Newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) faced various allegations before even taking office, after reports surfaced that he lied on his resume and questions were raised about his campaign finances. See&nbsp;Newsday&#39;s coverage on Santos here.

Long Island

Politics

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Laura Figueroa Hernandez

WASHINGTON — Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) notified House Republicans on Tuesday he was&nbsp;recusing&nbsp;himself from the two House committees he was appointed to earlier this month, saying he wanted&nbsp;&quot;to take time to properly clear my name before returning to my committees.&quot; 
 The recusal by Santos comes as he faces calls to resign and confronts county, state and federal probes into his campaign fundraising operation. 
 “With the ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations, I have submitted a request to [House Speaker Kevin McCarthy] that I be temporarily recused from my committee assignments until I am cleared,” Santos said in a statement posted to his congressional website. 
 “This was a decision that I take very seriously,” Santos said. 
 Santos, who has been trailed by reporters and camera crews since arriving on Capitol Hill a month ago, told GOP House members&nbsp;he had made the decision to recuse himself from the House Science and Small Business committees, saying he didn't&nbsp;want to be a distraction. 
<h3> Private meeting with House speaker </h3> 
 &nbsp;He said he had notified McCarthy (R-Calif.) of his move in a closed-door meeting Monday in McCarthy’s office.&quot; 
 Santos, speaking to reporters briefly as he left his congressional office on Tuesday afternoon, said he was not forced to recuse himself. 
 &quot;Nobody tells me to do anything,&quot; Santos said. &quot;I made the decision on my own that I thought best represented the interest of the voters.&quot; 
 Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, McCarthy said: “I think it was an appropriate decision.” 
 McCarthy said Santos told him he would stay off the committees&nbsp;“until he could clear everything up.” 
 McCarthy continued: “We had a discussion and he asked me if he could do that.” 
<h3> Calls to resign&nbsp;from Congress </h3> 
 Several Republican&nbsp;and Democratic House members&nbsp;have&nbsp;voiced concern&nbsp;about appointing Santos to House committees amid the probes. 
 Santos&nbsp;also has faced calls from New York's Republican House freshmen to resign. 
 Reps. Anthony D'Esposito (R-Island Park) and Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) in a joint statement Tuesday repeated&nbsp;their calls for Santos to resign. 
 “This is a classic case of someone quitting right before they were going to get fired,&quot; the lawmakers said. 
 &quot;While we, and the overwhelming percentage of Long Islanders we represent, are relieved to see that Santos will not be undeservedly sitting on committees, he should still do the right thing and resign,&quot; D'Esposito and LaLota said. &quot;That is what is in the best interest of his constituents and House Republicans.” 
 McCarthy came to Santos' defense earlier in January, telling reporters Santos was elected by voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District and should not be denied committee assignments. 
 McCarthy on Tuesday said Republican leaders would temporarily fill his seats with other House Republicans. 
 Asked by reporters what it would take for Santos to &quot;clear&quot; his name and return to the committees, McCarthy pointed to the House Ethics Committee. 
 The bipartisan panel has received at least one complaint about Santos, filed by Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) and Daniel Goldman (D-Brooklyn/Manhattan). 
 &quot;Going through Ethics on some of these concerns,” McCarthy said. “The voters have elected him, they’ll have a voice here in Congress, until he answers all those questions then he’ll, at that time he’ll be able to be seated on committees.&quot; 
 Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-Schuylerville), the No. 3 House Republican, confirmed news of Santos' recusal during a&nbsp;news&nbsp;conference Tuesday. 
 &quot;George has voluntarily removed himself from committees as he goes through this process,&quot; said Stefanik, who serves as House GOP conference chair. 
 Asked if she regretted her support for Santos on the campaign trail, Stefanik said: &quot;Ultimately, voters make this decision about who they elect to Congress.&quot; 
 Santos has admitted lying about his education and work experience. 
 Subsequent reporting has debunked many of his assertions about his biography&nbsp;while running for office last year — including statements his mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. 
 Congressional Democrats, who have argued that Santos should be barred from access to classified information provided to members of Congress, questioned Santos' move to temporarily step away from his committee assignments. 
 &quot;They defended putting him on committees and now they’re announcing that he’s not going to serve on a committee. So I just don’t understand what the play of the day is,&quot; Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said during a news conference with other House Democrats on Tuesday. 
<h3> Importance of committee work </h3> 
 Former Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, of Oyster Bay, who held the 3rd District seat before retiring from Congress in 2017, said by not participating in committee meetings, Santos will be skipping out on a key part of his congressional duties. 
 “One thing I learned in sixteen years in Congress is that most of the hard work is done in committees,&quot; said Israel, who heads Cornell University's Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. 
 &quot;That’s where bipartisan relations are formed, where legislation important to your district is crafted, where you can advocate for your constituents,&quot; Israel said in an email. &quot;We’re now paying George Santos not to do the hard work.” 
 Santos' communications director, Naysa Woomer, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. 
 Santos' announcement comes as McCarthy also is looking to shore up support for his bid to oust Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 
 McCarthy had pledged previously to boot Omar from the committee over remarks she made in 2021 about Israeli-Palestinian relations that some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle described as antisemitic. 
 Omar apologized for the statements but a group of right-flank Republicans have been calling for her removal. 
 McCarthy can only afford to lose the vote of four Republicans to succeed in his effort, but already two Republicans have said they will vote against Omar's removal. 
 Santos told the outlet Axios he planned to vote in favor of Omar's removal.

POSANTOS230201

Rep. George Santos recuses himself from committees amid resume fabrications

Santos recuses himself from House committees

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Yancey Roy

By a 6-1 ratio, voters in&nbsp;Rep. George Santos’ congressional district want him to resign since his lies about his education, family history and work profile have been revealed, according to a new Newsday/Siena College poll. 
 By a nearly 5-1 ratio, constituents say the Republican congressman cannot be an effective representative. Two of every three people who voted for him say they wouldn’t have if they knew then what they know now. 
 Further, in a district where prominent Republicans get good ratings and prominent Democrats don’t, an astounding 83% of his constituents view Santos unfavorably compared with&nbsp;7% favorably. 
 That’s a rating Siena pollster Don Levy said compares to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's after the invasion of Ukraine. 
 Those are some of the highlights of a survey Siena conducted on behalf of Newsday of residents of the 3rd Congressional District, which covers a large swath of&nbsp;Nassau County and parts of northeast Queens County. 
 Santos, who was largely unknown at the time, defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman, 55% to 45%, to win the seat last fall, a victory largely attributed to the coattails of Lee Zeldin, the GOP gubernatorial candidate who carried 57% of the district. 
 Since then, large swaths of Santos’ resume have been shown to be fabricated, as first reported by the New York Times. Multiple federal, state, local and congressional probes are underway. 
 In the meantime, the new poll shows constituents have turned on Santos. 
 “The district has buyer’s remorse — big time. Big time,” Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute, told Newsday. 
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 “How unique is it for someone to go from completely unknown to well known and so strongly disliked?” said Levy, noting that 81% of residents say they are closely following the news about Santos closely, a “dramatically high” number. 
 “It’s exceptional to see that level of recognition and that level of distaste,” Levy said. “That, to me, is striking.” 
 Among the findings: 
<ul> 
 <li> 78% of registered voters say Santos should resign; 13% said he should stay in office. Even among Republicans, 71% said he should resign while just 18% said stay. </li> 
 <li> 75% said he cannot be an effective representative; 16% said he could. </li> 
 <li> 71% said he shouldn’t have been seated on congressional committees; 17% said he should. </li> 
 <li> 63% of those who said they voted for Santos say they wouldn’t have if they knew then what they know now; 31% said they would still vote for him. </li> 
 <li> The survey indicates residents aren’t blaming Republicans, just Santos: 55% said Santos doesn’t reflect the values of the GOP, 32% said he does. </li> 
</ul> 
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 The Siena poll was conducted Jan. 23-26, among 653 registered voters in the 3rd Congressional District and weighted to reflect geographic and party patterns. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. 
 Some residents who voted for Santos told Newsday they did so merely because they backed Zeldin, backed the entire GOP ticket or wanted Republicans to control Congress. 
 Jillian O’Connor, 42, a Mineola Republican, said she “felt completely misled.” She wants him to resign. 
 “The arrogance and just the lack of judgment and pushing to see how far he could go makes me feel that, as a Republican, voting for him was a joke,” O’Connor said. “It seems like he was putting on a show, setting an example of what you can do if you cheat and lie from the beginning.” 
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 Asked if Santos reflected the party’s values, O’Connor said: “He will pretend to reflect any values he thinks will work for him.” 
 She said she has gotten into arguments with fellow Republicans about wanting Santos resign, but she believes he is “insulting” the party. 
 “We should be better than this,” O’Connor said. 
 “I am embarrassed to say I should have concentrated more on the local elections. I just voted across party lines,” said Evangeline Kohn, 68, a Bayville Republican. “I say this in an embarrassed way: I don’t really know what he stood for.” 
 But she stopped short of calling for his resignation. 
 “At this point, just let him finish out his term. No one’s ever going to vote for him again,” Kohn said. 
 Independents and Democrats interviewed by Newsday were even harsher. 
 “I can’t stand looking at his face when he’s on TV,” said Nicole Bruno, 56, a Manhasset resident not enrolled in a major party. “I don’t think he stands for anything but himself. Whatever can get him elected is what he is going to say, obviously. I don’t even think he believes why he’s there — I think he just wants the notoriety.” 
 She said she is following the story with disgust. “Everyday, I read everything about him and I watch every news story about him and I think he’s a clown,” said Bruno, who didn’t vote for Santos and wants him to resign. “I know all politicians lie and embellish, but he’s lied about every single thing.” 
 Allen Michaels, 31, a Great Neck resident not enrolled in a major party, said that any other person caught lying in a job application would be fired — an analogy used by several respondents who talked to Newsday. He said Santos should resign. 
 “Here is a clear case of a guy who is not there to represent the people, if he lied so much just to get elected,” Michaels said. “I don’t remember anything he said that was true.” 
 If Santos resigns, a new election would be held for the office with parties getting to nominate new candidates. Michaels said it’s “very sad” that some want Santos to stay in office just because they back the party. 
 “They don’t care the guy has no integrity, has no morals,” Michaels said. 
 Lorraine Bernstein, a 75-year-old Bayside Democrat who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, said the “whole situation is very difficult and very sad.” 
 She said Santos hurts the Republican Party, should resign and cannot be effective “and it’s his own fault because I don’t think people are going to work with him.” 
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 Santos lied about attending college at all, working for big-name Wall Street companies, being a volleyball star, being Jewish, having grandparents who escaped the Holocaust and losing his mother to the 9/11 attacks. 
 He’s under scrutiny for statements he had to file during the campaign, attesting that his income leapt from $55,000 to $750,000 in one year and claiming, initially, that he personally lent his campaign $705,000. It’s sparked accusations that Santos may have illegally funneled money to his campaign. 
 The U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. House Ethics Committee, the state attorney general and Nassau County district attorney are actively reviewing the issue or have been asked to review. Further, Santos possibly is facing revived charges in Brazil, where he once lived, over the use of a stolen checkbook to purchase goods. 
 Santos has resisted widespread calls for his resignation. He said he merely embellished his resume and broadly maintained his innocence regarding other allegations, saying: “I’m not a fraud.” 
 Among the related questions Siena surveyed, 93% said if a politician is exposed for lying, he or she should admit wrongdoing. Just 4% said the politician should say the “lie was really no big thing.” 
 Yet, they are pessimistic about what actually happens in such situations: 84% said public figures today are more likely to “minimize and blame others” when caught lying. Just 12% said public figures are likely to take responsibility. 
 Perhaps as a related result, 77% said they agreed with the statement that Santos’ behavior and refusal to resign shows “our political system is broken.” Just 12% said the Santos issue was a one-of-a-kind event that says little about the state of politics. 
 “Obviously, it’s an indictment of how public figures and politicians are handling this,” Levy said, later adding: “Is it embarrassing? Is it disheartening? Is it disillusioning? It’s somewhat all of those.”

STPOLL230129

Newsday poll: 78% of 3rd District residents say George Santos should resign

Newsday poll: 3rd District residents, by 6-1 ratio, say George Santos should resign

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The Newsday/Siena College poll shows&nbsp;78% of registered voters in his district say Santos should resign.&nbsp;NewsdayTV&#39;s Ken Buffa, and Newsday&#39;s Albany Bureau Chief Yancey Roy discuss what lies ahead for the congressman.

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George Santos poll: 78% of his constituents think he should resign

Newsday

Bye, George: 78% of his constituents say he should resign, poll shows

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Matthew Chayes

For two of Long Island’s three freshman congressmen, it’s been a busy January of appointments and phone calls and&nbsp;schmoozing&nbsp;with local officials back home. 
 In <a href="https://ziplook.house.gov/htbin/findrep_house?ZIP=11780">the easternmost congressional district</a>, the office of new Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) has discussed the Asharoken sea wall, Riverhead Town Square, Middle Country Road revitalization and the dredging of Northport Harbor, said his spokeswoman Lauren Lembo.&nbsp; 
 In <a href="https://ziplook.house.gov/htbin/findrep_house?ZIP=11558">the district covering the southern half of Nassau County</a>, there have been discussions involving the office of new Rep. Anthony D’Esposito&nbsp;(R-Island Park) about flood-mitigating sea gates in Freeport&nbsp;and coastal resiliency in Island Park and Long Beach, with a planned discussion about the Bay Park Conveyance Project, said his spokesman Matt Capp. 
 In the Island’s <a href="https://ziplook.house.gov/htbin/findrep_house?ZIP=11542">westernmost district</a>, new Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) has been busy, too. 
 But just barely, if at all, with the needs of local government officials, according to interviews with Newsday&nbsp;and a review of Santos' Twitter accounts. 
 Santos has been buffeted by&nbsp;still-expanding <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">revelations of lies and&nbsp;distortions</a>&nbsp;about his past, as well as allegations of involvement&nbsp;in scams,&nbsp;nearly all of which&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html">were uncovered</a>&nbsp;weeks after his election in November.&nbsp;He’s apparently&nbsp;made few if any known inroads with the local officials&nbsp;who run the dozens of towns, villages, cities and other government entities in the chunk of Nassau and sliver of eastern Queens he represents. 
 Just as <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2020-census-apportionment-results.html">the 750,000 or so constituents in each of America's&nbsp;435 congressional districts</a>&nbsp;can seek out&nbsp;their local member of Congress to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/george-santos-constituents-3rd-congressional-district-tvyulp1t">help</a> with immigration issues, veterans affairs, admission to military academies and more, governments look to that same politician&nbsp;to act as a key liaison&nbsp;to the federal bureaucracy:&nbsp;unlocking grant money, untangling&nbsp;red tape and bringing home the proverbial bacon. 
 “I have not heard a word from George Santos,” said Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck, a fellow Republican.&nbsp;She said she's&nbsp;turning to other members of Congress to address the city’s federal needs —&nbsp;repaving roads, rehabbing parking garages, fixing water mains to avert emergency shutdowns, and more. 
 “George Santos is busy making a fool out of himself. Not looking to help me or anybody, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. 
 Santos is the subject of several investigations by <a href="http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/anne-donnelly-george-santos-nassau-district-attorney-resume-lies-congressman-elect-c1lrk9wn">county</a>, <a href="https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/12/22/george-santos-investigated-by-new-york-attorney-general-james">state</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/nyregion/george-santos-long-island-investigation.html">federal</a> prosecutors, as well as <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/george-santos-house-ethics-committee-financial-disclosure-sscssril">an ethics complaint</a>. Among the subjects being probed: his financial dealings and&nbsp;political fundraising activity. Each day seems to bring a new revelation about his past, character, temperament. 
 “We could really use substantive representation in Washington, D.C., which we are currently obviously not getting, and we don’t anticipate — or at least I don’t anticipate — that the current congressman will be able to do his job effectively with this hanging over&nbsp;his head. So it’s as if we are kind of in limbo now,” said Mineola’s mayor, Paul Pereira, a self-described independent, who said the village counts on the federal government to provide grants such as those that help ensure clean drinking water and&nbsp;improve mass transit. 
<h3> Local governments look&nbsp;for answers </h3> 
 Weeks after the revelations, about 30 fellow Republicans on Long Island <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-cairo-nassau-republican-bgewy6pv">announced</a>&nbsp;they would refuse to work with Santos, suggesting his constituents turn elsewhere for help, such as to D’Esposito’s office. 
 Santos’ communications director, Naysa Woomer, has not responded to messages seeking comment, nor has&nbsp;Santos answered his&nbsp;cellphone.&nbsp; 
 On Twitter,&nbsp;Santos on Thursday&nbsp;<a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/Santos4Congress/status/1618822155365658625">criticized</a> press coverage about him: “I am getting the job I signed up for done, while you all spiral out of control.” 
 In one of his few tweets related directly to his district's needs, he&nbsp;commented on a media personality’s post&nbsp;suggesting that the Village of Roslyn adopt an app for parking meters. He <a href="https://twitter.com/santos4congress/status/1616986296483815424">responded</a>&nbsp;Jan. 21:&nbsp;“I’d gladly work with the local village to help facilitate.” A message seeking comment from Roslyn’s mayor wasn’t returned.&nbsp; 
 North Hempstead Town Councilwoman Mariann&nbsp;Dalimonte, a Democrat who represents areas including Port Washington, the Plandome villages, Munsey Park and&nbsp;Flower Hill, said that she felt confident when seeking help from Santos' predecessor in the 3rd Congressional District, Democrat Thomas Suozzi. Issues included&nbsp;recovery from destruction wrought by Hurricane Ida in 2021, funding for construction at North Hempstead Beach Park and dropping oysters in Manhasset Bay to improve water quality. 
 “I just knew it was dealt with,” with appropriate follow-ups, even if not always successfully, she said. 
 That&nbsp;changed when Santos took office earlier this month, according to Dalimonte. 
 “I don’t have that anymore,” she&nbsp;said, “Now I have nobody. Who am I contacting? He doesn’t answer his phone.” 
 Dalimonte has instead gone to the offices of New York’s two U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have statewide jurisdiction to help any constituent or municipality.&nbsp; 
 “Let’s think about that:&nbsp;Gillibrand and Schumer, they represent the entire state. Could you imagine if their offices are now getting phone calls from everyone in Congressional District 3,&nbsp;because we don’t have an effective congressperson? That’s not fair to them. That’s not fair to us,” Dalimonte said. 
 The North Hempstead town supervisor, Jennifer DeSena, who caucuses with the Republicans&nbsp;but&nbsp;remains a registered Democrat, said that given Santos’ problems, she’s relying on the town’s grant coordinator, others in the delegation such as Schumer, and a lobbyist based in Washington, D.C., to at least maintain what the town’s been getting in recent years. 
 “I hope that we’re not looking at two years,” she said, “but I believe that with the network we have, that we will be able to take care of what we used to receive from the federal government and from the grants.” 
 She said that neither she nor her staff have heard from Santos,&nbsp;nor have&nbsp;the offices of the other biggest governments in the district:&nbsp;the county executive’s office, according to&nbsp;spokesman Chris Boyle, or the Oyster Bay supervisor’s office, said spokesman Brian Nevin. 
<h3> King: 'Always something going on' </h3> 
 Peter King, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/peter-king/K000210?q=%7B%22congress%22%3A103%7D">a Long Island congressman from 1993 until 2021</a>, said he's never heard of a member of Congress with little to no relationship&nbsp;with officials back home. When King, a Republican, was in office, he said, a local municipality's staffer&nbsp;would speak with him or his office at least weekly. 
 “I mean, there’s always something going on,” King said in an interview, recalling how staff in his office would report: “‘Oh, I was talking to John Smith or Mary Jones yesterday from the city, or so-and-so called from Mineola. You know, somebody called us from the Town of Babylon or the Town of Islip.’” 
 Much of the work by congressional offices for localities back home goes on behind the scenes, by staff and the member. They&nbsp;acting as a liaison with an alphabet soup of <a href="https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies">federal agencies</a>&nbsp;to address issues locally:&nbsp;Beach erosion. Superstorm Sandy. Post-9/11 security funding for police forces. MacArthur Airport. 
 And King had relationships not just with fellow Republicans, he said. 
 “I’m talking about Democrats now: Richie Schaffer, Steve Bellone, Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo — they would call, their people would call,” he said. 
 Among the politicians also representing parts of Santos' district, one big name said he'd work with the congressman: New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat. Earlier this month, he <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/029-23/transcript-mayor-eric-adams-releases-preliminary-budget-fiscal-year-2024-holds-media">answered</a> “yes, yes, definitely” when asked whether&nbsp;he’d work with Santos. 
 “We’re going to need votes on the federal level, so until it is determined that he no longer should serve, right now, his name is congressman,” Adams said Jan. 12,&nbsp;“and we’re not leaving any stone unturned on who we should be sitting down with to make sure New Yorkers get resources that they need.” 
 But the mayor and his team have not met with the congressman and his aides, the mayor's press secretary, Fabien Levy, emailed last week. 
 And the mayor, in an interview with CBS/2 on Friday, appeared to have had enough. 
 &quot;I think he should resign,&quot; Adams said.

