Wikipedia on Santos
George Anthony Devolder Santos was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 3rd district last November and he now has many problems. He lies. A lot. The Associated Press writes that Santos "admitted that … he lied". The New York Times quotes Santos's fellow Nassau County Republicans calling him a "liar" and a "serial liar". The usual qualifiers like "accused", "apparent", "alleged" or "seems" have not been added.
The Guardian calls him a "serial liar", as does Vanity Fair which also adds in "pathological liar." The Washington Post varies this menu with "serial fabulist" and "pathological liar".
New York Magazine, The Washington Post, and several other publications are keeping complete lists of his lies. But it's hard for them to keep up. It seems like there's a new lie, or at least an unusual purported fact about Santos, that is revealed every day.
If you have been following the Santos saga in the press, you may want to skip to the next paragraph since the following lies have been widely published and documented. Santos did not attend a fancy prep school. He did not graduate from Baruch University or star on its volleyball team, or get two knee replacements because of his sacrifices for the sport. He did not earn an MBA degree from New York University. He did not work at either Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. He is not Jewish – and, despite his claim, not even Jew-ish, nor Ukrainian. His mother was not one of the first successful female financial executives in New York. She didn't have an office at the World Trade Center and didn't die on 9/11/2001, nor years later from the effects of that tragedy. He doesn't have a real estate portfolio, unless you count the apartments that he left without paying his rent. His family was not rich, it's unclear where the $700,000 he lent to his congressional campaign came from. He did work for a firm that has been accused by the US Securities and Exchange Commission of being a Ponzi scheme.
But there are too many well-documented lies to continue.
His problems include the federal, state, and local prosecutors who have said they are investigating him, although they haven't issued indictments. He will also be investigated by the House Ethics Committee. A Newsday poll this week shows that 78% of his constituents believe that he should resign from Congress, so his political career is likely almost over.
But perhaps his main problem is that he has been identified too many times in the reliable press as a liar. Publications, reliable or otherwise, may now have little or no fear of a libel suit from Santos. We might expect even more news reports of his lying to continue.
In an environment where the news media is swarming around Santos, Wikipedians need to be careful in evaluating the report that Santos edited Wikipedia and claimed that he was a drag queen and had appeared in several Disney television shows, including in "Hanna Montana" [sic].