George Santos Gets Snippy With Reporter Asking How He Made His Money, Attacks Democrats as ‘Authoritarian’ Instead
Screenshot via George Santos on Facebook.
Congressman-elect George Santos (R-NY) has been caught in a ever-growing pile of lies about his background, but one of the biggest remaining questions is how he made his money. Semafor reporter Kadia Goba attempted to get to the bottom of Santos’ sudden reversal of his fortunes, but only got vague claims and snippy insults about Democrats in response.
Santos has admitted to a series of bizarre lies about attending college, working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and claiming he was Jewish, but the framing of his confession — calling his fabrications “embellishing my resume” and saying everyone does “stupid things in life” — invited a new wave of condemnation.
The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes flatly rejected Santos’ attempt to redefine “embellishment,” writing that the congressman-elect had “just made shit up out of whole cloth.”
“Almost nothing that Santos claimed during the campaign has checked out,” wrote Jim Geraghty at National Review, noting the “potential public-corruption angle…because Santos appears to have gotten extremely rich extremely quickly, and no one is sure who has paid him and for what.”
The “most consequential question” regarding Santos’ background is where he got the chunk of change he loaned his own campaign — more than $700,000 according to his financial disclosure forms — because, “[f]or all we know, some foreign power may have bought itself a congressman,” wrote Geraghty. “This isn’t outlandish speculation, as one of his largest donors has ties to the Russian government.”
Goba interviewed Santos by phone and grilled him on the matter of his personal finances, getting what she described as “a short tick-tock of how he made his money that left certain key details unanswered.”
Santos’ financial disclosure forms from his first congressional campaign in 2020 “list[ed] no assets and a salary of $55,000,” wrote Goba, as compared to his 2022 campaign paperwork showing he seemed to have come “into sudden riches, making between $3.5 million and $11.5 million from a company he founded called the Devolder Organization in 2021.”
According to Santos, he was involved in the “capital introduction” business, engaged in “deal building” and “specialty consulting” for “high net worth individuals.” He offered as an example helping a client sell a high-end private plane or yacht and matching them with his “Rolodex” of about 15,000 rich investors, families, endowments, and other organizations.
Santos claimed that he “landed a couple of million-dollar contracts” in the first six months of launching Devolder, and that he raked in hefty referral fees, saying the sale of a $20 million yacht would get him a fee of “anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000.”
And that’s where Santos went mum, refusing to answer Goba’s requests for details about these alleged million-dollar contracts or any names of his previous clients.
There’s an additional bit of weirdness regarding Devolder’s corporate paperwork, with the the Florida-based LLC being administratively dissolved in September for failure to file an annual report. Santos reactivated Devolder last week and blamed his accountant for “accidentally” turning in the paperwork late.
Another New York congressman-elect, Democrat Dan Goldman, has “raised the question” of whether Devolder “was created merely to funnel illegal campaign donations,” urging Santos to “be an open book” and provide documents explaining his finances.
Santos responded to Goldman’s comments with a sharp retort, attacking his soon-to-be congressional colleague as “authoritarian”:
“I don’t dance to the tune of Congressman-elect Dan Goldman,” Santos told Semafor. “I don’t dance to the tune of these guys. If it was requested of me to produce any documentation from this organization, I have no problem doing so to people with the proper authority, not to authoritarian members of congress that think they have authority over their peers.”