PODISTRICT230129

In George Santos' district, local officials turn elsewhere for help

'He doesn't answer his phone': Local officials in Santos' district are worried

House Republicans Santos

Newsday Staff

Major Long Island&nbsp;donors to the congressional campaign of George Santos, including prominent wealth managers,&nbsp;investors and the&nbsp;chairman of Nassau County's only public hospital, said they were &quot;misled&quot; and &quot;defrauded&quot; by Santos' fundraising appeals, and some want their&nbsp;money back. 
 More than a half-dozen prominent local business leaders, speaking publicly for the first time, told Newsday they were deceived by the candidate and presumed, incorrectly, that Republican Party leaders had scrutinized his record and background. 
 The donors contacted last week said revelations over the past month that Santos lied on his resume, and fabricated stories about his educational, work and&nbsp;ethnic backgrounds, had caused them to question information he gave them when he was soliciting contributions. 
 &quot;Of course we feel lied to and betrayed,” Iris Maidenbaum, of Lawrence, told Newsday. Her husband, Shalom Maidenbaum, runs Maidenbaum Property Tax Reduction Group, a major tax-challenge company. 
 The Maidenbaums gave Santos committees a total of nearly $22,000, Federal Election Commission records show. 
 &quot;Our trust came from not only him as a person. But also, I guess we incorrectly assumed there was a vetting process that may have exposed this before the election,” she said. 
 A director serving on a corporate board, a top veterinary cardiologist&nbsp;and the mayor of Sands Point&nbsp;are among Long Islanders Santos successfully courted during his two-year campaign to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, Newsday found. 
 Santos&nbsp;raised $5.5&nbsp;million over the election cycle — $1.2 million of which came from Nassau and Suffolk County residents, the Newsday analysis shows. 
 Nassau residents gave nearly&nbsp;$670,000,&nbsp;while about $550,000 came from individual Suffolk donors, state and federal records show. 
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 Matthew Bruderman, a Centre Island financier and chairman of the board that runs Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow;&nbsp;his wife, Kerri Beth;&nbsp;and their son, Trevor, contributed a total of nearly $75,000 to committees tied to Santos, a&nbsp;Newsday analysis of Federal Election Commission and New York State Board of Elections filings shows. 
 A Bruderman attorney, who declined to be identified,&nbsp;said in a statement that Bruderman and his family were “fraudulently induced” to support Santos, and have formally requested refunds of their contributions. 
 Bruderman, who also was a major supporter of the Nassau County Republican Committee and Republican Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful campaign for governor last year, “believes strongly that this kind of deceit is deplorable, undermines public trust in our institutions and Mr. Santos should have no place in public life,” the statement said. 
 James Metzger, a Bruderman business associate and founder and chief executive of the Garden City-based Whitmore Agency, an insurance brokerage and financial services firm, was another big Santos donor. 
 Metzger, an All-American lacrosse player at Hofstra University, contributed about $40,000 to Santos committees and the Nassau GOP’s federal account, which coordinated with the Santos campaign, FEC records show. 
 Nassau Republican leaders presented Santos to Metzger as the “duly nominated” 3rd District candidate, a Metzger spokesman&nbsp;who&nbsp;declined to be identified&nbsp;said in a statement to Newsday. 
 “Mr. Metzger believes that the misrepresentations made by Mr. Santos to all who supported his campaign demonstrated his total lack of personal integrity,&quot; the statement said. 
 Metzger &quot;also believes strongly that this kind of deceit, from any public figure, be it a Congressional Candidate to a sitting President of the United States, is unacceptable and undermines public trust in our Republic and its institutions,” the statement said. 
 Maidenbaum,&nbsp;Bruderman and Metzger were among about 30&nbsp;Nassau and Suffolk residents who along with family members or co-workers&nbsp;contributed $10,000 or more to campaign committees associated with Santos,&nbsp;according to the&nbsp;Newsday analysis. 
 Santos beat Democrat Robert Zimmerman in November in the race for the open seat in the 3rd Congressional District, which covers parts of Nassau and Queens. 
 The Newsday review found the homes of Santos' largest donors largely were concentrated in North Shore&nbsp;communities&nbsp;such as Mill Neck, Locust Valley&nbsp;and Lloyd Harbor. 
 Significant Suffolk donors resided in communities such as Bohemia and Shirley. 
 The 3rd District originally included parts of Suffolk, but redistricting placed the district entirely in Nassau and Queens. 
<a class="p-smartembed" data-onecms-id="contentid/NGYwODM1MzctZDEwOS00" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="javascript:window.parent.actionEventData({$contentId:'contentid/NGYwODM1MzctZDEwOS00', $action:'view', $target:'work'})" polopoly:contentid="contentid/NGYwODM1MzctZDEwOS00">STORYWIDGET: poDONORS230129_map</a> 
 Newsday reached out to more than two dozen&nbsp;contributors after developing a list of Long Island ZIP codes associated with donations to Santos’ primary congressional campaign committee, his federal leadership committee, a joint fundraising committee with the Nassau Republican Committee&nbsp;and a state political action committee run by his sister, Tiffany Santos. 
 Nine donors responded in interviews or statements. 
 They included Robert Mangi, an insurance executive who contributed nearly $200,000 to the Santos and Nassau committees, and&nbsp;Dr. Jeff Vacirca, who heads a prominent Suffolk-based oncology practice and contributed nearly $50,000. 
 Vacirca and Todd O’Connell, the practice's president, donated a total of nearly $100,000 to PACs tied to Santos, according to FEC data. 
 After reading news reports of extensive falsehoods in Santos' work and education history, Vacirca in <a href="https://www.newsday.com/beta/long-island/politics/santos-vacirca-election-vqw6u2uq">a Newsday story last week</a>&nbsp;said of Santos: “I have to say, one of the best con men I’ve ever met. It’s embarrassing to admit being taken in by someone like him.” 
 Others&nbsp;did not respond or declined to comment. Two hung up the phone on a Newsday reporter. 
 Santos is the subject of federal, state&nbsp;and local investigations since revelations in December that he fabricated much of his back story. 
 Earlier this month, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging&nbsp;Santos acted as a straw donor for others and hid the true sources of funds he provided in loans to his campaign. 
 On Tuesday, the Santos campaign amended campaign disclosure reports to change the source of a&nbsp;$500,000 loan to his campaign. 
 In a filing in December, Santos checked a box attesting that the loan came from &quot;Personal Funds of the Candidate.&quot; In the filing on Tuesday, Santos left the box unchecked. 
 Santos blamed his campaign staff for Tuesday's filing. 
 Although Nassau Republican Party leaders now&nbsp;strongly condemn Santos, they&nbsp;reaped significant benefits during his two-year campaign for Congress. 
 <a href="https://www.newsday.com/beta/long-island/politics/santos-congress-ibztut1e">Newsday reported previously that </a>Santos committees transferred $185,000 to Nassau Republican committees. 
 Metzger, Mangi, O'Connell&nbsp;and Vacirca contributed to the Nassau GOP's federal account, which then spent money on Santos' campaign operations. 
 Santos did not respond to a request for comment for this story. 
<h3> Next Gen or fraud? </h3> 
 The Newsday analysis highlights the success of Santos, then a little-known congressional candidate with roots in Queens, in tapping a network of influential Nassau and Suffolk residents, many of whom give regularly to candidates for office. 
 Now, many say they feel burned. 
 &quot;More than the personal humiliation of finding the person you thought was a 'Next Gen' political standard bearer is, in fact, a fraud is the realization that these stunning revelations come with significant collateral damage,&quot; Mangi, a Lloyd Harbor resident, said in a statement to Newsday. 
 Mangi, who runs Garden City-based Northeast Coverages, a wholesale insurance broker, and his wife, Sandra, contributed a total of $197,400 to Santos-tied committees, state and federal records show. 
 That includes a $150,000 donation Robert Mangi&nbsp;made to Tiffany Santos’ Rise NY PAC&nbsp;on Sept. 10, 2021, FEC filings show. 
 Mangi didn't address how he met Santos. 
 But he called his&nbsp;experience&nbsp;&quot;a cautionary tale for everyone, regardless of enrollment, ideology, or their level of campaign support … It will surely have a chilling effect across the political spectrum.&quot; 
<h3> Why top donors give </h3> 
 Steve Israel, a&nbsp;Democrat who served in Congress for 16 years, including four years in the 3rd District,&nbsp;said of donors in districts such as Santos': &quot;These are people who know how to make a deal,&nbsp;and how not to be swindled, you would think. They're not easy marks.&quot; 
 Israel, who led the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011-15, said, &quot;my own experience with&nbsp;donors, who were sophisticated&nbsp;and affluent, was that they really knew their stuff. You had to make a convincing case. They weren't easy. You know, they didn't fall prey to sound bites.&quot; 
 Israel,&nbsp;director of the nonpartisan&nbsp;Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and the owner&nbsp;of Theodore's Books in Oyster Bay, continued: &quot;How they fell prey to this guy's [Santos'] lies&nbsp;is part of the mystery.&quot;&nbsp; 
 Neil Malhotra is&nbsp;a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who&nbsp;has written about the mentality of “elite donors.” 
 Such contributors often are concerned about national issues, he said, and many knew control of the House of Representatives in 2022 could hinge on the outcome of competitive races on Long Island, where there were three open seats, including in the 3rd District. 
 Regardless of their motivation, those who fall prey to unscrupulous candidates risk possible reputational damage given that the public can access their contributions online, Malhotra said. 
 “And if you gave to somebody who's a con man, it reflects on your judgment,” Malhotra said. 
 Many elite donors&nbsp;also give money to candidates in the hopes of gaining access to them on particular issues once they're elected, Stanley Renshon, a political science professor at The CUNY Graduate Center, told Newsday. 
 “They know they’re buying a hearing,” Renshon&nbsp;said. 
 If an elected official is exposed as a fraud and ostracized, such access no longer is worth much, Renshon said. 
 For donors who backed such candidates, &quot;there’s a certain amount of embarrassment,&quot; in telling associates or friends, &quot;‘Oh, I talked to him and you know, He’s going to do X, Y and Z.’ ” 
<h3> Support from Suffolk County </h3> 
 Major Santos donors in Suffolk included&nbsp;auto dealer Raymond Tantillo, who along with several family members&nbsp;gave approximately $50,000 to Santos committees, records show. 
 Tantillo didn’t return a message left at one of his dealerships. 
 But Raymond Pensabene, of West Sayville, manager of Chevrolet of&nbsp;Smithtown, a Tantillo group dealer in St. James,&nbsp;told Newsday: “Who wouldn’t feel duped with this? It’s a real shame with this situation. I feel very defrauded.” 
 Pensabene, whose family gave $20,300 to Santos committees, said the 2022 elections were about more than George Santos:&nbsp;“It was just about change. That was really the bottom line.&quot; 
 Of Santos, Pensabene said: “Shame on everyone who vetted people.” 
 George Kramer, a veterinary cardiologist with Atlantic Coast Veterinary Specialists in Bohemia, and family gave $23,600, FEC filings show.&nbsp;Kramer did not respond to requests for comment. 
 Vince Pipia, of Dix Hills,&nbsp;whose family gave about $14,000 to Santos or campaign committees tied to him, told Newsday:&nbsp;“Of course I feel duped and betrayed by the whole thing. You’d think there’d be a better vetting process.” 
<h3> 'Wish we knew then what we know now' </h3> 
 Peter Forman, mayor of the Village of Sands Point, and family gave Santos a total of $11,600 for his 2022 race. 
 “My wife and I have consistently supported local candidates,&quot; including Israel and Democrat Thomas&nbsp;Suozzi, who retired from the 3rd District seat in December, Forman said in a statement to Newsday. 
 Forman, a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a nonprofit that&nbsp;seeks to strengthen ties between the Jewish community and Republican officials, reflected the feelings of many of the major Santos donors Newsday contacted, saying:&nbsp;“We were misled by Santos’ representations and wish we knew then what we know now, as do many others.” 
 Mangi&nbsp;predicted donors solicited by candidates will ask:&nbsp;“What do I really know about this person, issue, or PAC?” 
 Iris Maidenbaum, while not a 3rd District resident, said Santos' refusal to resign was hurting his constituents. 
 “They believed in him and he’s representing them,” Maidenbaum said. “The whole thing, in a word if you wanted to sum it up, is bizarre.&quot;

PODONORS230129

Major George Santos donors say they were 'misled' and 'defrauded' 

Major Santos donors say they were 'misled' and 'defrauded'

poDONORS230129_photos

Michael Gormley

ALBANY — Lying on resumes in the private sector — and the cottage industry it&nbsp;has spawned — shows that fabricating work histories extends well beyond the political scandal surrounding Rep. George Santos, according to business analysts and academic researchers. 
 Fifty-five percent of job seekers admitted they lied on their resume, according to a survey last year by business consulting firm StandOut CV. 
 “It’s just so prevalent,” said Joey F. George, an emeritus distinguished professor from Iowa State University whose research field is known as “deception and credibility assessment.” 
 “I’d say 30 to 60 or 70% of resumes have something that is just not true,” George said after analyzing data from human resources departments. “There is probably a lot of stuff that isn’t getting caught … I think HR professionals now just expect there will be something on there that isn’t honest.” 
 The StandOut CV survey found that 17% of job seekers in the United States hired fake job reference services with paid actors at about $145 a pop, while 41% lied about a college degree. Some of them purchased phony college certificates at about $270 each. 
 “There are huge numbers of companies and freelancers offering these services now, and 1 in 6 of the people we surveyed had used one,” said Andrew Fennell, director of StandOut CV. The London-based, global company provides services to improve resumes to reflect an applicant’s best and truthful first impression. “But, of course, it must also be driven by a big demand of job seekers who feel the need to lie on their resume.” 
<h3> 'It’s all made up' </h3> 
 That’s where entrepreneurs such as&nbsp;William Schmidt come in. 
 In his companies&nbsp;based in Atlanta, he can tweak, overhaul or create out of whole cloth your resume and list of references. 
 But the key is what follows. When prospective employers check on the references for&nbsp;a client and on past companies listed on his or her resume, they will find active websites. Phone numbers for references will have the phony company’s area code, and the call will be answered live by a worker posing as an operator. Email addresses will use a URL that matches the fake company’s name. 
 Then the prospective employer will be contacted by one of Schmidt’s employees posing as the applicant’s former boss, human resources executive or co-worker, who will relay glowing things about the applicant and verify the dates of employment, titles, skills and responsibilities on the resume. 
 “It’s all made up,” Schmidt said. 
 Schmidt said he and his companies, CareerExcuse and WorkReferences, charge prices that range from $199 to $399 for a subscription, with monthly renewals between $25 and $100. 
 Companies operating in this field say they operate legally by using fake companies and the names of fictional company executives. 
 “Lying on a resume, cover letter, or job application isn't technically illegal,” said Christian Eilers, a resume expert and career advice writer, in an article for the online career adviser Zety. “These forms aren't legal documents, so usually you can’t get prosecuted for lying on them. However, if you falsify documents that ‘back up’ claims of educational history, for example, that could be grounds for trouble with the law.” 
 Job applicants who lie in an application that must be signed to verify the truth of the information could face civil charges. Lying about a professional license, a degree at a real college&nbsp;or expertise critical to the job could result in a misdemeanor for the job applicant, business consultants said. 
<h3> Chance of getting fired </h3> 
 The more immediate threat to resume liars is getting fired after the landing the job and the faked information is revealed, or including a line that is discovered in a background check that raises a red flag about the entire resume. 
 The reason resume&nbsp;fabrications&nbsp;work&nbsp;&quot;is&nbsp;called ‘truth bias,’ ” George said. “Evolution has gotten us to the point as a species where we tend to believe what people tell us, even if we don’t know them. We tend to believe strangers … it’s just our default. 
 “I think people like George Santos and other people understand that,” George said. “People will believe this stuff and people who know that will automatically take advantage of that tendency.” 
 Schmidt said his clients don’t seem troubled about securing phony credentials. 
 “I don’t think many people are concerned,” Schmidt said. “I think they are more concerned about putting food on the table.” 
 He said some lies on resumes are aimed at overcoming an unfairness by employers. Business consultants and academic researchers have found that some people lie on their resume to avoid being rejected for their ethnicity, race, age or gender. Still others come from past jobs where the policy is to refuse&nbsp;to confirm or deny the past employment or performance of workers out of fear of lawsuits. 
 Workers, especially after economic shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, try to cover up gaps in employment from layoffs or out of health fears or because they took a chance on an entrepreneurial adventure that didn’t work out. 
 Many employers also use “check-a-box” applications that prompt some people to lie rather than list a past conviction, said Michael Corwin, a retired private investigator who used to do preemployment investigations. 
 “In the old days, an employer would basically ignore any candidate who had that. I don’t think that’s right,” Corwin said. “There’s been a cottage industry that claims everybody should have a second chance. While I believe that’s true, I also believe in transparency.” 
<h3> Some lies&nbsp;indefensible </h3> 
 But there are also baldfaced lies, which seem indefensible, George said. 
 As a result, companies have hired “third-party verifiers” to check resume claims. Computer “applicant tracking systems” automatically reject hundreds of resumes for a single job by searching for keywords and gaps in a lexicon developed through years of weeding out applicants that artificial intelligence deems unsatisfactory. 
 “They haven’t been able to come up with any silver bullets,” George said. 
 For these experts in the field, the Santos saga of lying about his education, work history or&nbsp;his parents ethnicity&nbsp;comes as no surprise. 
 The Santos scandal “highlights the fact that people out there are lying on their resumes — no matter what their industry or background — and that all employers need to be cautious and put rigid background checks in place for all of their new hires,” Fennell said. 
 Some suggest Santos also reflects something about society today. 
 “He's what we are now,” Schmidt said.&nbsp;“Everything is basically made up. Everything is fake. Everyone is a story. He’s just the culture.”

News

Region/State

STHOWTOLIE230129

It's not just George Santos: Lying on resumes is a thriving business

Job seekers lying on resumes is becoming a big business, experts say

stPROBES230122_photos

ALBANY — Truth in politics is taking&nbsp;a beating these days, political scientists say. 
 Fragmented news media aimed at target audiences, unfettered social media and a polarized electorate have helped make political lying more prevalent today, they say,&nbsp;and leaves a trail much longer than the&nbsp;scandal dogging Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens). 
 “It’s gotten out of control,” said Catherine J. Ross, a professor at the George Washington Law School. “Once a lie is up there, it’s very hard for the truth to catch up. That’s especially hard with social media.” 
 Lying in politics isn’t new, but a lie can fly faster and farther than ever because of technology and high levels of partisanship. 
 “Certainly, there were lies about opponents and the candidates going back to the time of the founders,” Ross said. “Our first couple of presidential elections were full of lies. But I think we have become much more aware of them in recent years.” 
 She said outright&nbsp;lies and intentional misrepresentations in recent years have “desensitized us to accept as normal what is not normal … there’s been a shifting of norms. Lying is no longer something that disqualifies people,” said Ross, author of “Right to Lie? Presidents, Other Liars and the First Amendment.” 
 One reason, according to&nbsp;Mitchell McKinney, a political communications professor and a dean at the University of Akron,&nbsp;is a fragmented media where conservatives and liberals listen only to what they consider like-minded commentators on cable TV, podcasts and webcasts. 
 When news broke in December that Santos&nbsp;fabricated his work history and education,&nbsp;he went on&nbsp;the “Cats at Night” WABC radio show, which plays to a conservative and Republican audience,&nbsp;to contend the fabrications were merely embellishments.&nbsp;Show host John Catsimatidis and three relatives contributed $11,600 to Santos’ campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. 
 Analysts said people in a sharply partisan environmental will believe&nbsp;a lie — or not make any effort to determine if it’s true — because it reinforces what they already believe. 
 “I think when you are preaching to the choir, telling people what they want to hear and already believe in … you are more likely to believe it,” said Timothy R. Levine, a distinguished professor and communications chairman at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who researches deception and credibility assessment. 
 “Then there are the social surroundings,&quot; he added. &quot;What do all your friends think? If I’m telling you what you want to hear and it not only appeals to you but your friends, and you hear it over and over again, I think you’re going to believe it whether it’s true or false. 
 “I think because of the political polarization and the information bubble, this is truer in the political circle than it’s been in a long time,” Levine said. 
 Political lies can be divided into two categories.&nbsp;&quot;Special access lies&quot; are ones politicians want to hide,&nbsp;such as phony backgrounds; &quot;norm-breaking lies&quot; are falsehoods that politicians and others&nbsp;want people to hear for a political purpose,&nbsp;said Ezra Zuckerman, a management professor at the Massachusetts&nbsp;Institute of Technology and co-author of “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue.” 
 Today, the featured scandal is that involving Santos, who this month acknowledged he lied extensively about his background in winning a congressional seat in November to represent parts of Nassau County and Queens. 
 Last year, Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, a Democrat, resigned after he was found to have lied in his application for the job. He had said he wasn’t being investigated by federal agents when it turned out he was. Bribery and fraud charges were dropped months later. 
 Those scandals come on the heels of major&nbsp;political lies. 
 For example, a&nbsp;court ordered InfoWars host Alex Jones, an&nbsp;influential conservative figure, to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. He used his social media platform to repeatedly say the massacre that left 20 children and six adults dead&nbsp;was a hoax. 
 Inside politics, operatives and principals know lying can pay off, said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political strategist. 
 “What you say matters,” Sheinkopf said, referring to political promises. “What you do matters less. The battle is to remain in office, offend few, and excuse what has not been accomplished. And truth has nothing to do with any of it at all.” 
 Yet there is a cost to the public they serve, the researchers said. 
 “Politicians are one of the least-respected professional groups, but their words and actions do have impact,” said Heidi Julien, professor of information science at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education. “When these words and actions are dishonest, the harm to democracy may be relatively limited in each case, but cumulatively, they work to undermine faith in government and in the important and positive service that many who serve in government aim to accomplish.”

STLIES230122

Blame technology, partisanship for rise in political lying, experts say

Technology, partisanship make political lies more prevalent today, experts say

stLIES230122_photos

WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission is seeking answers from Rep. George Santos’ campaign after the campaign submitted new filings this week listing a new treasurer — an individual who has asserted that he turned down the job and never authorized the campaign to use his name or signature. 
 The FEC, in letters sent Thursday to the Devolder-Santos for Congress campaign committee and five other political fundraising committees tied to Santos, said the commission was aware “that you may have failed to include the true, correct, or complete treasurer information.” 
 The letter, made public on the FEC website on Friday, warns that “submission of false, erroneous, or incomplete information” is subject to punishment under federal statute, and gives the committees until March 3 to respond. 
 The letter is directed to Thomas Datwyler, who has served as the campaign treasurer for a number of GOP candidates across the country. Datwyler’s attorney, Derek Ross, told Newsday in a phone interview on Wednesday that his client never accepted Santos’ job offer and had notified Santos’ team via email on Monday that he declined their offer. 
 Ross said Datwyler never authorized the Santos campaign to use his information which was submitted in filings posted to the FEC website on Wednesday. 
 On Friday, Ross submitted a letter on behalf of Datwyler to the FEC, asking the FEC to refer the matter to law enforcement for criminal investigation, according to a report from The Daily Beast. Ross did not return a call and email seeking a copy of the email. 
 Santos’ attorney Joseph Murray on Wednesday said it was “inappropriate” to comment when asked who submitted the paperwork listing Datwyler as the replacement for Santos’ longtime campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks of Shirley. 
 Marks has served as the campaign treasurer for a number of high-profile New York Republican candidates, including former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley). She has faced increased scrutiny over her role overseeing Santos’ campaign finances as the embattled politician,&nbsp;who has admitted lying about his education and work history, also faces questions over the source of $700,000 in loans to his campaign and his pattern of spending just below the threshold requiring receipts. 
 Santos on Friday, speaking to reporters outside of his congressional office, did not respond directly when asked questions about the status of his treasurer. By federal law, a campaign committee cannot raise funds and reimburse expenses without a treasurer. The lack of treasurer also comes as all committees must file a year-end report to the FEC on Jan. 31. 
 “You guys keep asking the same question knowing that it’s not accurate,” Santos said, adding that he will “soon” hold a news conference to “appease all of your questions.” 
 Wednesday’s filing removing Marks as treasurer came a day after Santos’ campaign submitted amended FEC filings to reflect that Santos no longer was the source of a $500,000 loan to his campaign. 
 Santos on Wednesday blamed his campaign staff for Tuesday's filing. 
 “Let’s make it very clear, I don't amend anything, I don't touch any of my FEC stuff, right?” Santos told reporters. 
 The FEC, in its letter, states that if Santos does not respond by its March deadline the commission will list his committees as “unverified” on the FEC website and could refer the committees to authorities for “false filing.” 
 Also Friday, Santos, who has been denounced by Long Island Jewish leaders for claiming to be the descendant of Holocaust survivors, delivered a speech on the House floor marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. 
 &quot;Antisemitism is a plague in this nation, and it is undoubtedly up to us to ensure this kind of tragedy is never to be seen again,&quot; Santos said, in a short speech that did not touch upon his own claims of being “Jew-ish.” 
 Santos previously claimed that his grandparents fled from Belgium to Brazil to escape the Holocaust, but immigration paperwork filed by his mother that was made public earlier this month, indicates his grandparents were born in Brazil.

USSANTOS230128

FEC wants answers from George Santos about campaign treasurer

FEC has questions for George Santos about new campaign treasurer

usSANTOS230128

ALBANY — Rep. George Santos has been exposed for faking his<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html">&nbsp;education</a>&nbsp;and work history, circumstances of his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/29/george-santos-mother-911-death/">mother’s death</a>&nbsp;and his <a href="https://forward.com/news/529130/george-santos-jewish-lie-genealogy-records/">not-so-Jewish heritage.</a> 
 He’s facing revived charges in Brazil of using a stolen checkbook for purchases in 2008.&nbsp;Top political donors now are saying they were misled by Santos in his bid to raise millions of campaign dollars. 
 But perhaps the most serious issue facing the embattled congressman is the multiple probes now underway, especially any that wind up focusing on his sources of income and donations and the movement of campaign funds through several committees. 
 Santos has acknowledged&nbsp;embellishing his resume and broadly has maintained his innocence regarding other allegations, telling WABC: &quot;I'm not a fraud.&quot; He's been promising, since late December, to tell &quot;my story,&quot; though he still hasn't addressed most of the specific issues and questions that have been raised. 
 Here’s a look at all the ongoing reviews and investigations: 
<h2> Federal Elections Commission </h2> 
 In early January, the commission <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/federal-election-commission-george-santos-campaign-finance-reports-hyix8n44">sent Santos a letter </a>raising many questions, including failing to adequately identify some donors who might have exceeded campaign-contribution limits. 
 Days later, the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, filed a formal <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-congress-fec-i9psauiq">complaint with the FEC,</a> alleging Santos hid the true sources of money he lent his campaign, misrepresented campaign spending and illegally used campaign money for personal expenses. 
 The group said the jump in Santos’ reported salary — from $55,000 annually to $750,000 in just two years — suggests he was a funnel for others’ money. The complaint questions the source of more than $700,000 in loans to his campaign. 
 The complaint also alleges Santos falsified expenditures to keep them under the $200 threshold for having to report the date, amount and purpose of the expenditure. Santos’ campaign submitted 37 expenditures for exactly $199.99 each. 
 Although the FEC often doesn’t pursue complaints against campaign committees, the CLC told Newsday such complaints can lead to a federal criminal investigation. 
<h2> Federal prosecutors </h2> 
 U.S. attorneys are looking into public filings by Santos, amid questions about the source of his wealth, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/prosecutors-george-santos-amid-lies-questions-wealth/story?id=95902176">ABC News first reported</a>. 
 Besides listing the gigantic increase in salary in 2022, Santos claimed he owned assets worth between $2.6 million and $11.2 million.&nbsp;Newsday has reported he <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-linkbridge-lawsuit-hf4e6kjq">may have inflated his role </a>with his most recent employer. 
 ABC said the probe was a review and not yet a formal investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York hasn’t commented publicly. 
<h2> U.S. House </h2> 
 Two New York Democratic congressman <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/george-santos-house-ethics-committee-financial-disclosure-sscssril">filed a complaint</a> with the House Ethics Committee, saying Santos&nbsp;failed to file timely and accurate financial-disclosure reports about his income, bank accounts and real estate holdings. 
 Reps. Dan Goldman (D-Manhattan) and Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) specifically say Santos failed to file disclosure reports within 30 days of becoming a candidate and 30 days before the 2022 primary election, as required, and failed&nbsp;to disclose business clients. 
 Broadly, they also are questioning statements showing Santos’ huge leap in salary and real estate holdings, saying the claims were not plausible. 
 “This is an astronomical growth in his wealth that is so implausible, so inexplicable that it requires a willful&nbsp;suspension of disbelief, and it warrants an investigation,” Torres said. 
<h2> State and local probes </h2> 
 Nassau County District Attorney <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/anne-donnelly-george-santos-nassau-district-attorney-resume-lies-congressman-elect-c1lrk9wn">Anne Donnelly announced</a> in late December that her office is investigating Santos, sparked by the many claims he made that since have proved false. 
 But neither the prosecutor nor the office have talked specifically about the focus of the probe or where a local district attorney might have authority in the matter. 
 “The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with (Santos) are nothing short of stunning,” Donnelly said. “No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.” 
 Amid the probe, Donnelly’s office hasn’t provided further updates. 
 Somewhat similarly, state Attorney General Letitia James also is reviewing issues related to Santos. But her office isn’t calling it a formal investigation and hasn’t spelled out what issues would give it jurisdiction. 
<h2> Brazil charges </h2> 
 As part of its original story&nbsp;about Santos’ false claims, The New York Times reported he was subject of criminal charges for check fraud when he was living in Brazil. 
 The 2008 court case had been suspended because authorities there could not find Santos. Now, they want to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/nyregion/george-santos-brazil.html">revive the charges </a>and notify the U.S. Justice Department, multiple news outlets have reported. 
 The case involves Santos, then 19 years old, alleging spending about $800 using a stolen checkbook and a false name. The Times reported Santos admitted the fraud and a judge in September 2011 had approved charges to be filed — but soon after Santos moved to New York. 
 Santos denied the claims, telling the New York Post: “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world.”

STPROBES230122

Here's where the various probes into George Santos stand

Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Tom Brune

WASHINGTON — Rep. George Santos had papers filed with the Federal Election Commission naming a new campaign treasurer Wednesday, a day after a campaign filing indicated Santos had disavowed a large personal loan to his campaign. 
 But the replacement,&nbsp;Thomas Datwyler of Hudson, Wisconsin, already had turned down the job on Monday, according to Datwyler's attorney. 
 The filings Wednesday afternoon named Datwyler as the new treasurer, replacing Nancy Marks, of Shirley, who had served as treasurer since 2019&nbsp;for Santos' 2020 and 2022 House campaigns and his seven federal campaign finance committees. 
 Datwyler’s lawyer, Derek Ross, of Washington, D.C.,&nbsp;told Newsday his client was&nbsp;not serving as Santos' campaign treasurer and had told Santos’ team he had turned down the job on Monday. 
 “It appears that there was some miscommunication between that conversation and today's filing,&quot; Ross said. 
 Ross said the FEC papers filed just hours earlier on Wednesday would be amended to remove Datwyler as treasurer and custodian of the records. No new filings had turned up by the end of the business day. 
<h3> Santos deflects questions&nbsp;about campaign filings </h3> 
 Earlier Wednesday, Santos (R-Nassau/Queens)&nbsp;deflected questions from reporters about why his campaign on Tuesday had amended FEC filings to reflect that Santos no longer was the source of a $500,000 loan to his campaign. 
 Santos blamed his campaign staff for Tuesday's filing. 
 “Let’s make it very clear, I don't amend anything, I don't touch any of my FEC stuff, right?” Santos said. 
 “So don't be disingenuous and report that I did because you know that every campaign hires fiduciaries,&quot; Santos said. &quot;So, I'm not aware of that answer and we'll have an answer for the press regarding the amendments.” 
 Santos’ communications director said she could not comment on campaign related matters when asked by Newsday about Ross’ statement.&nbsp; 
 Santos’ attorney, Joseph Murray, declined to comment on any&nbsp;questions posed by Newsday, including who the campaign treasurer is, who filed the papers for the change in treasurer and why Datwyler was listed as the new treasurer when his lawyer said he had rejected the job offer. 
 Murray told Newsday in a telephone call it would be “inappropriate” to comment given the number of complaints filed with the FEC against Santos. 
 Santos is the subject of county, state and federal probes after admitting last month he fabricated major parts of his resume, including his education and work experience. 
<h3> Questions arise after multiple disclosure amendments </h3> 
 Many&nbsp;questions arose Wednesday after Marks submitted 10 amended filings, including one that appeared to disavow loans Santos had said he made to his campaign. 
 In filings submitted last year to the FEC, Santos had checked a box attesting that a $500,000 loan and a $125,000 loan to his campaign came from &quot;Personal Funds of the Candidate.&quot; 
 In updates of those filings submitted Tuesday, that box was left unchecked, raising new questions about the origin&nbsp;of the funds. 
 Santos, trailed by reporters as he left a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Wednesday, did not answer questions about the source of the $500,000 loan to his campaign. 
 Erin Chlopak, senior director of campaign finance for the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC attorney, said it was possible the unchecked box indicated that Santos disavowed the loan — but it simply could be an&nbsp;error. 
 But she said, &quot;It&nbsp;doesn't explain the filing of multiple amended reports the same day&nbsp;that do check the box indicating that the loan was personal funds. So whether it was an intentional attempt to disavow the loan is personal or a clerical error, or something else,&nbsp;I don't think the record is clear enough to say.&quot; 
 In the past two years, the FEC has sent 23 requests for additional information, most with multiple questions, to Santos' main campaign finance committee, Devolder Santos for Congress — and campaign treasurer Marks has filed 44 amendments. 
 Both numbers are on the high side compared with other congressional campaigns, Chlopak said. 
 One reason&nbsp;Marks filed the 10 amended reports on Tuesday might have been that she was in the process of preparing the year-end report for 2022 that is due Jan. 31, said Brett Kappel, a Washington lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law. 
<h3> Multiple committees complicated reporting </h3> 
 Santos created seven campaign finance committees for his 2022&nbsp;run, complicating the FEC reporting. He had four joint fundraising committees and one leadership PAC. 
 The FEC has peppered some of those committees with questions, as well.&nbsp; 
 In his amended filing Tuesday, Santos lists a balance of $130,000 in outstanding loans that came from personal funds, and $500,000 that was not from personal funds. 
 In a filing on Dec. 8, he listed a $630,000 outstanding balance on loans from personal funds. 
 In both filings he attested to having paid off $31,250 in additional campaign loans, $25,050 of which came from personal funds. 
 Earlier this month, a watchdog group filed a complaint with the FEC urging it to open an investigation into questions about Santos’ campaign fundraising, loans and expenditures.&nbsp; 
 And two New York Democratic congressmen filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee about Santos' personal financial disclosure and campaign filings. 
 Also Wednesday, an&nbsp;analysis by the news outlet Politico&nbsp;found Santos led all other congressional campaigns in reporting campaign expenses that cost exactly $199.99 — just below the $200 threshold requiring candidates to submit receipts. 
 The report said Santos’ “campaign accounted for roughly half of all expenses by all campaigns that cost exactly $199.99 — a statistical improbability.” 
 According to Politico, “FEC data shows more than 90 percent of House and Senate campaign committees around the country did not report a single transaction valued between $199 and $199.99 during the 2022 election cycle. Santos reported 40 of them.” 
 The nonprofit Campaign Legal Center in a complaint filed to the FEC took issue with the volume of Santos’ expenditures that fell just below the receipt reporting requirement. 
 Also, Santos on Twitter denounced what he called “derogatory” statements made about him by U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). 
 Kennedy, told reporters on Monday that Santos is “nutty as a fruitcake.” 
 “That's why I called him a bunny boiler,” Kennedy said. &quot;I don't know if you've seen 'Fatal Attraction' but there are people like that out there.” 
 Santos tweeted Wednesday: “I am saddened that a distinguished senator from the GOP, whom I've respected would use such derogatory language against me. Language like that is hurtful and divisive, and has no place in Congress.”

USSANTOS230126

George Santos names new campaign treasurer — who immediately declines the job

Santos names new campaign treasurer — who immediately declines the job

Paul LaRocco and Scott Eidler

A prominent Long Island cancer doctor who was among George Santos’ top campaign contributors — giving nearly $50,000 to his associated committees — said he regrets the support, calling the new&nbsp;congressman “one of the best con men I’ve ever met.” 
 Dr. Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of Port Jefferson Station-based New York Blood &amp; Cancer Specialists, said that during a meeting last summer, Santos appeared interested in the work of a political action committee of Vacirca's that backs increased access to affordable cancer drugs.&nbsp; 
 Santos, he said, peppered&nbsp;the conversation with details of his work in the financial sector that later were exposed as false. 
 “He told us his story: about working for Citibank, that his mom got cancer [and said], ‘I’m 100% on board with what you guys are doing. I want to support you,’” Vacirca said in an interview Sunday, in his first public comments about&nbsp;Santos. 
 In the weeks after the dinner,&nbsp;Vacirca contributed a total of $38,700 to Santos-allied&nbsp;committees, plus $10,000 to the Nassau County Republican Party’s federal account that was coordinating with the candidate.&nbsp; 
 All told,&nbsp;Vacirca and&nbsp;Todd O’Connell, New York Blood &amp; Cancer Specialists' president, donated nearly $100,000 to PACs tied to Santos,&nbsp;according to Federal Election Commission data. 
 After reading news reports of extensive falsehoods in Santos' work and education history, Vacirca&nbsp;says of Santos:&nbsp;“I have to say, one of the best con men I’ve ever met. It’s embarrassing to admit being taken in by someone like him.” 
 Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) did not respond to requests for comment&nbsp;for this story. 
<h3> 'It hurts all of us' </h3> 
 Santos,&nbsp;who has admitted fabricating significant parts of his educational and professional background, faces several probes into his campaign and personal finances. 
 Among issues investigators are focusing on are allegations that Santos, through personal loans to his campaign,&nbsp;served as a straw donor&nbsp;for people who gave large sums of money to his company, and that he falsely logged many campaign expenditures to avoid disclosure requirements. 
 After The New York Times last month&nbsp;published a story about fabrications in Santos’ resume, Newsday reported Santos-tied campaign committees <a href="https://www.newsday.com/beta/long-island/politics/santos-congress-ibztut1e">transferred nearly $200,000 to the Nassau GOP</a> and&nbsp;paid tens of thousands of dollars to <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-campaign-payments-oue35xav">newly formed companies</a> with opaque histories and scant record of working for other candidates. 
 Election law experts said such payments could suggest Santos diverted&nbsp;campaign funds to friends or for personal use. 
 His congressional office directed Newsday's request for comment Monday to Santos' personal attorney, Joe Murray, who did not respond. 
 In the Newsday interview on Sunday, Vacirca said Santos should resign or be removed from office. 
 Vacirca also expressed concern about his ability to find credible candidates committed to reducing the influence of health insurance companies and prescription drug middlemen. 
 Both, he says,&nbsp;slow&nbsp;the claims approval process for fast-acting cancer drugs while jacking up prices. 
 In July 2021, Vacirca founded&nbsp;the Conquering Cancer PAC, which he&nbsp;runs with Dr. David Eagle, head of New York Blood &amp; Cancer’s legislative affairs and patient advocacy office. 
 It has raised nearly $430,000 since then, and spent more than $274,000, Federal Election Commission filings show. 
 “Our PAC is all about patient care,&quot; Vacirca said. 
 &quot;It hurts all of us,” when candidates are untruthful, Vacirca said. 
 Vacirca also said the Santos scandal shows the shortcomings of candidate vetting by the national political parties’ campaign arms. 
 “You don’t know now. Is it all a handwave or a lie, or do they really mean what they say?,&quot; Vacirca said of candidates. 
 “I have to do background checks on everybody?&quot; Vacirca asked. &quot;It sets you back because you don’t know who has credibility.” 
<h3> Entry into politics </h3> 
 Since taking over&nbsp;New York Blood &amp; Cancer Specialists&nbsp;in 2008, Vacirca has expanded the company&nbsp;from a local practice with seven doctors to one with more than 100 physicians across&nbsp;200 offices&nbsp;on Long Island and in New York City. 
 The company employs 2,000 people and treats&nbsp;1 million patients a year, he said. 
 Vacirca said he became involved in politics in 2013, after the failure of negotiations between Democratic President Barack Obama and the GOP-controlled Congress over raising the federal debt limit led to imposition of a 2% across-the-board cut to Medicare. He&nbsp;worried his practice would have to lay people off. 
 When Republican Lee Zeldin of Shirley was elected to Congress in 2014, Vacirca was a supporter. 
 Zeldin ran unsuccessfully for New York governor against Democrat Kathy Hochul last year. 
 In 2020 and 2021, Vacirca treated Zeldin for leukemia.&nbsp; 
 &quot;Thank God he’s fine now, but he’s seen the [health care]&nbsp;system and understands in a way that most people don’t,&quot; Vacirca said. 
 Vacirca, who personally and through his PAC supported Zeldin's run for governor last year, contributed to the campaign of Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, a Democrat and a cancer survivor who has worked with New York Blood &amp; Cancer Specialists on re-entry programs for incarcerated individuals. 
 Vacirca also donated to State Sen. James Skoufis (D-Woodbury), who cosponsored a bill to require&nbsp;doctors who review insurance claims to be qualified in the specialties they're reviewing. 
 &quot;They're trying to get care to one of their patients, and they've got some doctor in God knows what field making determinations on these specialty claims, and the folks on the ground who care about their patients are rightfully very upset and frustrated by this process,&quot; Skoufis said of specialists like Vacirca. 
 Hochul vetoed the measure last&nbsp;month, saying it would &quot;pull specialists out of health care and into claims review.&quot; 
<h3> Meeting Santos </h3> 
 Vacirca said he was introduced to Santos last year by Nancy Marks, of Shirley, who has served as campaign treasurer for numerous Republicans, including&nbsp;Zeldin&nbsp;and&nbsp;Santos, as well as for Vacirca's Conquering Cancer PAC. 
 Explaining the large amount of money he donated to Santos, Vacirca recalled&nbsp;that&nbsp;Marks told&nbsp;him Santos “had more of a need” for money&nbsp;than most other candidates. 
 When the first reports of fabrications surfaced, Vacirca said he texted Santos. 
 “What is going on? Is this true?”&nbsp;Vacirca said he asked him. 
 “He said, ‘This is a smear campaign,’ then I never heard from him again,” Vacirca said. “As more came out, I said, ‘I am not talking to this guy.’” 
 Vacirca said he has dismissed Marks as treasurer of his PAC, citing the allegations that Santos committees may have engaged in campaign finance improprieties. 
 Marks did not respond to a request for comment. 
 While saying he was &quot;appalled&quot; by the allegations, Vacirca suggested Marks could have been deceived by Santos. 
 “He lied to everyone,”&nbsp;Vacirca said.

PODOCTORS230124

George Santos donor who gave nearly $50,000 regrets support

Santos donor who gave nearly $50,000 regrets support

poDOCTORS230124_photos

WASHINGTON — Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) has declined an invitation to join other first-term lawmakers in a meeting Tuesday&nbsp;with President Joe Biden at the White House, according to Santos' office. 
 All congressional freshmen were invited to the event, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced Monday. 
 Asked by reporters whether the invite list included Santos, Jean-Pierre reiterated that all new lawmakers were invited, although she had no&nbsp;“confirmation on who is attending at this time.&quot; 
 Reached by Newsday, Santos’ office said he would&nbsp;not be attending. 
 Santos, who&nbsp;has admitted fabricating significant parts of his educational and professional background, faces several probes into his campaign and personal finances. 
 Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park) is expected to attend the meeting with Biden, his spokesman Matthew Capp said. 
 D’Esposito, who beat Democrat Laura Gillen for the seat held previously held by Democrat Kathleen Rice, of Garden City, is among 18 House Republicans elected last year who flipped congressional districts Biden had won in 2020. 
 Santos flipped a longtime Democratic district, defeating public relations executive Robert Zimmerman for the seat formerly held by Tom Suozzi, a Glen Cove Democrat. 
 Capp said, D’Esposito “has many priorities he’d like to discuss with the President.” 
 Among them, Capp said in an email, is&nbsp;repeal of the cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes, known as SALT, &quot;and finding avenues of opportunity for the federal government to help enhance infrastructure on Long Island.” 
 Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) said in a statement Tuesday he had turned down the&nbsp;White House invitation&nbsp;&quot;out of protest&quot; for COVID-19 protocols the White House has kept in place for those attending events with the president. 
 Guests attending events at the White House must be tested for the virus beforehand and must attest to vaccination. Those who are unvaccinated must follow masking and social distancing requirements. 
 “The time for arbitrary and unscientific pandemic protocols should be far behind us and I am forgoing a historic trip to the White House to raise awareness of this punitive policy in hopes that President Biden will reverse it and other arbitrary, outdated, and unscientific restrictions across the federal system,&quot; LaLota said. 
 Asked about LaLota's statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday: &quot;We have protections in place to protect staff and the President of the United States. COVID isn't over.&quot;

USSANTOS230124

George Santos declines White House invitation 

ALBANY — Fifty-nine percent of New York voters said embattled Rep. George Santos should resign from Congress, according to a survey released Monday, which also reported the best job approval ever for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. 
 The Siena College Research Institute poll found that voters who say Santos, a Republican, should resign include 49% of Republicans voters statewide. Just 17% of voters felt Santos shouldn’t resign. 
 Santos has acknowledged lying about his education, his work history and other things. He said he won't resign from the seat representing the 3rd Congressional District, which covers parts of Nassau County and Queens. 
 More than half of liberals, conservatives and moderates said they had an unfavorable view of Santos, who began his term this month. 
 The poll found suburban voters — dominated by those on Long Island — had the harshest view of Santos with 76% giving him an unfavorable rating. Santos also was seen unfavorably by 45% of voters polled in New York City and 53% of those upstate. 
 Republicans and Democrats shared the same unfavorable view of Santos, with no statistical difference between voters of the two parties. There was also no statistical difference between the high disapproval rate of about 60% among Jewish, Catholic and Protestant voters. 
 Santos once identified himself on the campaign trail as an “American Jew,” but has since backtracked and said he was raised Catholic but identifies as “Jew-ish.” Subsequent reporting by CNN and Jewish Insider, citing genealogical records, has also cast doubt on Santos’ claims that his grandparents fled to Brazil from Belgium to escape the Holocaust. 
 The Siena poll also found Hochul had a 56% job approval rating, while 36% of voters disapproved of the job she’s been doing since August 2021. Hochul also had a 48% favorability rating among voters, which is her highest mark yet. 
 “Hochul sees her job-approval rating hit its highest level, jumping from a positive 5 points last month to a 20-point positive approval rating today,” said pollster Steven Greenberg. “The jump — despite continued strong partisan divide — is largely thanks to independent and downstate voters.” 
 “While she has yet to have a majority of New Yorkers view her favorably, the 48% of voters this month who view her favorably is the highest it has ever been,” Greenberg said. 
 The poll found Hochul’s favorability rose since December. Since then, the state’s first woman governor presented her agenda for the 2023 legislative session. Her State of the State speech included a pledge not to raise taxes, to make the state safer from crime, and to make the state more affordable. 
 Hochul received strong support for her proposal to improve public safety, just a little over two months after she won reelection against Republican Lee Zeldin, who made blaming Hochul for rising crime his top issue. 
 The poll found 65% of New Yorkers support Hochul’s plan to return more discretion to judge to hold suspects on bail if they are deemed dangerous to the public. 
 Overall, 78% of Republicans said crime is a “very serious” problem statewide, although 31% said it was a very serious problem in their community. Among Democrats, 55% felt crime was a very serious problem statewide and 30% felt it was very serious in their community. 
 The poll questioned 821 registered voters from Jan. 15 through Thursday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

stPOLL230124

Siena poll: Santos should resign; Hochul gets her highest marks

stPOLL230124_photos

WASHINGTON — Congressional staffers tend to toil in the background on Capitol Hill, but scrutiny of&nbsp;Rep. George Santos has drawn attention to his young staff members, who frequently appear in network news footage escorting him around the U.S. Capitol complex, serving as a buffer between him and reporters. 
 Two Long Island natives are among those working for Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), who has admitted fabricating parts of his educational and work background&nbsp;and who is under investigation by federal, state and local authorities. 
 They are among a staff of five hired by Santos so far. Several have worked for right-wing officials and candidates whose views skew far from the majority-Democratic district Santos represents. 
 Rafaello Carone, 22, who grew up in Dix Hills, serves as Santos’ senior legislative aide after stints with three other House GOP members including former Rep. Madison Cawthorn&nbsp;(R-N.C.), an ally of former President Donald Trump. 
 Gabrielle Lipsky, 24, also from Dix Hills, served as Santos’ campaign press secretary and now holds that title on his congressional staff. 
 Her parents are significant&nbsp;GOP donors&nbsp;who&nbsp;gave&nbsp;a total of $21,925 to Santos’ campaign committees between 2021 and 2022, according to campaign finance records. 
 Other hires include: 
<ul> 
 <li> Chief of Staff Charles Lovett, 24, who worked on the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Ohio Republican Josh Mandel, a staunch Trump supporter. </li> 
 <li> Viswanag “Vish” Burra, 31, a former aide to Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Burra&nbsp;told Newsday he is serving as Santos'&nbsp;operations director. </li> 
 <li> Naysa Woomer, 38, Santos’ communications director, who worked previously in the administration of former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican who left office Jan. 3. </li> 
</ul> 
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 Salary information for House employees has not been made public&nbsp;and likely will not be available for some&nbsp;weeks. 
 But members of Congress are allocated an average $1.8 million per year to staff their offices in Washington and their districts, pay for travel to and from their districts and for mail services, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. 
 Newsday requested interviews with the two Long Islanders on Santos' staff: Carone responded with a statement, but Lipsky declined to comment. 
<h3> RAFAELLO CARONE </h3> 
 Carone, a pediatric cancer survivor, spent his youth advocating on behalf of childhood cancer patients&nbsp;and raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. 
 At age 4, Carone appeared with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a news conference outside a Westbury blood bank to draw attention to bipartisan legislation Schumer had sponsored to fund a national network of umbilical cord blood banks to help treat cancer patients. 
 Carone also was featured in a 2013 video for the New York Blood Center, in which&nbsp;he shared his experience&nbsp;with cancer. 
 A graduate of Half Hollow Hills High School West, Carone went on to work for several right-flank lawmakers on Capitol Hill, according to his profile on the legislative research site Legistorm. 
 In 2021, he served as social media manager for Cawthorn,&nbsp;who was elected in 2020 at the age of 25, casting himself as a Trump acolyte. 
 Cawthorn failed in&nbsp;his reelection bid last year, having lost the&nbsp;support of Republican leaders after a series of controversies. 
 Cawthorn once said he had been&nbsp;invited to orgies on Capitol Hill&nbsp;but said later he had made up the story. 
 Last year, Carone served as press secretary for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Texas). 
 Gosar was censured by the Democrat-controlled House in 2021 for posting an online video that&nbsp;depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Queens/Bronx) and attacking President Joe Biden. 
 Gosar said “no threat was intended,” although Ocasio-Cortez said the video helped fuel the death threats her office routinely receives. 
 Carone served for a period last year as deputy communications director for&nbsp;Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), who was among 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 
 Carone also is&nbsp;founder of Liberty and Justice Consulting Firm, a company he formed in North Carolina that bills itself as working “to send a new wave of conservative leaders to Washington.”&nbsp; 
 Campaign finance records show the campaign of Republican Cait Corrigan, who ran unsuccessfully to replace former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), paid Liberty and Justice Consulting $2,000 for communications&nbsp;work last February. 
 The company also&nbsp;has performed consulting work for Virginians for America First. The group's website promotes poll-watching training sessions for “equipping Patriots to wage warfare against the enemy of all that is good, noble, and God honoring.” 
 Carone in a statement to Newsday said from an early age he felt&nbsp;&quot;a calling for civic engagement&quot; and public service. 
 &quot;After I won my battle with high-risk Leukemia, I decided to devote my life to giving back and making a difference,&quot; Carone said. &quot;From advocating for cancer research and new forms of treatment to working on the Hill, I've been committed to bettering the lives of everyday Americans and those in need.&quot; 
 But Carone and other staffers have experienced taunts both in person and online. At a recent demonstration outside Santos' House office, one protester asked them, &quot;How does it feel to work for an insurrectionist?&quot;&nbsp; 
 Carone complained about the treatment in the statement: &quot;Instead of encouraging my commitment to helping others, my&nbsp;experience has been met with public ridicule&nbsp;and harassment.&quot; 
 Carone continued: &quot;I am not discouraged. My commitment to bettering America hasn't wavered.&quot; 
 GABRIELLE LIPSKY 
 Lipsky is Santos’ press secretary and also manager of&nbsp;Santos’ office in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, according to Legistorm. 
 Lipsky attended Half Hollow Hills High School West and graduated from Adelphi University in Garden City, according to Legistorm. 
 Lipsky has a large social media presence on the photo and video sharing app Instagram, where she has more than 24,000 followers. 
 Posts on Instagram feature photos of Lipsky and her family at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's estate in West Palm Beach, Fla. 
 Lipsky’s parents,&nbsp;David&nbsp;and Kacey Lipsky,&nbsp;also are pictured on their public social media profiles in photos with&nbsp;Trump, Zeldin and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). 
 They're also featured in photos&nbsp;on Instagram and Facebook with Shawn Farash and Kevin Smith, founders&nbsp;of the Long Island Loud Majority, a pro-Trump group that&nbsp;organized protests denouncing mask mandates and other pandemic restrictions. The group backed Santos’ candidacy. 
 Federal campaign finance records show David Lipsky, who has several businesses registered on Long Island, donated $5,800 to the Devolder-Santos Victory Committee and $2,900 to the Devolder-Santos for Congress Committee in December 2021. 
 Kacey Lipsky&nbsp;(or donors with different spellings of her first name listed at the same address) gave a total of $13,225 to Santos political action committees between December 2021 and August 2022, according to FEC reports.&nbsp;

USSTAFF230122Q1Q3

George Santos staffers feel glare of spotlight

Santos staffers feel glare of the spotlight 

usSTAFF230122_photos

An American desperate to help a loved one stranded in a foreign country. A retiree who can’t seem to cut through Medicare’s red tape. A high school student&nbsp;hoping for a congressional nomination to a military academy — one of the <a href="https://www.westpoint.edu/admissions/prospective-cadets/nomination-information">few routes</a> for admission to a place like West Point. 
 For the&nbsp;approximately&nbsp;<a href="https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=36&amp;cd=03">746,449 people</a> in Nassau and Queens who live in New York’s 3rd Congressional District,&nbsp;one of the main channels for tackling such tasks should be the office of their new representative, George Santos. 
 But he and his staff are busy dealing with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html">post-election and still-unfolding revelations</a>&nbsp;that he had distorted or outright lied about almost all of his claimed background, including his resume, pedigree, money, religion, family, home, schooling and&nbsp;charity. 
 He’s since been accused of numerous other fabrications, including falsely claiming to having been a volleyball star at Baruch College,&nbsp;which has no record of him ever attending, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/embattled-republican-santos-faces-new-heat-over-jew-ish-heritage-claim-2022-12-27/">being &quot;Jew-ish.&quot;</a> There are investigations into Santos underway by the <a href="http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/anne-donnelly-george-santos-nassau-district-attorney-resume-lies-congressman-elect-c1lrk9wn">county district attorney</a>, <a href="https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/12/22/george-santos-investigated-by-new-york-attorney-general-james">state attorney general</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/nyregion/george-santos-long-island-investigation.html">U.S. attorney&nbsp;in Brooklyn</a>, plus <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/george-santos-house-ethics-committee-financial-disclosure-sscssril">an ethics complaint</a>.&nbsp;Part of what’s being looked at are his financial dealings. 
 For at least some&nbsp;of January, constituent calls&nbsp;to his office were either misdirected or sometimes did not go through. 
 Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) insists he and his staff are busy working for constituents on a variety of matters. 
 On a YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6oTdbHFi74">show</a> hosted by Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, Santos said:&nbsp;“We’re fielding calls in the office already, people are asking for, as simple as White House tour tickets. Which we’ve already engaged with the White House liaison, we are requesting passport issues and then all the way to an issue that’s very near and dear in my community, which is we have an organized crime that’s taking carjackings, and that’s to a whole new level.” 
 Over the course of several hours on a recent&nbsp;Thursday and&nbsp;Friday, no one appeared to be coming to&nbsp;his district office, in Douglaston, Queens, except a few office workers and news reporters. 
 Still in big letters on the awning and window: the name of Santos' predecessor, Democrat Thomas Suozzi. 
 And for at least part of the month, Santos' office has been all but unreachable by phone, due to telecom problems, including a broken menu&nbsp;last week and the week before.&nbsp;Calls were being <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/george-santos-district-office-services-tehbji28">mass-transferred</a>,&nbsp;without explanation, to fellow freshman GOP Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), who has sought Santos’ resignation. The transfers were a surprise to LaLota's staff, who had to ask the House telecom staff to undo the forwarding. 
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 Given all of Santos'&nbsp;troubles, Ross Wallenstein, who worked for <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/gary-ackerman/A000022">now-former Rep. Gary L. Ackerman</a>, a Democrat, from 2003 to 2007, wonders how effective Santos can be. 
 “Congressional staffs work with offices from around the country in order to help district residents across a variety of topics,” Wallenstein told Newsday. 
 “Many of these offices may think twice about engaging with someone like Mr. Santos, whose national reputation clearly precedes him — much to the detriment of his 700,000 constituents in Nassau and Queens,” Wallenstein said. 
<h3> Who's helping at home </h3> 
 The expectation that members of Congress would help the people back home has existed since the dawn of Congress, according to <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44726.pdf">a 2017 report</a> by the Congressional Research Service. Back in the 18th century, there were constituents seeking congressmen's assistance with Revolutionary War pensions. And these days, the types of issues representatives are called about has vastly expanded. 
 “It’s the only real interaction that most constituents will have with their congressman, other than seeing them on TV or in the newspaper, is reaching out to their office and saying, ‘Can you help me with this thing that my family’s going through or that we need in our community?’” Wallenstein said. 
 In certain cases, he said, a&nbsp;congressman himself will get on the phone with a government agency to advocate for a constituent,&nbsp;adding extra weight to the request. 
 Earlier this month, some&nbsp;30 Long Island Republican officials <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-cairo-nassau-republican-bgewy6pv">said</a> they’d refuse to work with Santos, suggesting&nbsp;his constituents turn elsewhere for help, such as to the office of Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park), who represents the 4th District. 
 Santos <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6oTdbHFi74">told</a> Gaetz: “I’m here actually trying to fight for the local people, the absurdity of saying that George Santos is — and we’re going to redirect the constituents’ requests to another members of Congress’ office instead of mine. That’s absurd. And it’s illegal.” 
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 The <a href="https://ethics.house.gov/sites/ethics.house.gov/files/documents/2022/House-Ethics-Manual-2022-Print.pdf">House Ethics Manual</a> regulates how much help congressional offices can give to nonconstituents, according to Rob Walker, a&nbsp;former chief counsel for the House and Senate ethics committees. 
 “There are limited ways in which they can help — they can’t help across the board — but there is some flexibility, but it’s limited,” he said. 
 D'Esposito’s spokesman Matt Capp said that office has been getting 10 calls a day from Santos constituents, some asking for help, others&nbsp;just venting frustrations about Santos. 
 “We’re definitely getting a steady stream of calls from residents of the 3rd Congressional District, for sure,&quot; Capp told Newsday. 
 &quot;They’re either not getting a response from Santos’ office, or they really don’t trust that office, it seems, to really go about their business,” Capp said. 
 Capp said his&nbsp;office has done its best to help nonconstituents,&nbsp;on top of handling 250 cases as of Friday afternoon for its own&nbsp;constituents.&nbsp;Otherwise, he said, the office has referred Santos callers to New York’s two U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have jurisdiction to help any New Yorker. 
 Kristen Cianci, a&nbsp;spokeswoman for Rep. Andrew&nbsp;Garbarino (R-Bayport), cited the ethics manual and said&nbsp;that Garbarino’s office is limited in what it can do. 
 “If it’s something as simple as, like, finding out information or something that can be cleared up with a phone call to the right contact, we can help give you the right information, refer you to resources you need, but as far as being a liaison with a federal agency, we’re limited in what we can do.” 
 And at LaLota’s office, the intake software won’t even allow a case about a nonconstituent to be entered into the computer system, said his spokeswoman Lauren Lembo. 
 A spokesman for Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said his boss’&nbsp;office has not seen an uptick in calls for help but would be more than happy to handle additional requests. 
 He said the office gets “hundreds” of constituent calls statewide every day. Two examples last week:&nbsp;a Nassau woman who hadn’t gotten her passport despite applying months ago and also needs help with a visa issue; a Suffolk man who wants his tax refund from the IRS. 
 Gillibrand spokesman Edwin Molina&nbsp;said in an email that&nbsp;“we are ready to handle any additional casework.” 
<h3> Back in the district </h3> 
 Told about Newsday's forthcoming article examining Santos’ constituent services work, his communications director, Naysa Woomer, wrote back to ask to know more about the article's scope and also whether other offices in the delegation were being queried. She didn't answer emailed questions, respond further or otherwise comment. She didn’t pick up her cellphone; her voicemail hadn’t been set up as of Thursday afternoon. Nor did Santos himself answer his cellphone or return a message. 
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 Congress was not in session last week, a time when representatives typically make public appearances in their districts. 
 D’Esposito, for example, barnstormed through the district in several publicized appearances, touring a union carpenter training facility, helping cut a ribbon for a discount store in Merrick, delivering citations at a Martin Luther King Jr. event with schoolchildren in Oceanside, swearing in a leader of junior county firefighters in Syosset, and celebrating a constituent’s 100th birthday in East Meadow, Capp said. 
 By contrast, Santos appears to have done one visit, uninvited and unannounced — to a Hindu temple in New Hyde Park, and he publicized it the next day on Twitter. 
 In an interview, leader Sridhar Shanmugam said Santos, who <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-santos-congress-mother-funeral/">has said he is Catholic</a> but also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/george-santos-jewish-heritage.html">“Jew-ish,”</a> came to the temple, Shri Saneeswara, about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday for the regular prayer of the charting of the planets. Shanmugam said Santos came alone for prayer. 
 “Like any devotee, he came and prayed for about three hours,” Shanmugam said. “We did not invite him.&quot; 
 On Saturday, Santos landed at LaGuardia Airport from Washington, D.C., and was chased by reporters asking questions he mostly didn’t answer. He did say he’s met with constituents. 
 “Yes, I have. Plenty! I went to D.C. last night for a meeting, and I’m back here today, I was here all week, and it’s been fabulous serving the people,&quot; he said, according to ABC/7 footage. 
 In Queens on&nbsp;Thursday at Santos’ district office, a staffer who wouldn't give his name described a buzzing constituent-services operation. “We’ve been helping constituents all morning,” the staffer said outside the district office, in Douglaston. “Constituents have been coming in, and we’ve been supporting them.” 
 Over the course of several hours, Newsday saw only what appeared to be staffers come and go from the office, a storefront on Northern Boulevard between a mortgage broker and an Episcopal churchyard. 
 Asked for aggregate totals of how many constituents have sought help from the office, the staffer said: “I can’t disclose that information.” 
 Why? 
 “Because that’s their personal, private business, and they’re not just a tally; they’re people in need.” 
 With John Asbury and&nbsp;Howard Schnapp 
 Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Rep. Andrew Garbarino's full name.

POOFFICE230122

George Santos' other challenge: His constituents' problems

While Santos faces scandals, his constituents have their own problems

poOFFICE230122_photos

ALBANY — Republicans and Democrats are quietly working to identify and prepare candidates for a special election for the 3rd Congressional District should Rep. George Santos resign or be removed from Congress, according to&nbsp;members of both parties. 
 Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) has acknowledged that he fabricated much of his resume, including his education and work history, but has refused to quit. The nonprofit Campaign Legal Center has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against&nbsp;him, and Santos faces additional state and federal investigations related to campaign committees tied to him. But those are still in fledgling stages. 
 Should a special election ultimately be necessary, both sides agree it would be expensive and&nbsp;draw nationwide interest and money. 
 For Republicans, holding the seat is important for the slim&nbsp;GOP majority in the House of Representatives, and&nbsp;Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California&nbsp;would be expected to devote a substantial amount of cash and resources from the GOP congressional campaign committee to a special election. 
 Several potential Republican candidates are the subject of private talks and polling, party members say. Among them are state Sen. Jack Martins; Alison Esposito, the former GOP nominee for lieutenant governor;&nbsp;and Daniel Serota, the Brookville mayor and police commissioner. 
 On the Democratic side, the potential candidates include Tom Suozzi, who&nbsp;had held the congressional seat since 2017 until he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for governor last year; Robert Zimmerman, who narrowly lost in November to Santos;&nbsp;and Assemb. Daniel Rosenthal, who&nbsp;since 2017&nbsp;has represented the parts of Queens that are included in the 3rd Congressional District. 
 Martins has served the heart of the 3rd Congressional District while in the State Senate from 2011 to 2016 and again in his return to the&nbsp;seat this year after November’s election. The former Mineola mayor has been interested in Congress in the past and was defeated in a 2008 run. 
 Esposito is a former New York Police Department lieutenant and the first openly gay candidate for lieutenant governor. She drew strong support as a running mate to former Rep. Lee Zeldin of Shirley, who was the GOP nominee for governor last year. 
 Esposito already has met with key Republicans in Washington, D.C., and on Long Island, said a former Zeldin-Esposito official who asked not to be identified. Although Esposito&nbsp;lives outside the district, the law doesn’t require residency in the congressional district to run. 
 Martins told Newsday he would&nbsp;not seek the congressional seat if it opens. “I’m going to be here in the State Senate,” he said. “That’s the race I ran for.” 
 Esposito didn’t return requests for comment. 
 Serota was one of the leaders of local officials who last year helped derail Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to expand “accessory dwelling units,” which was strongly opposed on Long Island. Accessory dwelling units allow the building of multifamily housing in neighborhoods long restricted to single-family dwellings. 
 Serota said he knows Republicans have included him in the mix&nbsp;but declined to comment until a vacancy exists. 
 Whoever the Republicans choose, the party will have the added chore of dealing with the political damage caused by&nbsp;Santos, a conservative Republican endorsed by the party. 
 Veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said that when seats are vacated by scandals, voters traditionally “blame the party for the embarrassment, rather than view candidates individually.” 
 For Democrats, the race would be a major test of new House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies of Brooklyn. He, too, would be expected to expend significant resources to retake the seat. 
 A Democratic win would “make Hakeem Jeffries an&nbsp;even bigger player because his people will be all over it,” Sheinkopf said. “It will be the first win for which he can take credit.” 
 Democrats under consideration include&nbsp;Zimmerman, Suozzi, Rosenthal, Nassau County Legis.&nbsp;Joshua Lafazan, who finished third in the Democratic primary for the seat in August, and&nbsp;Suffolk County Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman, who came in second in the primary. 
 “Certainly, I’m interested,” Kaiman said, noting that he has reached out to Jeffries and Nassau County Democratic Chairman&nbsp;Jay Jacobs. 
 Zimmerman and Suozzi didn’t return requests for comment.&nbsp;Rosenthal declined to comment, and&nbsp;Lafazan said through his county spokeswoman that he is planning to run for reelection to the county legislature. 
 “I’ve been hearing that Suozzi is interested in coming back,” said former Sen. Phil Boyle, a Suffolk County Republican. “In which case, seeing that as being maybe a done deal, I don’t know who would beat him.” 
 But Boyle noted a strong candidate supported by Nassau County Republican Chairman Joe Cairo might not emerge until late in the process of submitting petitions to run. “Cairo holds these things close to the vest,” Boyle said. 
 “We’ll be ready with a qualified, well-credentialed candidate,” said Mike Deery, a spokesman for Cairo and the Nassau County Republican Committee. “But it’s speculative at this point … we’re not ready to discuss it until an actual vacancy exists.” 
 Democrats confirm many candidates are interested in the seat. 
 “There are lots of people coming out of the woodwork,”&nbsp;said Jacobs, state and Nassau County Democratic chairman. “Of course, you have Robert Zimmerman, Joshua Lafazan and Jon Kaiman that have indicated interest. You have Tom Suozzi in the background; we don’t know his level of interest, but he’s been talked about.” 
 Political analysts say the successful candidate would likely have to be a centrist, neither a Trump Republican nor a socialist Democrat. The enrollment shows there are 229,188 enrolled Democrats and&nbsp;163,426 Republicans, but there are also 158,868 voters not enrolled in a party. 
 State records show 79% of the district’s voters are in Nassau and just under 21% in Queens. 
 “It’s a weird district,” said Steven Greenberg of the Siena College Research Institute poll. “It’s a district some would assume would be a safe Democratic seat, but it’s not. It’s a leaning-Democratic seat. To win, Democrats and Republicans are going to have to appeal to the middle.”

