George Santos Stepping Down from House Committees

Politico Reporter Olivia Beavers broke the News on Twitter on January 31 that New York representative George Santos would be stepping down from his committee assignments for a time. In the words of a Republican lawmaker who remained anonymous in a Washington Post article, “He is a distraction.”

Santos fell into hot water in December 2022 when The New York Times reported that his “storybook journey” from a son of Brazilian immigrants to the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent had some major plot holes.

The university he claimed to have graduated from, Baruch College, had no record of him having graduated in the year he claimed. Nor did New York University, which he also claimed to attend.

Citigroup and Goldman Sachs had no record of him ever working there, as he claimed.

His animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was not, as George Santos claimed, a tax-exempt nonprofit.

His comments and explanations for the “family firm” Devolder, which have offered him over a million dollars in dividends despite the company’s revenue being estimated at less than fifty thousand dollars, have been inconsistent and contradictory. The financial disclosure documents for the company do not list any clients using the company’s vague services.

Santos claimed that his mother had survived the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, despite records showing that his mother had not been in the United States since 1999. Nor was she “the first female executive at a major financial institution,” as was claimed on Santos’s campaign website, but a domestic worker and home care nurse.

He also claimed to have lost employees in the tragic Pulse Nightclub shooting, but none of the victims appeared to have any connection to him. He later changed his story to say that the four victims instead were “going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando.”

He claimed to have been a producer for the flop musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, but lead producer Michael Cohl denies that he had involvement with the show.

Throughout his career, George Santos used an alias, Anthony Zabrovsky, tied to his claims of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side. There is no evidence of this ancestry, nor of his claim that his father was born in Angola.

As all of this, and more, came to light, Santos was pressured to resign by fellow Republicans. He has, thus far, refused and says he will remain in his seat.

However, he did release a statement saying, “With the ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations, I have submitted a request to Speaker McCarthy that I be temporarily recused from my committee assignments until I am cleared.” He had been appointed to the Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

While he takes time to “clear his name,” he claims he will continue to serve his constituents.