an embodiment of the American dream. After growing up in a working-class, immigrant family in Queens and getting a high school equivalency diploma, he said he had a lightning-fast rise in the world of finance, culminating in his participation in “landmark deals on Wall Street.”

Yet a college where Santos said he earned a finance degree was unable to find records showing he attended. Several companies where Santos said he worked had no record of him having been an employee.

The potential problems with Santos' resume were first reported Monday by The New York Times. The newspaper also raised questions about the truthfulness of other aspects of Santos' life story and disclosed he faced an unresolved criminal fraud investigation in Brazil, where his family once lived.

An attorney for Santos didn’t answer questions about his personal history but suggested he was being targeted by people “threatened” by his politics.

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“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,” the lawyer, Joseph Murray, said in a statement.

In a detailed biography formerly posted on his campaign website, Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in 2010 with an economics and finance degree. Baruch, however, said it could find no records indicating that a person with Santos' name and birthdate had ever graduated.

The biography said Santos then worked at Citigroup, where he became “an associate asset manager in the real asset division." But a Citigroup spokesperson, Danielle Romero Apsilos, said the company had no records indicating Santos had ever been an employee.

Santos' biography said he later worked for the investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. That firm also said it had no record of his employment.

A different biography posted on the website of the National Republican Congressional Committee said Santos had earned a second degree at New York University. A spokesman for NYU said it could also find no records indicating Santos had been a student. An email was sent to the NRCC asking how the information had been obtained.

Santos also said he worked at two other companies, LinkBridge Investors and Metglobal. Two emails and a message seeking comment from LifeBridge were unanswered, as were two emails sent to Metglobal.

Records in Brazil, uncovered by the Times, show Santos was the subject of a criminal investigation there in 2008 over allegations that he used stolen checks to buy items at an apparel shop in the city of Niteroi. At the time, Santos would have been 19. The records include photos of Santos with members of his family. The Times quoted local prosecutors saying the case was dormant because Santos had never appeared in court.

Santos first ran for Congress in 2020, losing to Tom Suozzi, a Democrat. He ran again in 2022, facing Democrat Robert Zimmerman in a district that includes some Long Island suburbs and a small slice of Queens.

In a statement posted to social media, Zimmerman called for investigations by the House Ethics Committee, the Federal Elections Commission and federal prosecutors.

“Santos’ failure to answer any of the questions about these allegations demonstrates why he is unfit for public office and should resign," Zimmerman said.

Joseph Cairo Jr., chairman of the Nassau County Republican Committee called the issues “serious" but said Santos deserved a chance to address them.

“Every person deserves an opportunity to ‘clear' his/her name in the face of accusations," Cairo said in a statement. “I am committed to this principle, and I look forward to the Congressman-Elect’s responses to the news reports."

On social media, Santos portrayed himself as a successful real estate investor whose family owned multiple properties. Yet records indicate he had financial problems. Court records indicate Santos was the subject of three eviction proceedings in Queens between 2014 and 2017 because of unpaid rent.

In the summer of 2020, Santos was hired by Harbor City Capitol Corp. an investment firm based in Florida. That company, however, ceased operating in 2021 after it was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme.

Santos wasn't named in the SEC complaint. He told The Daily Beast earlier this year that he was shocked by the allegations of wrongdoing.

After leaving Harbor City, Santos registered a company called the Devolder Organization with the state of Florida, state records show.

In the financial disclosure form filed with the House of Representatives in September, Santos reported that the company paid him an annual salary of $750,000 and at least $1 million in dividends. He described the company's business as “capital intro consulting.” His only other listed asset was an apartment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he said was worth between $500,000 and $1 million.

In filings with the Federal Elections Commission, Santos reported having loaned his campaign at least $630,000 from his personal fortune.

Santos was registered to vote at a modest townhouse in Queens that he does not own, but he moved away before the election. His former landlord, Nancy Pothos, 72, said Santos had been a tenant for two years before moving at the end of August.

Santos’ campaign spokesperson and his lawyer didn’t respond to a list of questions about his company, possible discrepancies in his biography or the criminal case in Brazil.

Lerxst1992 said:

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The Juggler said:

Gern Blansten said:

The Juggler said:

Why didn't the NY Times or the democrats bother to do any opposition work on this fraud before the election? They totally just took NY for granted and, ironically, it cost them the house. Crazy. 

They didn't lose the house by this one race though...