Nassau

STSPECIAL230122

Dems, GOP lining up potential candidates if Santos leaves his seat

Dems, GOP lining up potential candidates if Santos leaves his seat

Constituents trying to reach Rep. George Santos got a surprise Thursday morning when telephone calls to his embattled office were mass-forwarded to the Huntington headquarters of fellow freshman GOP Rep. Nick LaLota — also a surprise to LaLota’s team. 
 By midafternoon, the problem appeared to have been fixed, according to LaLota spokeswoman Lauren Lembo, but the mystery remained over why it happened at all. LaLota’s team was forced to field calls meant for Santos’ office — many unhappy with their new House representative and his mushrooming scandals — who didn’t keep their opinions to themselves. 
 “People were calling and venting,” Lembo said. 
<h3> Help for constituents </h3> 
 Congressional offices typically help their own constituents as liaisons to federal agencies, such as for immigration, passports, flag requests and Veterans Affairs. 
 A succession of problems has prevented constituents from reaching Santos. On Friday, pressing “#” for constituent services from the phone menu returned callers to that main menu. On Tuesday and Wednesday, pressing “#” directed callers to a nonworking extension. And on Thursday, all those calls went to LaLota’s office. 
 “Unfortunately, this is not George Santos’ office — or fortunately, depending on your perspective,” said Adam Saccardi, LaLota’s director of constituent services, who answered the calls and often heard an&nbsp;earful in the process. 
 “Trust me, you’re not the first person to have this happen to them,” Saccardi told one such caller seeking Santos’ office Thursday morning. 
 “It seems that Santos is having his phones forwarded, and somehow we won the lottery and are getting his calls,” Saccardi said. “So we’ve been working with the House telecom people to undo that, but as you’ve observed, it’s still happening.” 
 Neither Santos nor his representatives could be reached for comment or explanation. The House of Representatives’ telecom office also couldn’t be reached. 
<h3> Calls since early January </h3> 
 Lembo said some calls had been misdirected since at least Jan. 3, and she hypothesized that the problem might be due to LaLota’s current office having once belonged to Santos’ predecessor Tom Suozzi before redistricting. 
 Santos, who represents a swath of Nassau County and parts of eastern Queens, took office at the beginning of January following revelations that he had distorted or outright lied about almost all of his claimed background — his resume, employment history, wealth, religion, family, home, schooling and charity. He’s since been accused of numerous other distortions or scams, including having cheated a disabled veteran and his dying dog and falsely claiming to having been a volleyball star at Baruch College, which has no record of him ever attending. 
 Earlier this month — weeks after the revelations — about 30 Long Island Republican officials said <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/santos-cairo-nassau-republican-bgewy6pv">they would refuse</a> to work with Santos, and directed his constituents to turn elsewhere for help, such as to neighboring Nassau GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, of Island Park. 
 D’Esposito’s spokesman Matt Capp said Thursday that the office has been getting a steady stream of calls from Santos constituents, but directly, not forwarded. 
 In an interview, the former chief counsel for the House and Senate ethics committees, Rob Walker, said that the House Ethics Manual regulates just how much help a non-constituent can get from congressional offices that aren’t their representative. 
 “There are limited ways in which they can help — they can’t help across the board — but there is some flexibility, but it’s limited,” he said. 
 Capp said that D’Esposito’s office is directing constituents to other offices, such as New York’s senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, for areas where D’Esposito can’t help. 
 Speaking last week on a YouTube show hosted by Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, Santos said his constituent services operation was robust. 
 “You know, we’re fielding calls in the office, already people are asking for, as simple as White House tour tickets,” he said. “Which we’ve already engaged with the White House liaison, we are requesting passport issues and, then all the way to the issue that’s very near and dear in my community, which is we have an organized crime that’s taking carjackings and that’s to a whole new level in my district, which is it’s plaguing a very specific wealthy part of my district, Old Westbury, Brookville, Upper Brookville.” 
 He added: “I’m here actually trying to fight for the local people the absurdity of saying that George Santos is — and we’re going to redirect the constituents’ requests to another member’s of Congress’ office instead of mine. That’s absurd. And it’s illegal.” 
 It’s not clear what specifically Santos was claiming to be illegal. 
 With Laura Figueroa Hernandez

LICALLS230120

George Santos constituent calls get forwarded to LaLota's office

'We won the lottery': Calls to Santos redirected to neighboring congressman

Rep. George Santos has boasted of his&nbsp;time at LinkBridge Investors, where, he&nbsp;said, he served as vice&nbsp;president, worked with high-level partners at prestigious global investment banks and brought in a million dollars in revenue during his first six months on the job. 
 But newly discovered federal court records show Santos may have significantly overstated his role. 
 The company's founder and chief executive, testifying under oath in a deposition in a lawsuit in 2019, described Santos&nbsp;as a “freelancer” who sold sponsorships for conferences and events. 
 Pablo Patrick Oliveira testified that Santos (R-Nassau/Queens)&nbsp;helped him build Excel lists of potential sponsors and was paid only on&nbsp;commission. 
 LinkBridge listed a Manhattan address, but after its first few months, was headquartered out of Oliveira’s apartment in Florida and used&nbsp;only “virtual” office space in&nbsp;New York City, according to the testimony.&nbsp; 
 “He's an independent contractor, freelancer, sells sponsorships whenever he wishes to,” Oliveira said of Santos, according to a transcript of Oliveira's March 14, 2019, deposition, part of a docket filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.&nbsp; 
 New details about Santos' work for LinkBridge, which have not previously been reported, are contained in court documents associated with a 2018 lawsuit alleging that Oliveira stole client lists from his prior employer. 
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<h3> </h3> 
 The lawsuit, brought by Markets Group Inc., did not involve Santos. 
 Oliveira denied the allegations, and&nbsp;the case ultimately was dismissed. 
 Newsday reviewed the federal court filings, publicly available business incorporation records, social media posts and LinkBridge&nbsp;brochures&nbsp;and compared them with statements Santos has made about his work for the company. 
 The court documents&nbsp;provide insight into a largely unexamined period of Santos’ career. 
 Oliveira's description of Santos' modest role at the company, coming more than halfway through his nearly three-year-tenure there,&nbsp;would&nbsp;appear to contradict Santos' description of himself as an&nbsp;experienced&nbsp;Wall Street financier who worked directly with major companies in the financial&nbsp;industry. 
 After admitting to lying about having worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which could produce records of his employment, Santos began to highlight his time at LinkBridge, where he said he got his most significant experience in the financial sector. 
 In an interview on Dec. 26 on&nbsp;John Catsimatidis' program on WABC Radio, Santos did not repeat past statements about having been employed by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but said: 
 “I did extensive work on the [limited partnership] side with Goldman Sachs in my time at LinkBridge. I did extensive work with Citigroup in my time in the [limited partnership] position in LinkBridge Investors, just like I did work with firms on the [general partner] side of things like Blackstone and Deloitte and Robbins Geller [Rudman] Dowd and so many other big firms in the industry of private equity.” 
 A Blackstone spokesperson told Newsday in an email this week: &quot;We have found no record of Mr. Santos or LinkBridge having a business relationship with Blackstone.&quot; 
 A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment, and representatives of the other firms Santos mentioned to Catsimatidis did not respond to requests for comment. 
 Oliveira said in his court deposition that LinkBridge&nbsp;primarily solicited sponsors for conferences designed to connect potential investors with each other. 
 It&nbsp;developed leads&nbsp;from Google and LinkedIn searches, made lists of the prospects in Excel, sent email pitches to thousands of people at a time and then tried to get on the phone with anyone who replied, Oliveira testified. 
 “Selling the conference, just like selling a car, selling insurance,” Oliveira said about the kind of work he did, first with Markets Group. 
 Santos, 34, was elected in November&nbsp;to represent the 3rd&nbsp;Congressional District, which covers parts of&nbsp;Nassau County and eastern Queens. 
 He is facing local, state and federal investigations into his background and personal and campaign finances after&nbsp;revelations, first reported by the Times, that he fabricated much of his work and education history. 
 Newsday has reported that political committees associated with Santos gave a total&nbsp;of $185,000 to Nassau County and Hempstead Town Republican committees after they had supported his candidacy. The party has disavowed Santos and returned some of the money. 
 Newsday also reported that Santos-tied committees paid tens of thousands of dollars to newly formed companies&nbsp;with opaque histories and scant record of working for other political candidates. 
 Campaign finance experts said the lack of public information about such vendors could raise&nbsp;questions about whether Santos paid inflated rates for unnecessary services performed by friends and allies, or possibly diverted campaign donations for his own use. 
 Several House Republicans have requested Santos’ resignation from Congress. 
 One of them, fellow freshman Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), called on federal prosecutors or the Federal Election&nbsp;Commission&nbsp;to freeze funds remaining in Santos’ campaign accounts, saying the Newsday report on questionable spending “highlights the need to act quickly.” 
 Santos’ congressional office did not respond to a request&nbsp;for comment for this story. 
<h3> 'Hustling for business' </h3> 
 Santos has described his work in finance as complicated —&nbsp;even of a level the American people might not understand. 
 Asked on Fox News to describe his resume, Santos said on Dec. 27: “I can sit down and explain to you what you can do in private equity … via servicing limited partners and general partners, and we can have this discussion that’s going to go way above the American people’s head … ”&nbsp; 
 On a resume Santos submitted to the Nassau County Republican Committee when he sought support for his first run for Congress in 2020, he said he was LinkBridge’s vice president, and that he started with the company in August 2017. 
 Santos wrote that within six months of joining LinkBridge&nbsp;he had tripled company sales from $450,000 to $1.4 million and ultimately oversaw growth in revenues from “revolving sales”&nbsp;to $11 million. 
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 But in his March 2019 deposition — a year-and-a-half after Santos said he had started at LinkBridge&nbsp;—&nbsp;Oliveira described Santos as only a freelancer who was paid by commission. 
 Santos reported only $55,000 in income from LinkBridge in 2019 when he disclosed his assets in a May 2020 financial disclosure form for candidates for the House of Representatives. 
 He went on to form his own Devolder Organization. He reported assets totaling between $2.6 million and $11.3 million in 2021 and 2022, according to the House financial disclosure form he filled out last year. 
 At the time of Oliveira's testimony,&nbsp;LinkBridge was promoting its 2019 “Global Investors Annual Meeting.” 
 Its&nbsp;brochure for the conference&nbsp;listed Santos, using the name&nbsp;George Devolder, as “vice president.&quot; 
 Newsday discovered the brochure&nbsp;attached to the agenda of a March 13, 2019, meeting of the Los Angeles County Employee Retirement Association’s investors board. 
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 Santos’ name is not listed on any annual LinkBridge reports filed during the period of his employment with the Secretary of State of Florida, where LinkBridge is incorporated.&nbsp; 
 The state agency&nbsp;maintains corporate business records and requires disclosure of registered agents and “authorized persons,” typically top executives. 
 Newsday also interviewed several people who said they attended LinkBridge conferences during Santos’ tenure. 
 None of them could remember dealing with him in any way. 
 “He probably would have been at the meeting, at that level,” said Eric Newman, treasury manager for the City of Stamford, Connecticut, who manages the city’s public pension plans and spoke&nbsp;at numerous LinkBridge conferences. 
 “I never came into contact with him, that I’m aware of,” Newman told Newsday. 
 Of Oliveira, Newman said:&nbsp;“That’s who I dealt with and continue to deal with.” 
 Portions of Oliveira’s back story bear close resemblance to biographical details shared by Santos during his House campaign. 
 Last week, Nassau GOP chairman Joseph Cairo said Santos had boasted having been a star volleyball player for CUNY Baruch College. 
 That wasn’t true.&nbsp;Baruch officials told Newsday&nbsp;they had no record of Santos having attended or been enrolled&nbsp;at the college.&nbsp; 
 The college's&nbsp;website describes Oliveira as an “outside hitter” for the Division III team, at 6 feet&nbsp;4 inches. His hometown is listed as Uberlandia, Brazil, in the country's southeastern region. 
 Oliveira, 33, did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment. His attorney in the federal lawsuit also did not respond to a request&nbsp;for comment. 
 Anoop Rai, a professor of finance at Hofstra University’s Zarb School of Business, said Santos’ role at LinkBridge, as described in Oliveira’s sworn deposition, appeared to be “marketing.” 
 Oliveira's deposition suggests&nbsp;“it is high finance in terms of what happens at the events,&quot; Rai told Newsday. 
 But it appeared, &quot;as far as George’s role here, he was just hustling for business,” Rai said. 
 Events management “takes an effort to get all these firms to come, you have to have a lot of credibility,&quot; Rai said. &quot;You have to have the right speakers so people pay to come to these conferences.” 
<h3> LinkBridge origins </h3> 
 Oliveira founded LinkBridge in 2016 after having worked at Markets Group, a New York City-based “executive forum provider,” for about three years, he testified. 
 He&nbsp;rose from a $10-an-hour employee to a manager with a salary of between $80,000 and $90,000 annually, he said. 
 At Market Groups, Oliveira&nbsp;would sometimes send out upward of 20,000 emails at once, he&nbsp;testified. 
 The goal, he said, was to get someone to agree to pay to attend or sponsor a conference. 
 Market Groups hosted events focused on Latin American real estate.&nbsp;Company officials did not respond to requests for comment. 
 People who replied received more personalized emails or calls. Successful sponsorships brought him commissions that could be 6.5% of the sponsorship fees, Oliveira testified. 
 “It was a mass email, talk to a lot of people, move on,” he said. 
 Oliveria first envisioned LinkBridge as servicing “investor relations,” he testified. That amounted to reaching&nbsp;“out to investors so they could be introduced [in] a specific amount of meetings to some managers,” he testified. 
 Within six months, LinkBridge moved into running conferences, because “there wasn’t enough revenue coming in through investor relations” alone, according to Oliveira's deposition transcript. According to company social media posts, LinkBridge has held and continues to hold events in New York, Dallas&nbsp;and Miami. 
 Oliveira testified in March 2019,&nbsp;a time when Santos said he was vice president,&nbsp;that the company then employed only&nbsp;just himself and his wife, Naira Oliveira. 
 LinkBridge's website lists its address as on the 8th floor of an office building on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. Oliveira testified that the space was &quot;virtual.&quot; 
 Newsday visited the address&nbsp;on Wednesday, but a LinkBridge office could not be found. 
 According to LinkBridge’s LinkedIn page, the company has four employees, including Oliveira and his wife.

POLINKBRIDGE230119

George Santos may have inflated role at finance company, records show

Santos may have inflated role at finance company, records show

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Tom Brune

WASHINGTON — Rep. George Santos was named to two House committees on Tuesday despite multiple law enforcement investigations and the filing of complaints about his campaign and financial disclosure filings. 
 Santos will sit on the Small Business Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee, a knowledgeable House GOP source told Newsday Tuesday night. 
 Santos' appointment came as the House Republican Steering Committee revealed committee assignments, including the decision to place the three other Long Island Republican congressmen on the House Homeland Security Committee. 
 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made the appointment despite admitting on Monday that he always had questions about Santos’ resume and had heard that a Santos campaign aide had posed as McCarthy's chief of staff to raise money and boost support for Santos. 
 “We will have dealt with all committees today and he’ll get seated on committees,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters asking about Santos Tuesday. Last week, McCarthy said he considered Santos a member of the Republican conference and would seat him on a committee. 
 Santos, 34, has admitted fabricating much of his resume and faces local, state and federal investigations. 
 Santos’ congressional office staff did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday night. 
 Santos sought to be placed on the House Financial Services Committee, but was denied that plum post. 
 Last week, Democratic Reps. Daniel Goldman of Brooklyn and Ritchie Torres of the Bronx filed a complaint about Santos with the House Ethics Committee. 
 The nonprofit Campaign Legal Center also filed a complaint against Santos with the Federal Election Commission. 
 “Mr. Santos has failed to uphold the integrity expected of members of the House of Representatives,” Goldman and Torres said in their complaint. 
 Long Island’s other three GOP&nbsp;congressmen won seats on their preferred committees. 
 Rep. Andrew Garbarino of Bayport, who is beginning his second term, won a seat on the House Financial Services Committee while retaining his membership on the Homeland Security Committee. 
 &quot;The financial services industry is the lifeblood of New York’s, and specifically Long Island’s, economy,” Garbarino said in a statement. “I am thrilled to be able to continue my efforts to strengthen Long Island's economy with this new committee assignment.” 
 Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park will join the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. 
 “Here on Long Island and New York, our transportation and infrastructure are critically important to our everyday lives,” D’Esposito told Newsday in a telephone interview. 
 “There's so much involved in this committee that I think is unique to Long Island, whether it's the maritime industry, or whether it's the fact that we have major airlines like JetBlue,” D’Esposito said. 
 Rep. Nick LaLota, of Amityville, a U.S. Navy veteran and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, won a seat on the House Armed Services Committee. LaLota also will serve on Homeland Security, according to news reports.&nbsp; 
 “The best job I ever had was serving as a young Naval Officer, deploying overseas three times with some of our nation’s bravest, most dedicated, and selfless men and women,” LaLota said in a statement. 
 LaLota said the committee assignment will help him serve his district, home to the 106th Rescue Wing of the New York Air National Guard, the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, an active veterans community&nbsp;and more than 150 defense and aerospace companies. 
 Also joining the Homeland Security Committee will be Rep. Marjorie&nbsp;Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). 
 The Democrat-led House stripped Greene of her committee assignments in 2021 for support of political violence and antisemitic and racist remarks before her election in 2020. 
 Greene often stirs controversy with her remarks, most recently when she said that had she and former Trump aide Stephen Bannon organized the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol they “would have won,” adding, “Not to mention, we would’ve been armed.”

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George Santos gets two House committee assignments

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The Washington Post

George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents. 
 Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos' main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater's cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry. 
 The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year. 
 Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos' onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond. 
 The congressman, whose election from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow House majority, has apologized for what he called &quot;r&eacute;sum&eacute; embellishment&quot; while rebuffing calls for his resignation. He is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro. 
 Ties between Santos, 34, and Intrater, 60, reflect the ways Santos found personal and political support on his path to public office. 
 While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova's largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year. 
 Intrater's interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin. 
 Intrater's company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls. Neither Intrater nor Vekselberg was accused of wrongdoing in Mueller's investigation. 
 In 2020, when Santos was tasked by Harbor City with locating investors in New York, he claimed in a Harbor City meeting held over Zoom that Intrater's investment firm, Columbus Nova, was a &quot;client&quot; of his, according to footage obtained by The Washington Post. 
 He made the comment during a discussion of the difficulties of residential real estate investing, in particular for investors who put money into the 1,400-foot tall tower at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which for a time was the tallest residential building in the world. Intrater did not respond to a question about whether he or Columbus Nova was involved in the project. 
 &quot;You might know who they are,&quot; Santos added in the company meeting, referring to Columbus Nova. &quot;They've made the news on several occasions. They were heavily involved with the Russia probe. Unjustified.&quot; 
 &quot;But they're a real estate company,&quot; Santos added. &quot;They're legitimate.&quot; 
 Santos did not respond to a text message seeking comment. Intrater did not respond to an emailed question about whether his firm was Santos's client as claimed or about the deposit with Harbor City. 
 The congressman has falsified substantial aspects of his work experience. And, in the Harbor City Zoom meetings reviewed by The Post, he recounted dealings with other prominent investors or moneyed organizations that those entities denied took place. 
 But Harbor City was able to land a $625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer, according to an exhibit included in the SEC's complaint against Harbor City. The alleged deposit, which is undated, is included in a chart that lists several entities that the SEC says made payments to Harbor City. 
 The Mississippi company, FEA Innovations, is registered to Intrater, according to secretary of state records. Registration documents include no other officers or directors and identify Intrater's address as the same one used by Columbus Nova on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Columbus Nova is now known as Sparrow Capital. 
 In the SEC action, initiated in April 2021, regulators accused Harbor City and its founder of running a &quot;classic Ponzi scheme&quot; - promising investors reliable profit and instead bilking them out of millions. 
 The SEC complaint did not name Santos, who has denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing, although he had been told by a prospective investor that the firm was using a fraudulent bank document, as The Post previously reported. 
 Harbor City's founder, J.P. Maroney, has denied the SEC allegations, which were brought in federal court in Florida. The company itself has not responded in court. Maroney did not respond to a text message about the alleged deposit from Intrater's firm. The exhibit that identifies the alleged deposit from Intrater's company does not elaborate on its purpose or suggest that Intrater had knowledge of purported wrongdoing at Harbor City. 
 After Harbor City's assets were frozen, and with assistance from a fellow former Harbor City employee, Santos in 2021 formed a company, the Devolder Organization, that paid him at least $3.5 million over the next two years, according to Florida business records and financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 but did not report any income from Harbor City despite having been paid by the company as recently as April 2021. 
 Details of Santos's tenure at Harbor City were confirmed by a court-appointed lawyer overseeing liquidation of the company's assets. 
 Columbus Nova became a subject of interest for the Mueller investigation as prosecutors probed the ties forged by Intrater and his company with Cohen, a confidant of Trump's at the time. 
 Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump's inaugural committee, according to campaign finance records, and attended the 2017 inaugural, along with Vekselberg. The Washington Post has reported that the two men encountered Cohen at the inauguration. Not long after, Columbus Nova began paying Cohen as part of a contract to recruit new investors for the company, The Post reported. Court records show the payments totaled $583,000. 
 Court records also show that Cohen and Intrater exchanged more than 1,000 calls and text messages between November 2016 and November 2017. Intrater donated $35,000 to attend a 2017 fundraiser for Trump's reelection, attending at Cohen's invitation, The Post has reported. 
 Federal officials questioned both Intrater and Vekselberg during the probe, interviewing the latter after his private airplane made a stop in the United States in 2018, people familiar with the investigation said. 
 Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax and bank fraud and lying to Congress - matters unrelated to his interactions with Columbus Nova. Intrater told the New York Times in 2019 that his omission from Mueller's final report &quot;confirms what I knew all along - that I've done nothing wrong.&quot; 
 Cohen later turned on Trump, criticizing him in a 2019 congressional hearing and cooperating with investigations into his former boss' business practices. 
 Vekselberg and his company, Renova, were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in April 2018, cited for benefiting from Russian President Vladimir Putin's &quot;malign activity around the globe.&quot; In April 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Vekselberg's $90 million yacht was seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the United States. 
 Columbus Nova has long been described as closely associated with the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate run by Vekselberg. As recently as 2017, a website for Renova Group listed Columbus Nova as one of its companies, and Columbus Nova confirmed to The Post in 2018 that Vekselberg's conglomerate was at that time its largest client. However, the firm said at the time that it was owned by Americans and had never been controlled by Renova Group or Vekselberg.

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New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch

New details link Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch

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Records show George Santos made questionable payments to vendors, experts say

Records show Santos made questionable payments to vendors, experts say

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WASHINGTON — Newly elected Republican George Santos, who next month takes office as a congressman representing parts of Nassau County and Queens, is listed as a special guest at a GOP&nbsp;event in Manhattan Saturday&nbsp;featuring many far-right American and European figures, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. 
 The New York Young Republican Club’s black-tie annual gala also features Donald Trump Jr. and Jack Posobiec, a Human Events editor known for disinformation campaigns and who promoted Pizzagate, which falsely accused Democrats of running a pedophile ring at a Washington pizza parlor. 
 The guest list includes members of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party founded by a former Nazi SS officer, and the Freedom Youth of Austria party that seeks to protect Western culture from globalism and “subjugation of our culture” and to end illegal immigration that “eradicates” the “traditional people of a land.” 
 Democrats and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors hate groups,&nbsp;raised concerns about the gala’s speakers, including Greene, whose promotion of many far-right conspiracy theories led the House to remove her from her committee assignments. 
 “The event’s headliners have built brands on the backs of hatred and bigotry. The New York Young Republican Club — and national Republicans — should be ashamed,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) in a statement. 
 Club president Gavin Wax could not be reached immediately for comment Friday. 
 Wax defended his star guests but also acknowledged he is coordinating with the New York Police Department for expected protests at&nbsp;the&nbsp;Midtown event's undisclosed location, NY1 Spectrum News reported Friday. 
 “We reject the framing and the accusations of the SPLC,” Wax told NY1. “These are all sort of baseless accusations that are thrown ad nauseam at anyone who even dares to veer just slightly right of center.” 
 Santos, 34, of Whitestone, who defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the race to replace Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), declined to answer questions when reached by&nbsp;phone. 
 He said to put questions in writing but has not responded to Newsday’s written queries. 
 Santos supported former President Donald Trump and has said he attended his “Stop the Steal” Rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. 
 But he said he did not enter the U.S. Capitol after a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the building and ransacked offices and desks in the chambers. 
 SPLC&nbsp;senior investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden said his group has documented Posobiec's&nbsp;ties to white nationalists, neo-Nazis and anti-government extremists. 
 The gala’s master of ceremonies will be Bill Spadea, a New Jersey radio host banned from LinkedIn because of accusations of spreading COVID vaccine misinformation. 
 Its toastmaster will be Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and an unsuccessful candidate this year for the&nbsp;Republican nomination for New York governor. 
 Featured speakers at the Young Republicans' gala include&nbsp;many figures in Trump’s orbit, including Rudy Giuliani, Trump associate Roger Stone, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon&nbsp;and former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik. 
 Well-known conservatives on the guest list include Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, former Blackwater private military company owner Erik Prince&nbsp;and right-wing media figures such as Mike Crispi and Raheem Kassam. 
 The guest list includes Cait Corrigan, who ran unsuccessfully to replace Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin in the 1st congressional District, and Robert Cornicelli, who&nbsp;lost his bid for the GOP nomination in Long Island’s 2nd Congressional District. 
 Also on the list is Kevin Smith, founder of Long Island Loud Majority, which SPLC listed as among 488 “extreme antigovernment groups” active in 2021. 
 The group's&nbsp;supporters are patriots &quot;tired of watching their liberties eroded away by an ever-expanding government,&quot; according to its website.

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George Santos listed as 'special guest' at event with far-right figures

Santos listed as 'special guest' at event with far-right figures

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WASHINGTON — Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican&nbsp;and former top White House aide to former President Donald Trump, has joined the growing number of House Republicans calling for Rep. George Santos to resign. 
 Miller, a freshman representative and one of two Jewish Republicans serving in the House, took issue with Santos’ claims of being “Jew-ish” and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. 
 Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), who once identified himself on the campaign trail as an “American Jew,” has since backtracked and said he was raised Catholic but identifies as “Jew-ish.” Subsequent reporting by CNN and Jewish Insider, citing genealogical records, has also cast doubt on Santos’ claims that his grandparents fled to Brazil from Belgium to escape the Holocaust. 
 “It is not okay to fabricate or lie for political gain,” Miller said in a statement issued Thursday night. “This is especially true when the lie seeks benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people. I do not believe George Santos can effectively serve and should resign.” 
 Miller previously served as a special assistant to Trump, and was often seen at Trump’s side during out-of-town trips. 
 Miller is one of the first House Republicans outside of New York to call for Santos’ resignation after the beleaguered politician admitted to fabricating major parts of his resume, including lying about his education and work experience. 
 A New York Times investigation published last month first revealed some of the inconsistencies with Santos’ resume and also raised questions about the source of Santos’ income via a private firm, the Devolder Organization, that has little public footprint. 
 New York Republican Reps. Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park, Nick LaLota of Amityville&nbsp;and upstate lawmakers Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro&nbsp;and Brandon Williams all called for Santos’ resignation this week. 
 Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), in a pair of interviews with CNN and MSNBC, also called for Santos to resign on Wednesday. She is the only non-freshman House Republican to call for his resignation. 
 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who garnered Santos’ vote in his protracted battle to win the House speakership, told reporters he would not join the calls for Santos to step down. 
 “The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference,” McCarthy said Thursday. “There are concerns with him, so he will go before Ethics. If anything is found to be wrong, he will be held accountable exactly as anybody else in this body would be.” 
 Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.), the only other Jewish House Republican, has yet to weigh in publicly, and his office did not respond to a request for comment. 
 Miller and Santos were financially supportive of each other's congressional bids. Federal campaign finance records show Miller contributed $8,900 to Santos’ 2022 campaign. Santos’ own political action committee — GADS PAC — donated $5,000 to Miller’s PAC, Dependable Conservative Leadership, according to records. 
 The Republican Jewish Coalition, a political group that supports the election of Jewish candidates, has since denounced Santos and said he will be barred from all of its future events. Santos was previously a featured guest at the group’s Dec. 18 Hanukkah celebration in Sands Point, where he was joined by former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), who is also Jewish, according to the group’s website.

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Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller urges George Santos to resign

Max Miller, 1 of 2 Jewish Republicans in the House, urges Santos to quit

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WASHINGTON — Embattled Rep. George Santos pushed back Thursday on calls for him to resign by five&nbsp;New York Republican congressmen and Nassau County party officials, saying he would step down only if asked to by the &quot;142,000 voters who voted for me.&quot; 
 Santos, who admitted fabricating his resume and faces multiple local, state and federal investigations, also picked up support from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the Queens Republican Party chairman Tony Nunziato. 
 “Well, what I find is the voters have elected George Santos,&quot; McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “If there is a concern, it will go through ethics,&quot; he said&nbsp;referring to the&nbsp;House&nbsp;Ethics committee. &quot;If there is something that is found, he will be dealt with in that manner, but they have a voice in this process.&quot; 
 McCarthy said this week that Santos is innocent until proven guilty and that Santos now is a member of the Republican conference. McCarthy has said&nbsp;that next week he will assign him to a lower-level committee, a regular practice for first-term representatives.&nbsp; 
 McCarthy faces a balancing act, Democrats and Republicans say, because he does not want to see his narrow majority of 222 members shrink to 221 with a departure of Santos and a special election that could result in a Democrat being elected. 
 And Nunziato, whose county party supported Santos for the congressional seat, defended Santos, conceding he embellished his resume as a candidate — something the party chairman added he did not condone — but saying no authority has charged Santos with breaking the law.&nbsp; 
 “Show me something illegal, then I can say step down.&nbsp;But for anybody else to say that — horrendous,” he told Newsday in a phone interview. “It’s the government of the people, not the government telling you to step down. The people have spoken.” 
 On Thursday, Santos raced to an elevator followed by reporters and cameras asking him if he intended to resign. From the back of the elevator, he said, &quot;If 142 people ask for me to resign, I'll resign.&quot; 
 Later he told ABC News he meant &quot;142,000 voters who voted for me&quot; would have to ask for him to resign – though records show he won with 145,824&nbsp;votes – and that the elevator cut him off. Videos show it did not and that he said “142 people.”&nbsp; 
 Santos&nbsp;appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, hosted Thursday by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in the first media interview he has given since McCarthy swore him in as an official representative of the U.S. House at the end of last week. 
 &quot;It's their prerogative,” Santos said about the calls to resign by other House members and the Nassau County Republican Party. “I came here to serve the people not politicians and party leaders, and I'm going to do just that.&quot; 
 He added, &quot;I wish well all of their opinions, but I was elected by 142,000 people. Until those same 142,000 people tell me they don't want me — we'll find out in two years.&quot; 
 On Wednesday, Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo and other top party leaders called for Santos’ immediate resignation because his lies have “disgraced the House of Representatives.” 
 Those urging Santos to resign include two other Republican congressmen from Long Island — fellow freshmen Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park and Nick LaLota of Amityville. Rep. Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York State Republican Party, and Rep. Brandon Williams (R-Sennett) also urged Santos to step down.&nbsp; 
 On Thursday, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Pearl River) issued a statement calling for Santos to resign. 
 &quot;It is clear that George Santos has lost the confidence and support of his party, his constituents, and his colleagues,&quot; Lawler said. 
 &quot;With the extent and severity of the allegations against him, his inability to take full responsibility for his conduct, and the numerous investigations underway, I believe he is unable to fulfill his duties and should resign.&quot; 
 Democrats urged Republicans to act on Santos. 
 Santos is “a complete and total fraud&quot; who “lied to the voters” and “deceived and connived his way into Congress,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn said at a news conference Thursday. 
 “And it's now the responsibility of House Republicans to do something about it,” said Jeffries. &quot;Clean up your house.” 
 Unlike Nassau County's Republican officials, Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams will work with Santos, saying when asked at City Hall if he would, “Yes, yes, definitely.” &nbsp; 
 Adams said, “We’re going to need votes on the federal level, so until it is determined that he no longer should serve, right now, his name is congressman, and we’re not leaving any stone unturned on who we should be sitting down with to make sure New Yorkers get resources that they need.&quot; 
 With Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Matthew Chayes

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George Santos resists calls for him to resign, picks up support from House speaker

George Santos resists calls for him to resign

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WASHINGTON — A watchdog group filed a complaint Monday with the Federal Election Commission urging it to immediately open an investigation into questions about Rep. George Santos’ campaign fundraising, loans and expenditures. 
 The complaint, by the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit, alleges Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) hid the true sources of funds he lent his campaign, misrepresented the campaign’s spending and used its funds for personal expenses. 
 The center said the jump in Santos'&nbsp;reported salary -- from&nbsp;$55,000 in 2020 to $750,000 in 2022 -- suggests he was a funnel for others’ money. 
 The complaint&nbsp;questioned the source of his $705,000 in loans to his campaign. 
 And it alleges he falsified reports on&nbsp;37 filings on expenditures under $200. 
 “George Santos has lied to voters about a lot of things, but while lying about your background might not be illegal, deceiving voters about your campaign’s funding and spending is a serious violation of federal law,” said Adav Noti, the center’s legal director. 
 Also Monday, the left-leaning nonprofit End Citizens United filed complaints against Santos with the U.S. Justice Department, the FEC and the Office of Congressional Ethics about Santos' late and faulty reports, campaign loans and his attempt to fundraise off his House swearing-in ceremony this month. 
 On Jan. 3, the Democratic PAC American Bridge filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics about&nbsp;Santos’ failure to file his personal financial disclosure statements as required in May of 2021 and 2022. 
 He filed the report on Sept. 22, 2022 — after New York’s Aug. 23 primary.&nbsp; 
 Santos, 34, admitted fabricating much of his resume after he won the 2022 election to represent the Third&nbsp;District in Nassau and Queens counties. He faces local, state and federal investigations. 
 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) swore in Santos early Saturday. 
 Many of the allegations in the complaint have been reported by news outlets, including the December expos&eacute;&nbsp;and subsequent stories by The New York Times. 
 Santos and his lawyer, Joseph Murray, did not respond to requests for comment Monday. 
 The FEC declined to comment on the complaint. 
<h3> Straw donor </h3> 
 The Campaign Legal Center complaint alleges that Santos acted as a straw donor for unknown others for the $705,000 in loans he made to his campaign finance committees, despite his statements that he drew it from his salary and dividends from his firm Devolder LLC. 
 “The available information indicates that Santos and other unknown persons engaged in a scheme to provide illegal contributions to Santos’ campaign,” the complaint said. 
 “These unknown persons provided money to Santos disguised as income from his wholly owned entity Devolder LLC,” it said. 
 The complaint notes Santos created and ran his fledgling new company and his campaign for Congress at the same time, a difficult task. 
 The complaint said there is scant information to corroborate Santos made such a large amount of money from brokering deals between wealthy, as he has said. 
 Santos filed his declaration of candidacy with the FEC on April 17, 2021, created Devolder LLC in Florida on May 11, 2021&nbsp;and made the first of three loans — for $80,000 — to his campaign on June 30, 2021, the complaint said. 
 The Florida Secretary of State dissolved Devolder LLC in September 2022 after it failed to file its annual report, but reinstated it in December after Santos filed a report following the Times expose. 
 The complaint also called it likely that Santos also “funneled outside money” to his campaign in his first run for Congress in 2020 when he lent it $81,250 even though he reported in his personal financial disclosure statement income of $55,000. 
<h3> Falsifying records, personal use </h3> 
 The Santos campaign appears to have routinely falsified its disclosures of how it spent money by reporting 40 disbursements between $199 and $199.99 — just under the $200 threshold that requires reporting of the date, amount and&nbsp;purpose of the expenditure, the Campaign Legal Center complaint said. 
 The campaign submitted 37 of those 40 reports for $199.99. 
 Some appear to be impossible, including one for a Miami Beach hotel that charges more than $700 for a room, a membership that costs $189 and a JFK International Airport parking fee. 
 The campaign also reported spending $199.99 seven times at Il Bacco Restaurant in Queens for food and drink —&nbsp;once reporting that expenditure twice in one day, according to the complaint. 
 The campaign also appeared to have spent $13,500 to rent a single-family home in Huntington for Santos in payments described as “Apartment Rental for Staff,” “Rent” or “Rent and Rent Deposit, the complaint said. 
 That would constitute a violation of the FEC ban on spending campaign funds for personal use.&nbsp; 
 The FEC often fails to pursue complaints against campaign finance committees, but Erin Chlopak, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of campaign finance, told Newsday the center's complaint&nbsp;could lead to a criminal investigation. 
 “Although the FEC does not have criminal jurisdiction, the Department of Justice does,” said Chlopak, the FEC's former acting associate general counsel. 
 “And in recent years, we have seen the DOJ step up on matters where the violations rise to a criminal level,” Chlopak said.

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Federal complaint: George Santos hid sources of funds he lent his campaign

Federal complaint: Santos hid sources of funds he lent campaign

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Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), who has admitted to fabricating key details of his biography, received payments as recently as April 2021 from a financial services company accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of a &quot;classic Ponzi scheme,&quot; according to a court-appointed lawyer reviewing the firm's assets. 
 Santos did not divulge any income from the company, Florida-based Harbor City Capital, on a financial disclosure form required of all federal candidates. The payments the lawyer described to The Washington Post, which have not been previously reported, indicate that Santos received money at least a month after he has said he left the firm — and mere weeks before registering a business called the Devolder Organization that he has claimed as the basis for his wealth. The lawyer, Katherine C. Donlon, declined to tell The Post the amount Santos was paid. 
 Santos, whose election to Congress from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow majority, has apologized for what he called &quot;r&eacute;sum&eacute; embellishment,&quot; but he has refused to step aside. On Wednesday, he rebuffed calls to resign from fellow New York Republicans, including leaders of the state GOP and the party in Nassau County, which had previously endorsed him. 
 <a href="https://www.newsday.com/beta/long-island/politics/george-santos-wont-resign-mccarthy-congress-s1tijlkf" target="_blank">Santos pushed back again Thursday</a>,&nbsp;saying he would step down only if asked to by the &quot;142,000 voters who voted for me.&quot; He won with slightly more votes than that. 
 The congressman's deceptions have already sparked an investigation by the district attorney's office in Nassau County, as well as complaints before the Federal Election Commission. Authorities in Brazil are also seeking to revive a fraud case against Santos dating to 2008. 
 During his first run for Congress in 2020, Santos reported earning a salary of $55,000 from a previous employer in the financial industry. His fortunes then improved dramatically, according to the financial disclosure he filed during his 2022 campaign: He earned an annual salary of $750,000 and received more than $1 million in dividends from the Devolder Organization. He also lent his campaign more than $700,000, according to campaign finance records. 
 A key unanswered question is how Devolder made its money. The congressman has given various explanations about the firm — including saying it is an operation focused on &quot;asset allocations&quot; and an effort to help &quot;all the people who were left adrift&quot; at Harbor City. 
 The financial disclosure form, filed in September of last year, covers January 2021 through December 2022. It does not mention Harbor City. 
 According to quarterly reports Donlon has submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, she and her team have interviewed people associated with the firm and issued subpoenas &quot;for documents related to monies paid out by Harbor City.&quot; While declining to enumerate the payments to Santos, Donlon told The Post they exceeded the $200 reporting threshold. 
 Santos, 34, did not respond to text messages seeking comment. 
 Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said intentional failure to disclose could result in large fines or imprisonment for up to five years. &quot;Voters have a right to know this information,&quot; she said. &quot;Congress has said as much.&quot; 
 Santos, who sometimes uses his maternal family name, Devolder, registered his eponymous organization in Florida on May 11, 2021, according to corporate records. He did so with the help of a business associated with DeVaughn Dames, state business records show. Dames, who describes himself on LinkedIn as the former chief financial officer of Harbor City, did not respond to requests for comment. 
 Harbor City was formed in 2014 by a Florida entrepreneur named J.P. Maroney. In July 2020, the company announced it had hired Santos to serve as regional director of the company's New York City office. The news release referred to Santos, who was then in the midst of his first congressional campaign, as George Devolder. 
 &quot;I've known Mr. Devolder for several years professionally, and have always had a lot of respect for how he conducts himself in business,&quot; Maroney said in a news release at the time. 
 Before Santos's hiring was made public, the Alabama Securities Commission had issued a cease-and-desist order in June 2020 to prevent it from selling securities in the state. 
 Santos has previously denied knowing of any wrongdoing at Harbor City, telling the Daily Beast last year that he was &quot;as distraught and disturbed as everyone else&quot; to learn of the allegations against it. He claimed that he had left Harbor City on March 1, 2021, more than a month before the SEC filed its complaint. 
 In that complaint, filed on April 20, 2021, the SEC alleged that Maroney had raised more than $17 million by deceiving investors into sinking their money into unregistered fraudulent securities. 
 The SEC complaint named Harbor City and Maroney as defendants, but did not name Santos or any other Harbor City employees. Santos was responsible for securing investors for the company in New York, according to people familiar with his role who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity. 
 Maroney told investors that Harbor City was in the business of generating sales leads for other companies, and that their money, in funding that work, would fetch handsome returns, according to the SEC complaint. But he spent &quot;at most&quot; $449,000 of the $17.1 million he raised on actual business expenses, according to the complaint. It accuses him of diverting much more than that — $4.8 million —&nbsp;for his personal use, including to pay off his and his wife's credit card bills, buy and renovate a waterfront home, and buy a Mercedes-Benz. 
 Maroney used another $6.5 million to make monthly interest payments to investors in &quot;classic Ponzi scheme fashion,&quot; according to the SEC complaint. 
 In court, Maroney has denied allegations of wrongdoing. Last fall, he secured a stay in the SEC's civil case against him, saying he was the &quot;target in a related criminal investigation&quot; involving the &quot;same conduct and events.&quot; He did not elaborate in court and did not respond to requests for comment. 
 With Newsday Staff

George Santos was paid for work at company accused of Ponzi scheme later than previously known

Santos was paid for work at company accused of Ponzi scheme later than previously known

Vera Chinese

Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo and other top party leaders called Wednesday for the immediate resignation of Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), saying Santos' lies had &quot;disgraced the House of Representatives.&quot; 
 At a news conference attended by dozens of top Republicans, including new GOP Rep. Anthony D'Esposito via video conference, Cairo said Santos' congressional campaign had been one of deceit. 
 “His lies were not mere fibs — he disgraced the House of Representatives&nbsp;and we do not consider him&nbsp;one of our congresspeople,” Cairo said. 
 Recent media reports have revealed that Santos lied about his educational background, work history and&nbsp;financial standings and suggested he misrepresented his family’s Jewish heritage, among other things. &nbsp;A 2020 resume provided by Santos to the GOP surfaced Wednesday in which he claimed to have graduated in the top 1% of his class at Baruch College and to have earned an MBA from New York University in 2013. He admitted last month that neither is true. 
 Santos, stepping outside his congressional office on Capitol Hill Wednesday, told reporters &quot;I will not&quot; when asked if he would resign. 
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 About 30 Republican officials — including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and all three Nassau town supervisors — attended the news conference at county GOP headquarters in Westbury. 
 The officials said they are refusing to work with Santos, and are directing constituents to D'Esposito's office for help. District offices typically help constituents with services such as obtaining passports or nominations for service academies. 
 “George Santos does not have the ability to serve here in the House of Representatives and should resign,” said D’Esposito (R-Island Park). 
<h3> Santos takes to Twitter </h3> 
 Santos in a Tweet Wednesday said he was disappointed to hear that, but that the actions of his fellow Republicans&nbsp;would not change his mind. 
 “I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party &amp; politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living. I will NOT resign!” he wrote. 
<div data-oembed-url="https://twitter.com/Santos4Congress/status/1613234542650982400"> 
 <blockquote align="center" class="twitter-tweet"> 
 I was elected to serve the people of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NY03?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NY03</a> not the party &amp; politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living. I will NOT resign! — George Santos (@Santos4Congress) 
 <a href="https://twitter.com/Santos4Congress/status/1613234542650982400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Jan. 11, 2023</a> 
 </blockquote> 
</div> 
 Cairo announced in December that the committee would not support Santos for reelection in 2024, but local public officials on Wednesday gave the strongest rebuke of the congressman yet, using terms like “national joke” and “fraud” to describe him. Cairo confirmed&nbsp;the Nassau GOP committee had returned $126,725 given to the party by a Santos-tied PAC, Rise NY. 
 Asked about his decision to call for Santos' resignation now and not sooner, Blakeman said he believes in due process, but couldn’t “stomach” Santos' lies anymore. Blakeman, who is Jewish, said he was particularly offended by Santos' claims that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust. 
 &quot;It is simply tragic and outrageous and disgusting,&quot; Blakeman said. 
 In an interview with Anderson Cooper late Wednesday on CNN, Blakeman said of Santos: &quot;He has no concept of the scope of his untruths. … if he wants to do the right thing he should resign and seek professional help.&quot; 
<h3> House Ethics Committee could play a role </h3> 
 GOP officials admitted there is little they could do to force Santos to resign, but noted that the House could take action against him. The House could discipline him through its Ethics Committee, which reviews and passes judgment on complaints about conduct.&nbsp; 
 The most severe punishment the committee can administer is expulsion, which requires two-thirds vote of the House and was last used in 2002, followed by a censure, which requires a majority vote and was last used in 2012. The committee can also reprimand members, strip their committees, seniority or privileges. 
 Earlier this week, two&nbsp;New York House Democrats filed a complaint with the Ethics Committee asking it to investigate Santos’ financial disclosures. Meanwhile, Santos is facing probes from federal and state prosecutors over his business and campaign finances.&nbsp; 
 Stanley Brand, who previously served as general counsel to the U.S. House, told Newsday in a phone interview that while there is public pressure for the House Ethics Committee to open an investigation into Santos, the bipartisan panel may decide to delay opening an investigation. Such a delay would avoid conflicting with any ongoing law enforcement investigations into Santos including those reportedly being conducted by federal investigators from the Eastern District of New York. 
 “There is precedent for the committee to stay its hand until the criminal process completes because they don't want to get into complications with witnesses,&quot; Brand said. 
 Rina Shah, a Washington, D.C.-based Republican strategist who previously worked as a senior congressional aide, told Newsday in an interview, &quot;[House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy must decide whether Santos remains, but for a party that ran on delivering results — keeping this con man in their ranks does them no favors.&quot; 
 Cairo said the county will conduct more thorough background&nbsp;searches for future candidates following the revelations about Santos' claims. 
<h3> Santos resume for congressional run didn't raise red flags </h3> 
 GOP officials also on Wednesday for the first time released the resume Santos submitted to them in 2020 when he first ran for Congress. The document claims he earned a 3.89 GPA at Baruch and that he earned a score of 710 on the GMAT before earning a MBA from New York University. He also claims to have worked for&nbsp;Citi Group as an asset manager associate between 2011 and 2014 and for Goldman Sachs as a project manager in 2017. 
 Santos has admitted to lying about attending Baruch and NYU and acknowledged he never worked directly for Goldman Sachs or Citi Group. 
 Cairo said Santos gave detailed accounts of his past that the chairman now knows are fabricated but at the time did not raise any flags. Santos had said he was a striker on the Baruch College volleyball team and led the college to victory. 
 “[He said] that he was a star on the Baruch volleyball team and that they won the league championship,” Cairo said. “What can I tell you?” 
 Asked whom the GOP would support if Santos were to leave office and there were to be a special election to fill the seat, Cairo declined to answer, calling the question “premature.” 
 State GOP chairman Nick Langworthy in a statement said he supported the calls from Nassau Republicans. 
 “It’s clear that he cannot be an effective representative and it would be in the best interest of the taxpayers to have new leadership,” Langworthy said. 
 With Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Tom Brune

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George Santos must resign, Nassau Republicans say, but Santos digs in

Nassau Republican chief: George Santos must resign

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Nassau County Republican Committee chairman Joseph Cairo on Wednesday called&nbsp;for the&nbsp;resignation of Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) during a news&nbsp;conference at party headquarters in Westbury.&nbsp;NewsdayTV&rsquo;s Cecilia Dowd reports.

