Happy One Year Anniversary Since George Santos Became a Thing!
21:27 Share

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Walmart Plus members save on meeting up with friends. Save on having them over for dinner with free delivery with no hidden fees or markups. That's groceries plus napkins plus that vegetable chopper to make things a bit easier. Plus, members save on gas to go meet them in their neck of the woods. Plus, when you're ready for the ultimate sign of friendship...

Start a show together with your included Paramount Plus subscription. Walmart Plus members save on this plus so much more. Start a 30-day free trial at WalmartPlus.com. Paramount Plus is central plan only. Separate registration required. See Walmart Plus terms and conditions. Listener supported. WNYC Studios.

Shortly after being expelled from Congress last Friday after a House Ethics Committee report found there was, quote, substantial evidence that he had broken multiple laws, disgraced liar George Santos found himself a new gig on Cameo. Cameo, a site where you can pay people for personal messages like from celebrities. Santos's profile calling him a former congressional icon.

That's what it says. This week, Democratic Senator John Fetterman ponied up $343.20 to buy a message from Santos to send to his colleague Bob Menendez, the senator from New Jersey who has been accused of taking bribes and secretly aiding the Egyptian government. Hey, Bobby. Uh, look, I,

I don't think I need to tell you, but these people that want to make you get in trouble and want to kick you out and make you run away, you make them put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir. Stay strong. Merry Christmas.

As with everything George Santos touches, his expulsion from Congress has turned into yet another sideshow, which is equal parts silly and gross. But since he hopefully will recede from public view now, we thought it would be a good moment to reflect on how we got here.

It was almost exactly a year ago, December 19th to be precise, that Santos' lies were first revealed in a story by New York Times reporters Grace Ashford and Michael Gold. The newly elected Long Island congressman, it turned out, was not who he said he was when it came to his family background, the charities he was associated with, or his wealth.

It was a bombshell report. But at the North Shore Leader, a small local paper in George Santos' district on Long Island, the story was nothing new. In January of this year, the New Yorker Radio Hour ran a story about the leader reported by New Yorker staff writer Claire Malone. So I went out to Long Island to meet with Grant Lally, who is the publisher of the North Shore Leader, and also with Maureen Daly, who is the managing editor of the paper.

Yeah, I'm Claire Malone. Are you Maureen? Maureen, lovely to meet you. Yeah, how are you? I'm good. We're probably going to bring you into the conference room. Okay. Do you mind if I go ahead? No, wherever you want to go. Okay.

The North Shore Leader serves kind of a wealthy, pretty white suburban area of Long Island. And it has about a circulation of 5,000, so it's pretty small. This is a cutting-edge story about a Christmas tree lighting. It says, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays across the top of the fold. And this is, I believe this is the Oyster Bay.

Downtown Oyster Bay, Main Street Associations, holiday celebration they have up. So your four lead stories are World Cup Party, Thieves Are Very Busy, New Year's Eve in Glen Cove, and Bayville Lights the Menorah. That's it. That's it. These are locally. I mean, this is, you know.

I mean, I guess our top story inside is, you know, the leader told you so. It said, the leader told you so. U.S. Rep. Elect George Santos is a fraud and wanted criminal. And we published this just a couple days after the Times piece came out.

Grant Lally, the publisher, is a lawyer by trade, but he is also someone who's in politics. So he actually ran, he's run three times for the same congressional seat that George Santos is now sitting in. And Grant is

pretty, you know, connected and involved in local Republican politics out there. I've already spotted two Reagan busts. So how many more? That was actually my dad did that. His dad sculpted it? My dad sculpted it. No way. That one he didn't do. The Teddy Roosevelt? Yeah, that was, we had a sculpture, he had a sculpture manufacturer company. No way.

The paper has endorsed Democrats before. They endorsed incumbent Tom Suozzi for this seat previously, who is a Democrat. And in 2022, the paper endorsed Robert Zimmerman, who was Santos' Democratic opponent. I mean, when my dad bought the paper, there was somebody, and she passed away, but, you know, she kind of came with the paper. She was Tom Suozzi's babysitter when he was a baby. You know? So...