I know. But they lost a few more there that they likely assumed they'd win just because it's NY

Plus people always die and retire so if the margin was tad closer, that could be huge. 

GOP has a four seat cushion in the House and they flipped four dem seats in the NYC suburbs, two of which on the island. 

mickeyrat said:

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xavier mcdaniel said:

And today's follow up story on my "congressman elect". https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/nyregion/george-santos-republican-resume.html?smid=tw-share

this was interesting too....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/nyregion/george-santos-jewish-descent-fraud.html?smid=url-share

Did George Santos Also Mislead Voters About His Jewish Descent?

Genealogy websites cited by The Forward suggest that Mr. Santos’s grandparents were born in Brazil and were not “Holocaust refugees,” as he has claimed.

• 
  
  
  

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The Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential conservative group, said that the assertion that Representative-elect George Santos had lied about being Jewish was “deeply troubling.”Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

By Michael Gold and Grace Ashford

Dec. 21, 2022

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the incoming House Democratic leader, on Wednesday accused Representative-elect George Santos of being a “complete and utter fraud,” as a new report cast doubt on Mr. Santos’s account of his Jewish descent.

“His whole life. Made up,” Mr. Jeffries said at a news conference in Washington. “Did you perpetrate a fraud on voters of the Third Congressional District of New York?”

Hours before Mr. Jeffries spoke, The Forward, a Jewish publication based in New York City, reported that Mr. Santos, a Republican, may have misled voters about having Jewish ancestry, a claim he made on his website and in statements during his political campaign.

In his current biography, Mr. Santos says that his mother, Fatima Devolder, was born in Brazil to immigrants who “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.”

But according to The Forward — which cited information from myheritage.com, a genealogy website; Brazilian immigration cards; and databases of refugees — Ms. Devolder’s parents seemed to have been born in Brazil before World War II. CNN later published a similar report that also cited interviews with several genealogists.

Ms. Devolder died in 2016, according to an online obituary. Mr. Santos said in a 2020 interview that his family converted to Christianity in Brazil, and on Ms. Devolder’s Facebook page, which links to Mr. Santos’s, she regularly shared Christian imagery and had “liked” numerous Facebook pages associated with Brazil-based Christian organizations.

Mr. Santos’s campaign, his lawyer and a political consulting firm that had been fielding reporter inquiries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

continues....

mickeyrat said:

Abbot the fucking douchebag....

https://apnews.com/article/texas-kamala-harris-a0de34dd3b26941c0ae4fac2114586d0

 

Texas Kamala Harris

Migrants dropped near VP Harris home on frigid Christmas Eve

Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three buses of recent migrant families arrived from Texas near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in record-setting cold on Christmas Eve.

Texas authorities have not confirmed their involvement, but the bus drop-offs are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president's residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in recent months.

Local organizers had expected the buses to arrive Sunday but found out Saturday that the group would get to Washington early, Laborde said. The people on board included young children.

Some were wearing T-shirts despite temperatures hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 degrees Celsius). It was the coldest Christmas Eve on record for Washington, according to the Washington Post.

Laborde said employees had blankets ready for the people who arrived on Christmas Eve and moved them quickly onto waiting buses for a ride to an area church. A local restaurant chain donated dinner and breakfast.

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Most of the arrivals were headed to other destinations and expected to remain in Washington only briefly.

Gov. Greg Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment Sunday morning. His office said last week that Texas has given bus rides to more than 15,000 people since April to Washington, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, are strong critics of President Joe Biden on his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are trying to cross daily, many to seek asylum. Officials on both sides of the border are seeking emergency help in setting up shelters and services for migrants, some of whom are sleeping on streets.

Republicans argue Biden and Harris, designated the administration's point person on the root causes of migration, have relaxed restrictions that induced many people to leave their countries of origin. Biden has ended some policies but kept others enacted by former President Donald Trump, whose administration also grappled with spikes in border crossings and at one point separated immigrant families and children as a deterrence initiative.

White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan called the bus drop-offs a “cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”

“As we have repeatedly said, we are willing to work with anyone – Republican or Democrat alike – on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office, but these political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger," Hasan said in a statement Sunday.

Halifax2TheMax said:

New GOP branding: Fraud, it’s what we do.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/26/politics/george-santos-admits-embellishing-resume/index.html

He’ll be welcomed with open arms by the repubs in the House. They’ll love him. Don’t worry about lying boys and girls. Don’t worry about padding your resume either. Work hard? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps? Nah, that’s for suckers and losers. Just run for congress. As a repub.