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Nassau GOP chief: George Santos must resign

Westbury

'We trusted him and shame on us for doing that'

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Tom Brune and Laura Figueroa Hernandez

WASHINGTON — Two New York Democratic congressmen asked the House Ethics Committee on Tuesday to investigate Rep. George Santos for failure&nbsp;to file timely and accurate financial disclosure reports about his income, bank accounts and real estate holdings. 
 Reps. Daniel Goldman of Brooklyn and Ritchie Torres of the Bronx hand-delivered a copy of their six-page complaint to Santos’ office, where an aide accepted it for the beleaguered congressman, who already faces local, state and federal probes into his fabrications and finances. 
 &quot;Mr. Santos has failed to uphold the integrity expected of members of the&nbsp;House of Representatives,&quot; they said in their filing. 
 Acknowledging other inquiries, Goldman said, “This investigation, though, it calls on the House to police its own because if we are to have credibility, if we are to have integrity, and if this body is to gain the trust of the American people, then we need to assure that its members are following ethics rules of this body.” &nbsp; 
 Santos later entered an elevator without commenting in response to questions about the filing to the House Ethics Committee, which is located one floor below his office. 
 The request by Goldman, a former prosecutor and Trump impeachment counsel, and Torres stands as the latest in a barrage of complaints filed against Santos in his first few days in office, most of them about his campaign fundraising and spending and financial disclosures. 
 Outside ethics groups, however, warned that requests for investigations to the Ethics Committee, overseen by eight House members evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, often result in lengthy deliberations and in little or no punishment. 
 The last time the House expelled a member came in 2002 and the last time it censured a member was in 2010. &nbsp; 
 Those ethics groups and Democrats said the more potent Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent House entity created to review misconduct allegations and refer its investigations to the House Ethics Committee, had been weakened by House rules passed Monday. 
 The rules remove three Democrats on the office’s board of four Democrats and four Republicans, hampering any investigations until they are replaced, in part because the board must approve any probes before they begin. 
 That delay would affect the only complaint about Santos to the Office of Congressional Ethics by the liberal advocacy group End Citizens United. &nbsp; 
 It filed a complaint against Santos Monday for allegedly soliciting campaign contributions for a round trip from New York to Washington for his swearing-in and other activities, a violation of the U.S. Federal Code and House Ethics rules. 
 Members of both parties in New York have condemned Santos. &nbsp; 
 Rep. Pat Ryan (D-Gardiner) tweeted, “George Santos can not be trusted with access to classified information.” 
 Nassau County Republican Committee chairman Joseph Cairo announced that he and other Nassau Republican elected officials on Wednesday will “deliver their strongest statement yet” on the “disgraced” Santos. 
 “Santos’ despicable lies and mistruths have offended countless Long Islanders, and he will have to answer for his horrific deceptions,” said Matt Capp, a spokesman for Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park). 
 Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) said, “New Yorkers deserve the truth and someone who is a total fraud deserves harsh consequences. I expect that the House Ethics Committee is one place where both can be delivered.” 
 And Kristen Cianci, spokeswoman for Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said,&nbsp;“As a member of the Ethics Subcommittee on Investigations Member Pool, Congressman Garbarino could be called upon to participate in potential future congressional investigations of the matter and is therefore unable to comment at this time.”&nbsp; 
 The filing by Goodman and Torres to the Ethics Committee said Santos violated the Ethics in Government Act by failing to file financial disclosure reports within 30 days of becoming a candidate and 30 days before the 2022 primary election. &nbsp; 
 Records show Santos did neither. 
 “Mr. Santos failed to file a single disclosure report prior to the Republican primary for the NY-3 congressional seat on August 23, 2022, not withstanding his status as a candidate for 19 months prior,” the filing said. 
 “As this committee well knows, financial disclosures are essential to enforce compliance with the law as well as to ensure voters have access to relevant information about candidates,” the filing added. 
 Goldman and Torres questioned the validity of Santos’ tardy financial disclosure statement, noting he claimed he owned&nbsp;an apartment in Brazil worth $500,000 to $1 million but later told reporters that he owns no property. And they doubted his reports that his income soared from $55,000 in 2020 to $750,000 in 2022. 
 “That is an astronomical growth in his wealth that is so implausible, so inexplicable that it requires a willful suspension of disbelief, and it warrants an investigation,” Torres said. “He claims to have earned millions of dollars from clients yet none of those clients were disclosed on his congressional disclosure as required by federal law.” 
 &nbsp;

USSANTOS230111

New ethics complaint: George Santos 'failed to uphold the integrity' of the House

New ethics complaint: Santos 'failed to uphold the integrity' of the House

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ALBANY — As federal officials probe&nbsp;embattled Rep. George Santos' campaign finances, records show he used&nbsp;the same Shirley-based campaign company&nbsp;as nearly 200 other Republican organizations&nbsp;since 2009, including former congressman and gubernatorial candidate&nbsp;Lee Zeldin. 
 The company is Campaigns Unlimited. Its principal, Nancy Marks, also has served as treasurer of the campaigns of Santos and Zeldin, who lives in Shirley,&nbsp;state and federal records show. 
 Last week, the Federal Election Commission sent Marks a letter asking&nbsp;the Devolder Santos Nassau Victory Committee, a political action committee that supported Santos’ campaign,&nbsp;about what appears to be a failure to fully identify some campaign contributors. The FEC also said three supporters apparently exceeded contribution limits. 
 Marks is listed as the treasurer of the political action committee as well as treasurer of Santos'&nbsp;“principal campaign committee” — called Devolder-Santos for Congress. Both committees share the same Shirley address in federal records. 
 FEC and state Board of Elections records detail a number of&nbsp;connections between Santos and New York Republicans, many of whom are now distancing themselves from him after he admitted fabricating parts of his resume dealing with his education, family and work history before winning the 3rd Congressional District in November. Discrepancies in Santos’ background, including an unresolved criminal matter in Brazil,&nbsp;were first reported by The New York Times after Santos was elected. 
 The records show Campaigns Unlimited worked for more than 190 Republicans, GOP parties and political action committees that funded and supported candidates at the state and congressional levels. 
 The vast majority of services provided by Campaigns Unlimited are&nbsp;listed as “professional services” or “office” work, such as bookkeeping and administration, but also included consulting, campaign ads and fundraising, the records showed. 
 Marks and Santos declined comment. Zeldin and his spokeswoman, as well as the state Republican Committee, didn’t respond to requests for comment. 
 Federal records show Campaigns Unlimited worked in more than 30 congressional campaigns since 2015 and was paid more than $849,000. During that period, the company was paid more than $371,000 by the campaigns for Zeldin&nbsp;and $121,334 from Santos campaigns. 
 Hiring campaign veterans and their firms to do part-time administrative work or short-term contracts is often done by candidates of both parties, records show.&nbsp;Political observers said the records don’t appear to show anything illegal about the multiple roles of Campaigns Unlimited. 
 David M. Primo, political science professor at the University of Rochester and co-author of “Campaign Finance and American Democracy,” said&nbsp;he didn't find anything &quot;particularly unusual&quot; about Campaign Unlimited working for numerous groups&nbsp;because&nbsp;campaign finance compliance is&nbsp;complex. 
 &quot;Campaigns need to hire outside firms to help manage campaign finance and other campaign management tasks,&quot; he said, &quot;and these firms often become identified as Republican or Democratic based on their client base. They may also have a regional focus.” 
 John Kaehny, executive director of the Reinvent Albany good-government group, said such political operators are &quot;like the spider at the central web&quot; of many campaigns of the same party. 
 “It shouldn’t be, but it’s not unusual,” Kaehny said. “How they avoid conflicts of interest, I don’t know.” 
 Veteran good-government advocate Blair Horner said he was struck by the interconnections. 
 “To me it feels like a more insane version of a terrible system,” said Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. He said accountability in campaigns is hurt when hired companies represent more than one candidate or committee. 
 “There is a whole industry that is almost completely unregulated that provides the backdrop for how all these campaigns are run,” Horner&nbsp;said. “It makes it almost impossible for the public to know what’s behind it.” 
 Campaigns Unlimited also worked for the New York State Independence Party, which paid Marks' firm $5,000 in 2020. 
 The company also was paid&nbsp;$49,000 in 2015 by the 1776 Project Political Action Committee, which has sought to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/19/conservative-school-board-fundraising-florida-00057325">bankroll school board candidates</a> around the country. 
 At the state level, Campaigns Unlimited worked for 164 Republican campaigns, parties and PACs that paid the company $1.25 million since 2009. Zeldin of Shirley paid the company $272,003 dating back to his State Senate campaign in 2010. 
 One of the political action committees that Campaigns Unlimited worked for in 2021 and 2022 was the Conquering Cancer PAC, which is also based in Shirley. 
 The PAC contributed $60,829 to Zeldin’s campaign in November 2021 and the next largest campaign contribution was $5,000, according to state records. At the time, Conquering Cancer was also paying Campaigns Unlimited $4,750 for accounting services and $9,750 for an item listed as “treasury retainer.” FEC records identify Marks as the PAC’s treasurer. 
 Democrats&nbsp;have chided Republican on their ties to Santos. 
 “I can’t say I blame them for trying to run as fast and far away from this guy as possible,” said state Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs.&nbsp; 
 “They are married to Santos,” Jacobs said. “If you want to be unmarried to Santos, you have to have a real divorce. They have yet to call for his resignation … &quot;

Long Island Elections | Nassau & Suffolk

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Santos campaign treasurer also worked for Zeldin, other Republicans

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NewsdayTV&#39;s Ken Buffa talks about Congressman George Santos&#39; campaign treasurer with Newsday Albany reporter&nbsp;Michael Gormley

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Santos campaign treasurer also worked with other Republicans

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Leading contributors to the PACs associated with embattled incoming Rep. George Santos often overlapped with the Nassau GOP’s most generous direct state and federal donors, a Newsday analysis found.&nbsp; 
 Major donors to Santos’ federal committees and the Rise NY PAC, which was run by his sister, also gave money directly to the Nassau County Republican Committee federal account, the Newsday review of campaign finance records found. Santos’ federal committees were forwarding part of these donations to the Nassau County Republican Committee federal account.&nbsp; 
 Tap the arrows to see how. 
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 Here is how much money came from each of the major contributors.&nbsp; 
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 The most&nbsp; came from Robert Mangi, of Lloyd Harbor, who sent $150,000 to Rise NY PAC alone in a single wire transfer. In 2022, he and his wife, Sandra Mangi, donated a total of $30,000 to the two federal Santos PACs and $6,500 to the Nassau Republicans' federal account. The FEC also cited donations from the Mangis as &quot;Apparent Excessive Contributions,&quot; in a letter on Nov. 17, 2022, and another dated April 4. 
 Andrew Intrater, an asset manager with family and business ties to Viktor Vekselberg, a billionaire Russian oligarch, contributed $80,000 to Rise NY, $35,000 to three Santos federal accounts and $10,000 to the Nassau GOP’s federal account. 
 The FEC also cites Todd O’Connell, who is reported to have contributed $25,000 on Sept. 2, and Dr. Jeff Vacirca, who is listed as contributing $25,000, also on Sept. 2. O’Connell and Vacirca are leaders of Port Jefferson Station-based New York Cancer &amp; Blood Specialists, one of Long Island’s largest oncology practices. O’Connell is president and Vacirca is chief executive. 
 PACs tied to Santos and his family sent almost $185,000 to the Nassau county and Hempstead town GOP accounts combined.&nbsp; 
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 After inquiries from Newsday, Nassau GOP Chairman Joseph Cairo said Thursday that the party would return the Rise NY money, totaling $126,725. 
 He continued: “The money that we received from his joint committee, and whatever other committees he has, we spent it. We did that in the true spirit of helping a Republican in his election process.”

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How money flows between Santos-tied PACs and Nassau GOP

Data: How money flows between Santos-tied PACs and Nassau GOP

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WASHINGTON — Incoming Rep. George Santos appeared to flash a widely known white supremacist hand sign on the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday&nbsp;evening, according to images captured by photojournalists. 
 In photos, Santos (R-Queens/Nassau) is seen raising his right hand to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to become the next speaker of the House. 
 With the left&nbsp;hand, Santos forms an&nbsp;“OK” sign often used by white-supremacist and other far-right groups. 
 A Santos aide, presented with the photo outside Santos'&nbsp;congressional office, refused to answer questions from Newsday about the hand gesture and shut the door in the&nbsp;reporter’s face when pressed for comment. 
 The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and hate groups, has said the sign often is used by white supremacists to showcase their affiliation, and by right-wing figures to “troll” detractors and the news media. 
 Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told Newsday in an email: “The OK sign is a smirk and a wink signaling to insiders support for hateful, extremist ideas — it’s about identifying with a group.” 
 “Like all coded and underhanded actions, it’s difficult to confirm an intention,” Carroll Rivas said when&nbsp;asked about the Santos photo. 
 “But regardless, of course the public and voters are nervous about the presence of hard-right extremists and their supporters in the halls of Congress and positions of power,&quot; Carroll Rivas said. 
 Santos, who says he is the son of Brazilian immigrants, has asserted he is “Jew-ish.” 
 He also described himself as the “son of a black man and raised in a very bi-racial family,” in a Nov. 16, 2020, Twitter post. 
 Santos was sworn into the House early Saturday along with other new members after McCarthy won the speakership on his 15th try. 
 Questions about Santos’ background continue to surface after he admitted last month he fabricated major parts of his life story — including lying about attending Baruch College and New York University and saying he worked for financial companies&nbsp;that have no record of his employment. 
 Santos on Friday avoided a small group of protesters who arrived at his congressional office to call on House Republicans not to adopt rules that would weaken ethics investigations of House members. 
 The protesters held up signs with Santos’ face that read: “House GOP — Don’t gut the Office of Congressional Ethics.” 
 When approached by one of the group’s members, Santos walked in the opposite direction, away from his office. 
 He circled back from a different hallway and, seeing&nbsp;protesters still outside his office, ducked into an elevator. 
 Santos entered his office about an hour later, after the protesters had disbanded. 
 He did not answer Newsday questions about why he did not enter his office earlier or engage with the group. 
 Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including incoming Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Santos after a New York Times investigation last month detailed major holes in his resume. 
 The story also raised questions about a surge in Santos’ reported income that allowed him to loan $700,000 to his campaign for the 3rd Congressional District, which covers parts of&nbsp;northwest Nassau&nbsp;County and Queens.

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George Santos displays hand gesture used by far right

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Long Islanders react to a photo that appears to show&nbsp;Congressman-elect George Santos making a white-supremacist hand symbol on Friday.&nbsp;

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LIers react to photo of Congressman-elect Santos' hand gesture 

Nassau Republican Party committees reaped significant benefits from Rep.&nbsp;George Santos’ complicated campaign finance network for more than a year before disavowing him after investigations into his background and finances became public, Newsday has found. 
 Four political action committees tied to Santos and his family contributed nearly $185,000 to county GOP committees between late 2021 and last year’s election, state and federal records show, making the&nbsp;lawmaker one of the county party's largest contributors over that time. 
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 Santos, 34, has ignored calls to resign for two weeks since&nbsp;The New York Times revealed that he&nbsp;fabricated his work, education&nbsp;and ethnic history. He defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the Nov. 8 election. 
 In his first days in Washington, Santos has ignored reporters and other House members, including one who called him a &quot;liar&quot; in Spanish and Portuguese on the House floor. 
 Under a swirl of federal, county and state investigations, he&nbsp;has begun&nbsp;assembling&nbsp;a staff that includes a right-wing operative&nbsp;to run his House office. He was sworn in early Saturday&nbsp;along with other new members after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) won the speakership on his 15th try. 
 Santos’ congressional leadership PAC — meant to make contributions to other candidates for office — and one of his joint fundraising committees contributed more than $58,000 to Nassau Republicans’ previously dormant federal campaign account over two days in late September, campaign finance records show. 
 In September 2021, Rise NY, a state PAC where&nbsp;Santos’ sister Tiffany served as president, gave $62,500 to the party.&nbsp;Rise NY also gave $62,500 to the Hempstead Republican Committee on the same day and another&nbsp;$1,725 to the county committee in February 2022. 
<h3> GOP leader: We'll return the money </h3> 
 After inquiries from Newsday, Nassau GOP Chairman Joseph Cairo said Thursday&nbsp;that the party would return the Rise NY money, totaling $126,725. 
 “The money that he gave — we are going to return,” Cairo told Newsday.&nbsp; 
 “George Santos is not welcome here,&quot; Cairo said. &quot;When I invite our elected officials in, I will not invite him. If he shows up to a fundraiser, we will ask him to leave … He’s done with the Nassau County Republican Party.” 
 Cairo announced in December that the committee&nbsp;would not support Santos for reelection in 2024. 
 Contributions from top GOP donors to the numerous state and federal accounts associated with Santos&nbsp;show&nbsp;the extent to which the Nassau Republican Party played a role in financing Santos’ campaign. 
 State Sen. Jack Martins (R-Old Westbury), whose district includes portions of the Third&nbsp;Congressional District, which Santos will represent,&nbsp;said&nbsp;“there should be some real concerns” over how any donor or recipient can be made right. 
 Martins declined to comment directly&nbsp;on the county GOP's involvement with Santos, but he told&nbsp;Newsday:&nbsp;“It's his [Santos']&nbsp;responsibility, in the end, to be accountable for that.” 
 Martins, who ran unsuccessfully for the Third District seat in 2016,&nbsp;continued: “I think people should be very concerned about how he was funded, where that money came from.&nbsp;I think the investigations are just the beginning.” 
 Federal laws limited donors to $5,800 in total contributions to Santos' main candidate committee, $5,000 to his leadership PAC, and $10,000 to any federal committees run by the state or county parties. 
 Political and campaign finance experts said&nbsp;it’s legal for individuals to max out their contributions to various accounts as&nbsp;a way to maximize support for the candidate as well as the local political parties. 
 They noted that&nbsp;it’s often the case that party donors contribute to as many of the candidate's&nbsp;committees as they legally can in a bid to support the party’s infrastructure of candidates. 
 FEC officials on Thursday&nbsp;said in a letter to the Devolder Santos Nassau Victory Committee&nbsp;that three contributors&nbsp;appeared to have made contributions that exceeded limits by $76,000. 
 The letter requires Santos' PAC to explain the excess donations by Feb. 8. 
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 “If any contribution you received exceeds the limits, you may have to refund the excessive amount,&quot; the FEC wrote to the PAC. 
 The FEC cites Matthew Bruderman, who is listed as contributing $25,000 to Santos’ campaign on Sept. 6 and another $1,000 the same day; Todd O’Connell, who is reported to have contributed $25,000 on Sept. 2;&nbsp;and Dr. Jeff Vacirca, who is listed as contributing $25,000, also on Sept. 2. 
 Bruderman, of Centre Island, is a&nbsp;financier and chairman of the Nassau&nbsp;Health Care Corp., the political board that runs Nassau University Medical Center, Nassau County's only public hospital. 
 O’Connell and Vacirca are leaders of Port Jefferson Station-based New York Cancer &amp; Blood Specialists, one of Long Island’s largest oncology practices. O’Connell is president and Vacirca is chief executive. 
 “The joint committees are a convenient way of allowing all of the money to be raised at once, but under the different caps that each of these entities have,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School and a&nbsp;campaign finance expert. 
 “Although the campaign finance laws have a lot of loopholes, they do impose real limits on the amount of money that can be given to the candidate, or the political parties that support a candidate, and at some point people do hit those limits,&quot; Briffault told Newsday.&nbsp; 
<h3> Donors gave to multiple committees </h3> 
 Several of the same people who were major donors to Santos' federal committees also gave money to the Rise NY PAC that his sister ran, the Newsday review of campaign finance records found. 
 Newsday reviewed contributions to, and expenditures by, the leadership PAC known as GADS — after Santos’ full name, George Anthony Devolder Santos — and the joint fundraising account named Devolder Santos Nassau Victory Committee, which was established in August as a &quot;joint fundraising committee.&quot; Through such a committee, money could be distributed to Santos' main committee as well as Nassau Republicans' federal committee. 
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 Robert Mangi, of&nbsp;Lloyd Harbor, was Rise NY’s single-largest contributor, giving $150,000 in 2021. 
 In 2022, he and his wife, Sandra Mangi, donated a total of $30,000 to the two federal Santos PACs and $6,500 to the Nassau Republicans' federal account. 
 The FEC also cited donations from the Mangis as &quot;Apparent Excessive Contributions,&quot; in a letter on Nov. 17, 2022, and another dated April 4. 
 The federal agency asked the campaign to explain $5,800 total in contributions in March and August of 2022 from Sandra Mangi, and $3,900 from Robert Mangi in 2021. 
 Andrew Intrater, an asset manager with family and business ties to Viktor Vekselberg, a billionaire Russian oligarch, contributed $80,000 to Rise NY, $35,000 to three Santos federal accounts and $10,000 to the Nassau GOP’s federal account. 
 Other leading contributors to the Santos PACs often overlapped with the Nassau GOP’s most generous direct state and federal donors. 
 Bruderman gave $41,800 to the Santos PACs and $285,000 to the Nassau Republicans' state account. His wife, Kerri Beth Bruderman, gave $5,000 to Santos' leadership PAC, records show. 
 O’Connell and Vacirca gave $60,000 total to GADS PAC and the Devolder-Santos Victory Committee and $20,000 to the county Republican Party’s federal fund. 
 James Metzger, who runs a Garden City insurance brokerage and financial services firm and has worked with Bruderman, gave $17,900 to the three Santos federal committees&nbsp;and $10,000 to the Nassau Republicans' federal account. 
 None of the top donors to the Santos-allied PACs agreed to speak for this story. They either declined to comment, did not respond to calls and messages, or could not be reached for comment. 
 Santos, who could not be reached for this story, has admitted fabricating key parts of his biography, including his education and work experience. He also has yet to provide specific details about the source of his income and assets, which increased significantly as reported by disclosures between his failed 2020 run in the Third District and last year’s victory. 
 Asked about the federal money, Cairo said: “We never reached out to the rank-and-file Nassau County people to say, you know, come and support George Santos. We never did that. He did that on his own.” 
 “Being a Queens Republican, and coming from without&nbsp;our organization, he ran a different campaign than the traditional national Republican candidate runs,&quot; Cairo said. 
 “He solicited people who were his supporters,” Cairo said. “To be candid, my solicitation or my reaching out to these people was to help elect state senators and Assembly people this year.” 
 Cairo said he authorized the Devolder Santos Nassau Victory fund because&nbsp;“it was permissible under the law, and it would allow a Republican to have a better chance to win in a challenging Congressional district.” 
 Cairo said of his GOP donors who gave to Santos: “These are people who believe in the Republican Party, who believe in the principles of the party. And I have no doubt that they were supporting a Republican candidate for Congress who they believe had a good chance of winning, especially if their districts were redrawn.” 
 He continued: “The money that we received from his joint committee, and whatever other committees he has, we spent it. We did that in the true spirit of helping a Republican in his election process.” 
 GOP officials said the county party's federal committee spent most of what Santos gave for lawn signs and digital billboards, including more than $35,000 to GMG Printing in Shirley&nbsp;and $23,000 to ABW Hospitality. 
 Records show the Rise NY PAC run by Santos' sister sent the Nassau County Republican Committee $62,500 in September 2021. 
 The PAC paid a total of $21,465 in salary&nbsp;to Tiffany Santos, campaign finance records show. Tiffany Santos, who has also gone by Tiffany Devolder, identified herself&nbsp;as president of Rise PAC on her FEC contribution form. 
 The Rise PAC spent a total of $314,492. Among the expenditures was $48,265, in 2021 and 2022, to&nbsp;Harry Brar for &quot;wages&quot; or &quot;professional services,&quot;&nbsp;the&nbsp;records show. 
 In September, the Nassau County District Attorney's Office charged Brar with choking a 10-year-old boy in 2021. Brar could not be reached for comment. The Nassau District Attorney's Office said the case is still active. 
 In November 2021, Republicans saw big gains in countywide offices, and the party's county committee was key in helping Bruce Blakeman win the county executive’s race and getting Anne Donnelly elected district attorney. 
 Donnelly’s office is among those investigating Santos. 
 Asked whether the donation from Rise helped fund other county races, Cairo said the donation went into the committee’s “general fund” and said that by September 2021 the committee “had already funded those campaigns.” 
<h3> Santos blames GOP for doing too little </h3> 
 Cairo recalled that Santos, after losing to then-Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Clove) in 2020, blamed the Nassau GOP for not doing enough to support him. 
 Weeks later, he met with Cairo and other GOP leaders to apologize, and expressed interest in a 2022 run in the district. 
 Cairo recalled telling Santos: “As far as a second chance, you need to earn that within the party.” 
 Looking back, Cairo said: “Did I have a warm, fuzzy feeling toward George Santos? Certainly not. Did I forgive him? Yes, I did.” 
 Last month, Blakeman told Newsday: &quot;George Santos is not a Nassau Republican. He's a Queens Republican.&quot; 
 Blakeman noted the Third District was redrawn substantially between 2020 and 2022. 
 &quot;And he ran for office when it was a very, very different district — that's when he initiated his campaign. So we kind of inherited him,&quot; Blakeman said. 
 David Primo, a campaign finance expert and professor of political science at the University of Rochester, told Newsday, &quot;It’s very hard to completely dissociate yourself with a candidate you created a joint fundraising account with.” 
 Primo continued: “The best thing they can do is acknowledge they made a mistake and admit they were fooled just as many, many people were fooled.”