So we could never endorse against Tom Suozzi. Right. That's amazing. When did you first become aware of George Santos? I got a telephone call from someone who had helped me out in my campaign and said she was working with George Santos and could we please meet and have lunch? What year is this? This was January of 2020.

And it was down the street at the Carl Place Diner. I went down, I had lunch with them. George Santos was sort of sitting back, glowing in the attention. And he was bizarre, would be the best description. He was very boastful and very evasive and...

I had run for this seat before, and we had the newspaper, so I was kind of, you know, it was a dual role. He was looking for help and support and advice. And at the same time, it wasn't an interview, but, you know, I was sort of sizing him up for, you know, coverage in the future. Sure. And, I mean, I asked him at the time. I'm very, you know, I have friends from Brazil, Brazil.

I know a bit about Brazilian society, and he boasted about his finance, but being in finance and being a very successful, wealthy financier, he was only 32 at the time, maybe 31 at the time, so very young, and bragging about his millions. It didn't click. It didn't mesh with what

With truthfulness. I noticed that you guys didn't endorse him in 2020. Correct. Yeah. Did you know anything was concretely amiss or was it more just a feeling? He was not a serious candidate in 2020. I mean, it was Tom Suozzi. I mean, it was the same district I ran in, but...

Tom Suozzi was well-established. He was the former county executive. You know, Santos really ran that year as, uh, you know, a throw as, as, as a, as a non-serious candidate. Uh, it, you know, he, he was just some guy running and, you know, it was, it was a, um, he was Brazilian. Nobody's ever run a Brazilian before, you know, so, you know, it was almost like an outreach candidate. Let's see, let's see what he can do. And, um,

You know, he was openly gay. I think he's the first person they ran in the county who was openly gay. So it was really, you know, let's give him a shot. Let's see what he can do. But no one at any level expected him to be competitive or certainly not to win. Sure. Fast forward two years. Yep.

There's redistricting that happens in the third district. Two things. This is actually the key to the whole thing this year is everyone expects, meaning everyone, all the political pros, all the political people expected that you have a one-party democratic government in New York State. And, you know, look, anytime you have a one-party government in any state, they will redistrict the lines to favor their party.

And, you know, it's called gerrymandering. And in February of 2022, the legislature came out with a map that was heavily gerrymandered to favor the Democrats. The governor signed it. And this district, the third district, became a, went from a three-county, reasonably competitive seat into a five-county, completely non-competitive seat that wrapped around, uh,

Through Queens, up through the Bronx, along the shore in Westchester, and then for whatever, and I still want to know who designed it, but shot a tentacle up to Westchester Airport, got to Westchester Airport, went halfway down the runway and stopped. It was not a competitive seat. Sure. And so he wanted to run for it, and nobody else wanted to. And just to clarify, not competitive seats?

favoring Democrats. It was a Democratic seat. No Republican could have won it. Doesn't matter whether Red Wave year or no Red Wave year, that was a Democratic seat. So he's running for it.

No one else, no other candidate filed. And then the New York State Court of Appeals, the top court, issued a decision throwing out the map, claiming it was too partisan and that they also had not followed the proper procedures under New York law for a redistricting commission to meet. They basically, people boycotted and didn't allow the commission to meet. Right.

So the Court of Appeals threw it out, said there's no time. Legislature is actually enjoined and barred from trying to weigh in at that point. And the court issued a brand new map for New York State. And at that point—

The Republican Party around here has already canceled the local primary, right? And George Santos is the presumed candidate. They gave a very short window, about 10 days, for if anyone else wants to jump in and wage a primary, you have 10 days to stand up a congressional campaign, raise a million dollars, go out and collect 2,000 signatures. Grant, did you consider it? No.

You know, I talked to a few people about it. Because I saw that I could see instantly that the new district was a lean, a marginally Republican district. I was browsing the website and I saw, you know, there's one headline, mass thugs rob store in Huntington, you know, national crime. Like, was crime a big issue out here? What were the things that were kind of resonating with Republican voters? I think crime definitely was. Yeah.

