In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him. Campaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on. But when the report came back on Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the hear
Rep. elect George Santos appears on the House floor at the Capitol in Washington on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.
Fraudulent academic degrees. Involvement in a firm accused of a Ponzi scheme. Multiple evictions and a suspended driver’s license. All of it was in the report, which also said that Santos, who is openly gay, had been married to a woman. The report did not offer conclusive details, but some people briefed on the findings wondered whether the marriage was done for immigration purposes.
Interviews with more than two dozen associates, adversaries and donors, as well as contemporaneous communications and other documents reviewed by the Times, show that Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of his own party. “The reality is, there’s no defense. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Gerard Kassar, the chair of the New York Conservative Party, a small but influential partner to the Republican Party that backed Santos. “It would be impossible and probably incorrect for me to say this could never happen again, but it won’t be from me not looking again.”Santos was a political neophyte when he first showed interest in running for a House seat made up of parts of Queens and Nassau County in 2020.
“I guess unfortunately, we rely on the person to be truthful to us,” Joseph Cairo Jr., the Republican Party county chair, said in an interview. This week, he called on Santos to resign and said he would no longer be welcome in the Nassau Republican Party. Around that time, Santos began attracting the suspicion of a pair of friends and potential donors active in New York Republican circles. Santos claimed to one of them, Kristin Bianco, to have secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump when he had not. That prompted her to express concerns about Santos to plugged-in Republicans, including associates of Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, one of Santos’ biggest early backers, whose top political aide was assisting his campaign.
If party leaders were aware of any of the concerns about Santos, or others raised by his former vendors, they found ways to reassure themselves. With a more competitive race expected in 2022, researchers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did the first meaningful opposition research on Santos that summer, assembling an 87-page opposition research book. It extensively documents Santos’ past statements — including his extreme views on abortion rights and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Strapped for time and cash, Zimmerman concluded that his money would be better spent on advertising and canvassing operations. And he believed that the campaign committee’s report as well as Santos’ far-right views on abortion and Jan. 6 — two of the year’s most prominent campaign themes — gave him powerful campaign fodder.
One outlet stood out: The North Shore Leader in Long Island, run by a Republican lawyer and former House candidate, Grant Lally. The paper published a pair of articles casting doubt on Santos’ claims that he owned extravagant cars and homes and labeling him a “fabulist — a fake,” though it did not have other specifics that would later come out about his falsified resume or his past.
Santos quickly signed off, but as the research dragged on, he asked to cancel the contract with the firm. When the results came back, it was clear why. The people working for Santos convened an emergency conference call to discuss the results Dec. 1, 2021. They presented Santos with a choice: bow out of the race with dignity, or stay in and risk letting the Democrats turn up the same information and use it to destroy his political and personal future.
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