POSANTOS230108

George Santos-tied PACs gave $185,000 to Nassau GOP

Santos-tied PACs gave $185,000 to Nassau GOP

poSANTOS230108

Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Matthew Chayes

WASHINGTON — A former aide to Trump political strategist&nbsp;Steve Bannon&nbsp;is set to join the congressional staff of incoming Rep. George Santos&nbsp;as the embattled politician continues to ignore calls to resign and instead has started to assemble a team aligned with the former president. 
 Santos (R-Queens/Nassau) arrived at his congressional office on Thursday morning joined by Vish Burra, a former aide to a number of right-flank figures including former GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla). Once again, Santos' swearing-in was delayed, along with other members', when the House failed to elect a speaker for a third day. It will reconvene Friday.&nbsp; 
 Burra, speaking to Newsday briefly in a hallway of the Longworth House Office Building, said he planned on joining Santos’ office next Monday as an operations director. 
 Burra — whose full name is Viswanag Burra — is executive secretary of the New York Young Republicans Club,&nbsp;which last month hosted Santos at a gala in Manhattan featuring several far-right American and European political figures including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and members of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party founded by a former Nazi SS officer. 
 Burra, 31, hails from Staten Island and previously worked as a producer on Bannon’s podcast &quot;War Room,&quot; which was booted from YouTube in 2021 after the video platform said the talk show aired “misleading content that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.” 
 Burra also served as a campaign spokesman for Paladino’s failed bid last year for an upstate congressional seat. 
 Paladino, a Buffalo businessman who also lost his 2010 bid against former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has previously come under fire for a series of inflammatory remarks including praising Adolf Hitler in a radio interview and comparing former first lady Michelle Obama to an animal. 
 Burra, shortly after entering Santos’ office, tweeted: “It’s nice to be back on Capitol Hill. I’m gonna enjoy this.” Attached to his missive was an image of the Marvel comic book villain Thanos. 
 The addition of a Gaetz-aligned staffer came as Gaetz and a faction of conservatives sought to foil Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become the next speaker of the House. The GOP majority leader on Thursday was still struggling to get the necessary votes to secure the speakership. 
 Santos, emerging from his office Thursday afternoon before the House reconvened, said he continued to support McCarthy. He ignored all other questions posed by reporters on the roughly four-minute walk to the House chamber. 
 Santos, who has admitted fabricating major portions of his biography and is now the subject of county, state&nbsp;and federal probes, continued to face calls to resign. Protesters gathered outside of his Douglaston, Queens, district office demanding he step down. 
 Santos&nbsp;chief of staff Charles Lovett did not respond to questions by Newsday about the protest&nbsp;and complaints that constituents can’t reach his office. 
 Lovett, who served as Santos’ campaign manager, also served as an Ohio field organizer for the Trump Victory Committee, according to his LinkedIn profile. The committee was a joint fundraising venture between President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee. 
 Santos and other recently elected House members were still waiting to be sworn in on Thursday as the speaker vote dragged into a third day. House rules dictate that members cannot take the oath of office until a speaker is elected. 
 Santos faced renewed scrutiny over his financial state after the online outlet The Daily Beast published an article Thursday morning indicating Santos’&nbsp;sister, who he has been living with in Elmhurst, is in an eviction proceeding. 
 Tiffany Lee Devolder Santos&nbsp;is in an eviction proceeding in Queens housing court for failing to pay nearly $40,000 in apartment rent, late fees and other penalties for being in arrears dating back to at least March 2020, according to court records obtained by Newsday. 
 She owed nearly $60,000 until July 2022, the records show, when a one-time payment was made of $30,000 — government funds for rental assistance — but she didn't make any payments after&nbsp;and apparently continued to live there. The lease was terminated in May 2022, and she and potentially another occupant were &quot;squatters.&quot; 
 Her eviction has been long staved off, using a mix of programs for COVID-19 hardship and Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which paid the nearly $30,000. 
 The case — which is due in court on Feb. 17 — also accuses the sister, referred to in the proceeding as the &quot;Respondent,&quot; of “conduct that is disturbing the entire building.” 
 “Respondent and her guests/occupants are smoking in the common areas, leaving cigarette butts, cups and other trash in the hallways and staircase. The cigarette smoke enters neighboring units and spreads throughout the entire building’s common areas, to much distaste of other tenants.” 
 The apartment is in Elmhurst on Queens Boulevard near the Long Island Expressway. 
 On Feb. 8, 2021, Santos took to Twitter to criticize the generosity of housing laws — not from a tenant perspective but a landlord's, which he claims to be. 
 &quot;Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property? My family and I nearing a 1 year anniversary of not receiving rent on 13 properties!!! The state is collecting their tax, yet we get 0 help from the government. We worked hard to acquire these assets …,&quot; he wrote in one tweet.

USSANTOS230106

Still ignoring questions, Santos assembles team of right-wing aides

Still ignoring questions, Santos assembles team of right-wing aides

usSANTOS230106_photos

ALBANY — The Federal Elections Commission has told embattled Rep.-elect George Santos to explain why his campaign filings failed to adequately identify some contributors and why three donors appear to have exceeded contribution limits. 
 The FEC letter dated Wednesday said failure to respond to the questions by Feb. 8 “could result in an audit or enforcement action.” The letter also said,&nbsp;“If any contribution you received exceeds the limits, you may have to refund the excessive amount.&quot; 
 Santos, leaving his congressional office for the House chamber on Thursday afternoon, did not respond to repeated questions about the FEC filings.&nbsp;A request for comment from&nbsp;his lawyer in Great Neck wasn’t immediately returned. 
 Santos, a Republican,&nbsp;has&nbsp;acknowledged that he fabricated much of his biographical information, including work history and&nbsp;education,&nbsp;used in winning the 3rd Congressional District seat in November.&nbsp;Discrepancies in Santos’ background were first reported by The New York Times after Santos was elected. 
 Santos is awaiting the election of a speaker of the House, which was delayed a third day Thursday. After that, he could be sworn in as the congressman for the district that&nbsp;includes part of northern Nassau County and northeast Queens. 
 The FEC is asking&nbsp;Santos’&nbsp;campaign fund, the Devolder Santos Nassau Victory Committee, to identify the employer name and occupation of three contributors. The donors are identified in Santos’ financial disclosure record as “Best Efforts/Best Efforts,” “NYCBS/MD” and NYCBS/Self Employed.” 
 Federal law requires that donors’ employers and occupations be identified as a guard against violations of campaign finance limits and conflicts of interest under federal election law. The FEC also said Santos must prove in detail that his campaign’s “best efforts” were used to obtain the missing information. 
 The FEC also states three contributions to Santos’ joint fundraising committee appear to exceed the limit over a two-year election cycle for a candidate for Congress. The FEC cites Matthew Bruderman, who is listed as contributing $25,000 to Santos’ campaign on Sept. 6 and another $1,000 the same day; Todd O’Connell who is reported to have contributed $25,000 on Sept. 2,&nbsp;and Jeff Vacirca, who is listed as contributing $25,000, also on Sept. 2. 
 Bruderman, O’Connell and Vacirca didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.&nbsp; 
 The FEC identifies Bruderman as an investor with a Locust Valley address. The Bruderman Asset Management company has a Long Island address in Locust Valley, according to the company website. Bruderman was appointed last year by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman as chairman of the Nassau Healthcare Corp. and Nassau University Medical Center. 
 Vacirca and O’Connell are top officials at New York Cancer &amp; Blood Specialists, a Port Jefferson Station-based oncology practice that has expanded significantly across Long Island and New York City in recent years. 
 Reached on his cellphone Thursday, Vacirca, a physician and the company CEO, said he was in an appointment and couldn’t speak to a reporter. He subsequently did not respond to messages seeking comment. O’Connell, the company president, didn’t return a voicemail and text message. 
 A New York Cancer &amp; Blood spokeswoman also didn’t respond to a request for comment. 
 With Tom Brune and Laura Figueroa Hernandez in Washington,&nbsp;Paul LaRocco and Scott Eidler.

POFEC230106

FEC raises questions about Santos campaign finance reports

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Incoming Rep. George Santos admitted to investigators more than a decade ago that he stole a man’s checkbook and used it to buy clothes and shoes in a Brazil shop, according to a new report Wednesday. 
 Santos in 2010 told police in Brazil that he took the checks from his mother’s purse&nbsp;in 2008 and used “some sheets” to make $1,313.63 worth of purchases, CNN reported, citing 150 pages of documents it obtained in connection with the case. 
 The checkbook belonged to Camara da Costa Alemao, who had been in the care of Santos’ mother Fatima Devolder, a healthcare worker, and died in 2009. 
 Santos told police his mother asked him “with despair” to return the checkbook, but he had ripped up the remaining checks and threw them down a manhole, according to the report. 
 “He [Santos] acknowledged having been responsible for forging the signatures on the checks, also confirming that he had destroyed the remaining checks,” according to a documents cited by CNN.&nbsp; 
 Santos signed a confession on Nov. 18, 2010, CNN reported.&nbsp;That admission contrasts with a response Santos gave to the New York Post in a Dec. 26 interview denying that the criminal charge had been filed against him. 
 “I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” Santos told the Post. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.” 
 Santos, a Republican, emerging from his congressional office on Wednesday afternoon, did not respond to questions about his admission in the court documents. He quickly entered a nearby elevator and looked away from reporters asking questions. His swearing-in, originally scheduled for Tuesday along with other representatives, had been&nbsp;delayed after members failed to elect a House speaker as late as Wednesday evening. 
 Santos used an ID bearing the checkbook owner’s name and picture of himself to make the purchases in the city of Niteroi, outside of Rio de Janeiro. The store clerk had told police he had to pay the amount of the fraudulent purchases and later located Santos on social media to demand repayment, the CNN report said. 
 Brazilian authorities had not been able to prosecute Santos for the crime because they previously couldn’t find him. A spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office told CNN that they will make a formal request to the U.S. Justice Department to notify Santos of the criminal charges filed in 2011. 
 Santos has been facing increasing financial scrutiny and calls to resign following a bombshell New York Times report&nbsp;revealing that he fabricated most of his resume and lied about owning 13 properties.&nbsp;Federal and local prosecutors have opened investigations into whether Santos committed crimes involving his finances and his campaign funds or made false statements. 
 Democrats said Wednesday’s report was the latest example of why he is unfit to serve. 
 “George Santos is a liar, fraud, and cheat who’s proven he can’t even issue an apology without spewing more lies. New Yorkers can’t trust a single thing he says,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Nebeyett Betre said in a statement. “He’s an embarrassment to Long Island and is completely undeserving of being a member of Congress.” 
 With Laura Figueroa Hernandez

USCHECKS220108

Santos admitted writing fraudulent checks he stole in Brazil, CNN reports

Congress

WASHINGTON —&nbsp;Incoming Rep. George Santos arrived at his congressional office Wednesday insisting he planned to be sworn in and serve his two-year term despite the growing pressure on him to step aside. 
 Santos (R-Queens/Nassau), the subject of county, state, and federal probes, answered “yes” to reporters' questions about whether he still planned to be sworn&nbsp;in. 
 But he ignored all other questions about calls to resign and his ability to serve amid the ongoing investigations. 
 The embattled politician remained tight-lipped and largely out of sight Wednesday as his nascent office struggled to get organized. 
 Telephone calls to his congressional office went to a full voicemail box, and his congressional website posted an inaccurate news&nbsp;release that later was removed. 
 The website offered only vague information&nbsp;about his work history compared with&nbsp;the detailed websites of other incoming first-term House members. 
 Santos has admitted lying about graduating from Baruch College and New York University and acknowledged he never worked directly for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as he once asserted on his campaign website. 
 The admissions came after a New York Times investigation last month found major holes in statements Santos made about his background on the campaign trail. 
 Fellow members of the New York congressional delegation on Wednesday continued to raise concerns about serving with Santos, who has admitted fabricating key parts of his biography. 
 Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan) told Newsday he thought other members of the&nbsp;delegation would be reluctant&nbsp;to discuss information about national security and other sensitive issues around Santos. 
 &quot;I'm not sure if anybody would feel comfortable sharing their points of views within that environment and given what has transpired, whether there's going to be enough trust,&quot; Espaillat said. 
 Incoming Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Suffern), who has been publicly critical of Santos, told Newsday Santos should “cooperate fully with investigators.” 
 Asked if Santos could serve as an effective member, Lawler said: &quot;His election has been certified. He's seated and he's here voting … we'll see how this proceeds.&quot; 
 Santos, who earlier in the day had told reporters he had spoken with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and supported his bid to be the next speaker of the House, cast votes for the GOP leader. 
 But Santos stayed off the House floor between rounds of voting,&nbsp;retreating&nbsp;to the Republican cloakroom, where he remained out of view of&nbsp;television cameras. 
 Santos and recently elected House members were waiting to be sworn in on the second day of the new congressional session. After McCarthy failed to win in three votes Wednesday, the House adjourned until 8 p.m. but then voted to adjourn again until Thursday without holding any votes. 
 The oath cannot be administered until a speaker is elected, and McCarthy has struggled to capture the necessary Republican votes for his bid. 
 Santos also faced scrutiny on social media after his congressional website posted a news release Tuesday night stating he'd&nbsp;already been sworn in. 
 The inaccurate news release appeared to be a pre-written version of a release provided to first-term lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to launch their congressional websites. 
 By Wednesday morning the release had been deleted from Santos' website. 
 The confusion came as Santos continued to piece together a legislative staff, while other incoming lawmakers already had&nbsp;their team of aides assembled. 
 Santos' office is led by Chief of Staff Charles Lovett, whose Twitter biography says&nbsp;he served as Santos' campaign manager. 
 Lovett's LinkedIn profile states he worked as a field organizer for the Ohio Republican Party from April 2020 to January 2021, and served as political director for the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Josh Mandel from March to May of last year. 
 Constituents looking to reach Santos’ office phone line were directed to an automated voicemail box that said it was full on Tuesday. 
 Lovett did not respond to an email from Newsday about the voicemail box. 
 Santos’ congressional website provided only vague statements about his work background compared with the specifics he once touted on his since-scrubbed campaign website. 
 “George perused (sic) a long path to success, starting in import &amp; export sales, customer service, corporate Hospitality to building an extensive capital markets career covering real estate, bio-tech, M&amp;A, capital introduction for Private Equity firms and managing General Partner and Limited Partner relations,” his website states. 
 Questions also have arisen about the source of Santos’ income and his ability to loan his campaign $700,000. 
 He reported receiving a salary of $750,000 in his federal candidate finance disclosure forms for 2022 — a substantial increase from the $5,000 in compensation he reported in 2020. 
 Former longtime members of the House questioned Santos' ability to&nbsp;work with other lawmakers on issues or legislation. 
 &quot;I don’t see how he gets anything done. No one will be able to trust him or believe him,&quot; said former Rep. Peter King of Seaford. 
 &quot;It would be risky to share any information with him,&quot; particularly about national security or homeland security, King told Newsday. 
 &quot;This isn’t a question of correcting one mistake or explaining a misconception; everything about him is fraudulent,&quot; King said. 
 Given their slim majority&nbsp;in the House, Republicans may have to learn to live with him. 
 &quot;With such a small majority, House Republicans can’t afford for Santos to vacate his seat,” Steve Israel, a former Democratic congressman from Huntington, told Newsday. 
 “That would trigger a special election which will cost millions of dollars and they’re likely to lose,&quot; Israel said. &quot;So they have to keep him in his seat until the 2024 election.&quot; 
 with Tom Brune 
 &nbsp;

USSANTOS220105

George Santos says he plans to be sworn in, despite calls to step aside

Santos plans to be sworn in, despite calls to step aside

usSANTOS230104_photos

Around coffee shops,&nbsp;diners and&nbsp;burger joints&nbsp;across New York's 3rd Congressional District, some voters Tuesday said that the prospective swearing-in&nbsp;of their new representative, George Santos,&nbsp;had left them with a sour taste. 
 Voters interviewed in his district, from&nbsp;Plainview to Port Washington, expressed scorn and dismay Tuesday as Santos, 34, was to take his seat in the historic House chamber a week after&nbsp;admitting to lying about his schooling, work history, finances&nbsp;and religious heritage. 
 The House session adjourned Tuesday evening until Wednesday after representatives failed to pick a speaker — delaying the swearing-in of members, new and incumbent. 
 Some gave no quarter&nbsp;to the congressman who&nbsp;fabricated a story about his grandparents fleeing Jewish persecution during the Holocaust. Santos said his statements&nbsp;were &quot;embellishments.&quot; He said he worked for&nbsp;Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, then said he worked with them. And after describing himself as a &quot;proud American Jew,&quot; Santos said he was actually&nbsp;&quot;Jew-ish,&quot;&nbsp;but not &quot;Jewish.&quot;&nbsp; 
 A candidate's integrity matters&nbsp;more than his or her political ideology, a sampling of district voters stressed during interviews with Newsday.&nbsp;Public officials should follow an ethical code, they said:&nbsp;A&nbsp;person who is caught lying in a job interview wouldn't&nbsp;be hired, and the same rule should apply to&nbsp;members of Congress. 
 &quot;To me it smells like a character issue,&quot; John Keegan, 53, of Syosset, told Newsday&nbsp;as he walked into&nbsp;Starbucks in the Woodbury Village shopping center. Keegan, who said he voted for Santos, said of his new representative: “A lot of politicians lie, and I think he got caught.” 
 Santos entered the House Tuesday despite a swirl of investigations: On Monday, Brazilian authorities reopened a 2008 case against him involving the use of a stolen checkbook; the Nassau and Queens district attorneys, and the state attorney general, have said they are&nbsp;looking into Santos' conduct. 
 Federal prosecutors&nbsp;for the Eastern District of New York also are investigating Santos, according to several news outlets. 
 In the GOP stronghold of Massapequa, Santos drew scorn from registered Republicans.&nbsp; 
 Jacqueline Colavito, 56, a Republican, said she felt betrayed by her vote for Santos. 
 “I did vote for him,&quot; she said as she was about to order&nbsp;her lunch at the All American Hamburger Drive In. &quot;But I'm not happy with the idea that he lied about everything. I think he should step down.”&nbsp; 
 Colavito said she didn’t like either Santos or Zimmerman, but was intrigued by some of the Republican’s policy positions. 
 “Now, I see how much he lied,&quot;&nbsp;Colavito said. “Deceived, lied to? Absolutely. He should not be sworn in. I’m sorry, he should not go in today.&quot; 
 His decision to fundraise off of his inauguration was wrong, Colavito said. &quot;Now he’s trying to get paid for people to see him. You don’t do that. So I don’t think he’s good to represent Long Island.” 
 New York's 3rd Congressional District spans&nbsp;the North Shore of Long Island and dips South to Massapequa and Hicksville. There are more&nbsp;registered Democrats than Republicans, by a margin of 40% to 28%, according to the most recent State Board of Election enrollment figures. 
 Another 28% of registered voters&nbsp;are independent, or not affiliated with a political party. 
 Santos is due to succeed&nbsp;former Democratic House members&nbsp;Thomas Suozzi, of Glen Cove,&nbsp;in office since 2016; and Steve Israel, who now lives in Oyster Bay and was first elected in 2000. 
 Port Washington resident Marc Ausfresser, 70, said it “doesn’t seem fair” that Santos misrepresented his record and gets to take his seat. 
 “Being objective, trying to put politics to the side, it seems like if anyone were applying to any other job, other than Congress, with such a misrepresented resume, they would automatically be disqualified, and it should be the same here.” 
 Ausfresser, an attorney, said at the Port Washington train station that Santos' pending swearing-in&nbsp;shows that “the truth is not all that important” in this political climate. 
 John Minietta, 72, a registered Republican from Plainview, who was eating lunch at On Parade in Woodbury,&nbsp;said he had&nbsp;voted for Santos but wouldn't vote for him again. 
 “I feel like he’s done a very sad thing,” Minietta said. “I don’t think there was any reason for him to do it. He should have been honest. Now he has a problem. I’m disappointed in him.” 
 Kerry Clyne, 52, who was getting off a late afternoon train at the Port Washington Long Island Rail Road station,&nbsp;called Santos a “con artist” and said it was&nbsp;“deplorable&quot; that&nbsp;he will represent her&nbsp;district. 
 “I think it sends a message that nothing really matters anymore,” said Clyne, of Port Washington. 
 Clyne, who works as a fundraiser for a health care company, said she voted for Zimmerman and called on the Republican Party to condemn him. 
 “They really shouldn’t want someone like this representing the party,&quot; she said. 
 In a statement to Newsday, the Republican supervisor of North Hempstead called Tuesday a &quot;sad day&quot; for district residents.&nbsp;Jennifer DeSena, who endorsed Santos and campaigned with him last year, said: &quot;Mr. Santos is not trustworthy, and I am personally offended and disgusted by his actions, which included deceiving me personally when he sought my endorsement. He does not have my support, and I will never consider him my congressman.”

POSTREET230104

On the day George Santos was to be sworn in, voters say they feel betrayed

On the day Santos was to be sworn in, voters say they feel betrayed

Complete coverage: George Santos scandal

Complete coverage: George Santos scandal

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