George Santos

George Anthony Devolder Santos ( ; ; born July 22, 1988) is an American politician who is the U.S. representative for , serving since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Santos was elected to Congress in 2022 after running unsuccessfully in 2020 against incumbent Democratic representative Thomas Suozzi. Santos is the first openly LGBT member elected to Congress as a Republican. Santos has made numerous false or dubious claims about his biography, work history, criminal record, financial status, ethnicity, religion, and other matters, both in public and in private. Six weeks after his election, numerous news outlets reported that large parts of his self-published biography appeared to be fabricated, including claims about his ancestry, education, employment history, charity work, property ownership, and crimes of which he claimed to be a victim. Santos has admitted to lying about his education and employment history. In 2010, Santos confessed to having committed check fraud in Brazil in 2008, but failed to appear in court in 2011, leaving the case unresolved. In the wake of his election, Brazilian authorities revived the case in late 2022; Santos later agreed to plead guilty. Additionally, there have been several judgments against Santos in the United States concerning eviction and personal debt cases. In 2022, he was accused of failing to pay thousands of dollars in judgments from the 2010s, to which he admitted. In the U.S., theft by deception charges were dropped in 2017, and later expunged. Two 2023 federal indictments allege 23 fraud-related charges against Santos; he has pleaded not guilty to 13 of them. He has rejected calls for his resignation from the House and reiterated his intention to run for re-election.