The biggest stories are the local, often the students, the success stories. But I'd say the second most important thing to the readers is the crime. So let's talk, you know, for listeners who would be unfamiliar, can you talk a little bit about, you know, the issues that George Santos brought up? Or was it mostly, he had an interesting biography. I mean, what was it about Santos that resonated over the Democrats? What was interesting was...

He really didn't run, and this is part of what we saw, which really nobody else, frankly, even in other parts of the region saw, is that there was no campaign. I mean, he did nothing. There was not a campaign office open, not a lawn sign printed or put on a lawn, not a mailer sent to people's homes, not a TV commercial on television, not a radio ad on radio, nothing until Labor Day. So if you walked around in August...

You have no idea. You never have no idea who this, who George Santos is. You wouldn't even know his name. But, and this is what we saw, we pulled his campaign filings, his campaign finance disclosures, and he claimed to have already spent over a million dollars on a congressional campaign. And people, some people run entire congressional campaigns on a million dollars or less.

And he, by August, doing with nothing, claims he already spent a million dollars. And that was a disconnect that we saw. And we said, there's something really wrong here. It's kind of like, what did you do with the million we gave you last week? Where did it go? And you do look at the filings. And what is great with the FEC and with our system is...

you do have to record everything up to that $199.99. That can go without being detailed.

So there were so many expenses that were just $199.99. So I don't have to tell you what I spent that on. And that's just a red flag that kind of says, wait a second here. You know, you can't be buying everything for $199.99. We heard story after story after story about him doing bizarre things about

bragging about his mansions. So you hear the story and you say... We hear these stories and we know everybody, meaning we know a lot of people in the district. And so Santos would tell one lie to one person, another lie to another person, and we would hear from both of those people, compare notes and realize, I mean, he's a total... He's making all of this up. He's a total liar. And so when you know he's a total liar, then you start looking more closely and...

Look, he was so well known, at least in the more active political circles, to be a liar, that by early summer he was already being called George Scamtoast. Did you talk to Democrats about the weirdness with Santos? You know, the DCCC, the Democratic, posted a, I thought, very weak bit of research on Santos. So we looked at that. It was about 75 pages or so, but most of it was pretty much boilerplate and...

It raised a lot of the questions that we had, but didn't really provide answers. He put down in February, I believe it was February of 2022, that he loaned his campaign, he personally loaned his campaign $700,000. Now, this is a guy who had no assets, zero assets, just 18 months before.

And that was disclosed in his 2020 personal financial disclosures. They made like $55,000 a year. Yeah, they made $55,000. So where did a million and a half dollars in earnings come from? And by the way, do we know anything about that $700,000? Look, I suspect, my suspicion is that it's fake, that he just put it down. It never happened, but he put it down on the reports to try to enhance himself financially.

So he could go to wealthy people on the North Shore, tell them he's Jewish and tell them all sorts of lies and say, I really need money. And I'm in. I put $700,000 of my own money in. I'm wealthy like you are, but I really need your help too. How did this blatant of a lie happen? I mean, does some fault come to the local GOP where they just never—

You know, congressional campaigns are, by law, separate legal entities. The local parties cannot finance, cannot control congressional campaigns. So the story comes out in September. What's the reaction? What do you hear? Different reactions. Some people said, oh, we knew this all along. This is not surprising. George Scamtoast. George Scamtoast. We've been calling him that already. You know, he...

So some people said, yeah, we understand it. Other people were hostile. We got a lot of negative pushback from some local Republican party officials. We had people outraged. What are you attacking our own for? And we will still get that. We're hearing that on social media and all. This was a Republican. Why would you say anything against him? And...

