George Santos' Ex-Boyfriend Drops New Revelations
A former boyfriend of George Santos dropped fresh revelations about the Republican U.S. representative-elect, who has already admitted to "embellishing" his credentials with multiple lies.
Pedro Vilarva offered an account of his time with Santos that depicted the politician as a serial fabulist and alleged thief, The New York Times reported.
"Mr. Vilarva met Mr. Santos in 2014, when he was 18 and Mr. Santos was 26. Mr. Vilarva found him charming and sweet," the Times recounted. But that sweetness seems to have masked a tendency to deceive: Vilarva claimed he had spent their time together "footing many of the bills..."
"He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor," Vilarva said. "One day it's one thing, one day it's another thing. He never ever actually went to work."
"Things began to unravel between the two men in early 2015, Mr. Vilarva said, after Mr. Santos surprised him with tickets to Hawaii that turned out not to exist," the Times went on to add. "Around the same time, he said he discovered that his cellphone was missing, and believed Mr. Santos had pawned it."
When Vilarva belatedly sought to vet Santos by doing some research online, "he found that Mr. Santos was wanted by Brazilian police," the Times reported. Vilarva's reaction, he said, was this: "I woke up in the morning, and I packed my stuff all in trash bags, and I called my father and I left."
At age 19, while living in Brazil with his mother, the Times recounted, "Mr. Santos entered a small clothing store and spent nearly $700 in 2008 dollars using a stolen checkbook and a false name, court records show."
The Times went on to detail: "In November 2010, Mr. Santos and his mother appeared before the police, where they both admitted that he was responsible."
"On Sept. 13, 2011, a Brazilian judge ordered Mr. Santos to respond to the case," the article continued. "Three months later, a court official tried to subpoena him, but he could not be found."
By then he had returned to the U.S. and was living in New York — though not doing many of the things he later led voters to believe he had done. Even at that time, the Times noted, according to those who knew him he was "a striver, whose tendency toward embellishment and one-upsmanship left them with doubts about his many claimed accomplishments."
Santos' "embellishments" extended to fabricating a claim that his mother, who worked as a cook and housecleaner, had "worked her way up to become 'the first female executive at a major financial institution,'" the Times relayed. "He has also said that she was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that she died 'a few years later,'" even though she seems to have died in 2016.
Santos' debunked claims about his past and accomplishments include stories about going to prestigious schools and having high-level jobs in financial services as well as "at a famous news organization in Brazil," the Times detailed.
Now that he's been elected to "New York's 3rd Congressional District in the recent midterm election," Newsweek reported, one revelation following another has emerged as to the extent to which Santos invented the details of his background. The Associated Press gave a rundown of the apparent falsehoods — and subsequent backpedaling — Santos had offered.
"The Queens resident had said he had obtained a degree from Baruch College in New York, but the school said that couldn't be confirmed," the AP specified, only for Santos eventually to admit, "I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume."
As for Santos' claim that he "worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs," the AP noted, "neither company could find any records verifying that." Santos disclosed that "he had 'never worked directly' for either financial firm, saying he had used a 'poor choice of words,'" the AP went on to detail.
Perhaps his most creative choice of words came when Santos attempted to explain certain claims about his heritage. The AP noted that "the Jewish American site The Forward... questioned a claim on Santos' campaign website that his grandparents 'fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.'"
Said Santos: "I never claimed to be Jewish.... Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish.'"
Those revelations have been ignored by the GOP's leadership, though a handful of "Republicans have also rebuked Santos, and at least one of his fellow incoming House Republicans from New York called for him to face an ethics investigation," according to CNN.
Meanwhile, Newsweek noted, "Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, has also put forward the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker (SANTOS) Act, which would require candidates to disclose certain elements of their background under oath, so that they can be punished for lying."
Santos is still expected to be sworn in on Jan. 3, and it's uncertain what his constituents can expect.
Vilarva summarized his own feelings, The Times reported, saying: "I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands."