Since we first realized in December that George Santos is a serial liar who makes his Republican colleagues appear like the salt of the earth, we’ve been in a position to categorize the tales which have come out about him into roughly two teams. The primary class—which we’ll name “Wow, That’s Messed Up”—consists of the entire downright deplorable issues he’s stated and performed, like falsely claiming his grandparents fled the Holocaust and that his mom died attributable to 9/11-related well being points, regardless of documented proof that she was in a foreign country on the day of the assaults. Then there’s the second class: “Okay, That’s Absurd however Vaguely Amusing,” which incorporates stuff like his telling individuals he was a male mannequin who was going to seem in Vogue and that he’d produced Spider-Man: Flip Off the Darkish on Broadway.
However as of late, a 3rd class has begun emerge. It’s referred to as “That Is Deeply F–ked Up and If You Weren’t Booted From Congress Over the Different Stuff, You Undoubtedly Ought to Be for This,” and it encompasses, for example, the allegation that he absconded with cash raised for a disabled veteran’s dying service canine—a canine that died after not getting the lifesaving surgical procedure it wanted—and the allegation leveled on Friday that he sexually harassed a would-be worker in his Washington workplace.
That latter allegation was made by Derek Myers, a potential congressional staffer, who included a proper criticism he made with the Home’s Workplace of Congressional Ethics in a series of tweets. (Myers stated he additionally filed a police report with the Capitol police.) In accordance with the criticism, Myers had utilized to work in Santos’s DC workplace as a legislative correspondent and workers assistant; after he was provided the job, he met with the workers there and was “assigned a desk” on January 24. Myers states that whereas he spent the day working, his title was “volunteer,” as his paperwork had not but been processed. He alleges that the next day, he was alone with Santos within the congressman’s “private workplace, going over mail correspondence,” when the newly sworn-in lawmaker “plac[ed] his hand on my left leg, close to my knee,” and prolonged an invite to do karaoke that night time. Myers says he didn’t settle for and that Santos proceeded to place his hand into Myers’s “internal thigh” and contact his groin. He says within the criticism that he “shortly pushed the congressman’s hand away” and went again to his desk shortly after.
Myers claims that 5 days later, on January 30, he was referred to as into Santos’s workplace and questioned about his earlier work as a journalist; he had his job provide rescinded two days later. (In accordance with The New York Instances, Myers was arrested final 12 months and charged with wiretapping for publishing audio of a homicide trial {that a} supply had recorded and despatched him; the Society of Skilled Journalists condemned the arrest and stated it confirmed a flagrant “disregard for press freedom and violation of not solely the First Modification however state and federal legislation.”) In accordance with audio of the January 30 assembly that Myers recorded and supplied to Speaking Factors Memo, Santos claimed that Myers’s arrest was “not regarding to us, it’s regarding to this establishment.” Requested by the Put up if he thought he misplaced his job provide attributable to rejecting Santos’s advances, Myers wrote in an electronic mail: “The timing definitely raises the prospect of the reply being ‘sure.’” Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, declined the Put up’s request for remark.
Final week the Republican congressman stated he would quickly recuse himself from his seats on the Home’s small enterprise and science committees till he might “clear” issues up. Whereas the newest allegations might theoretically result in a dialogue among the many GOP re: eradicating Santos from workplace, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that that may occur given the opposite issues Kevin McCarthy has condoned during the last a number of years. Santos’s conduct is, in fact, the topic of a number of prosecutorial investigations, with probes being performed by the New York lawyer common, the Nassau County and Queens County district lawyer workplaces, and federal prosecutors in New York. He’s additionally being probed by the FBI over the aforementioned allegations associated to the canine—which Santos has referred to as “pretend.” He has claimed he’s “not a prison” and that he’d solely resign if he had been requested to by each single one of many “142,000 voters who voted for me.” As of final week, greater than 75% of his constituents consider he ought to give up, so maybe we’ll get there!