You know, the truth is the truth. And we didn't write his history. He did. We exposed it, yes. But there was some feedback from the party, from lifelong people who've worked to get people elected their whole life, volunteered and all that. And there was a bit of a, you know, you shouldn't have done this. What is, I mean, this is kind of a bigger question, but like,

We're obviously in the era of super-partisan politics. This is now very, you know, there's a lot of very Republican towns out here. What makes a Republican truly unelectable? If they knew in June what they know now, he would never have been, never have been the nominee. He was running as a sacrificial candidate, and they couldn't find, when really it was hard to find anyone else to run. And then suddenly the New York State Court of Appeals decided

Transforms what was a guaranteed... Transforms your cannon fodder into a congressman. Yeah, from cannon fodder into a congressman. That's a great... Yeah. I like that. There you go. I like that. That's great. That's the movie title. I mean, did the story just not get traction in the way that you thought it might? Well, you know, I mean, Robert Zimmerman called. I know he tried very hard when we put these stories out to promote the stories to the...

to the daily newspapers. I don't know exactly what he did. He told me at one point he said 85,000...

Social media blasts out and he sent daily reports on what we had reported to the major daily newspapers. So as a media reporter, to me that's very interesting. Okay, you write the story in September. You know, the Democratic candidate is aware of it. You get some pushback from local Republicans. Okay, the guy still wins in November. Mm-hmm.

December comes and the New York Times publishes this investigation into Santos that has some of the stuff that you guys had but also goes a little further of lying about jobs, lying about a pet charity. It was great journalism. I mean, the New York Times did great work on this. And it's also reflective that if you have the resources—

and you can put a team of reporters. You can do the research and the background research and dig up these materials. I mean, this wasn't an easy bit of reporting. This was reporting in the United States and reporting in Brazil. When you saw that story, or when you saw it, Maureen, was there any, like,

Or, oh, I wish we could have pushed it harder? Or was it sort of, oh, okay. No, I was actually very happy to see it come out because it really vindicated us. Because, I mean, George Santos was running around telling people openly that he was going to sue us. And he was going to shut us down. Really? For having published the expose that we published on him. Did you ever have any worry about that? No.

Because everything was well sourced and we had backup for everything we said. So George, did you ever hear from George Santos after that original September story? No, I have not spoken to George Santos and he would not even speak to us after we endorsed Tom Suozzi in 2020. Have you guys talked to the New York Times? Yeah. The people who broke the story? Yeah, I mean I've spoken to Grace Ashford and Tina. Yeah.

You weren't credited in that story. Was there any bad feeling about that? You know, it's a competitive world. I'm glad that they followed through on the story we started. It would have been nice to be credited. Um...

To that end, you guys have been doing a lot of press around this story. Oh, my God, it's killing me. It's just killing me. Is it helping subscribership or circulation at all? Yeah, definitely. The newspaper's gotten a lot of attention and good attention. So it's actually very gratifying to get that. The social media is just blowing out of the water. We're just constantly getting...

new subscribers, new followers, and great comments, great follow-up, direct messages, congratulating us and thanking us for doing the story. It is disappointing that George Santos was elected, even though we had exposed these massive issues with him. But he actually trailed Lee Zeldin by three to four points behind Lee Zeldin in this district. Lee Zeldin got almost...

58% in this district. He got 54%. So it did have an impact. The shame of it is a lot of people just vote reflexively. They just vote one party or the other. And so they say you could run anything, anyone or anything on a ballot, and they would still get 40% of the vote because people don't think about it.

The depth and breadth of the lies are so tremendous. I don't know what to say about us that this guy has got all the way into Congress. I think it says basically we want to believe and we want to. We're always looking for that person to fulfill the check all the boxes for us.

And maybe that's unrealistic. I come from Brooklyn, so we have that kind of, if it's too good, it's too good. What was the Ed Koch thing you were saying earlier? Oh, well, Ed Koch always said that, pick your top ten issues. If you agree with me on six of them, vote for me. If you agree with me on ten, have your head examined. Have you noticed that people read less local news? Is it about the same? Like, has there been any change on? I think they read about the same. There's a real, we have a really loyal readership. Yeah.

Our website traffic is up 31,000%, I think. It's amazing. Somebody asked me, I said, well, I know there's smoke coming out of the server, so I...

Claire Malone is a staff writer for The New Yorker. This story first aired in January of this year. Thanks for listening to the Midweek Podcast. Is there a topic or story you'd like to hear OTM cover in 2024? Send us questions, tips, and suggestions to onthemedia at wnyc.org. We'd love to hear from you. I'm Michael Lohinger.