Disgraced Santos should step aside

The blathering and evasive non-explanations now uttered by George Devolder-Santos for his invented back story convince us more than ever that he’s uniquely unfit to serve in Congress. It will be an embarrassment to New York and the nation when he takes office next week representing the Queens-Long Island Congressional District 3.

Santos has been caught lying to a bizarre degree — about success in finance, about having degrees from college and grad school, about owning real estate. He’s even gratuitously dissembled for years about such personal matters as his religion and his domestic involvements.

Now Santos admits to some astonishing fakery but is still defensively dodging, shedding no light on his motives for being a serial fabulist. “If I disappointed anyone by my résumé embellishment, I’m sorry,” he told WABC radio. But Santos didn’t “embellish.” He fabricated his purported “experience” at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and “education” at Baruch College and NYU. And we still don’t know what if anything he did for a living after working at a call center a decade ago and failing to pay many rents.

He’s still in denial about records of an unresolved case unearthed by The New York Times in Brazil showing Santos was charged with fraud in his youth for writing checks from a stolen checkbook. “I am not a criminal,” the New York Post quotes him saying. What does that even mean?

The scope of his fake claims is sprawling. Santos displays an optimistic belief that after a minimal response his pile of lies will evaporate rather than metastasize. Even Nassau County GOP chairman Joe Cairo, who twice gave him nominations, says Santos “has broken the public trust,” including his made-up descent from Jewish Holocaust survivors. His "not a Jew but Jew-ish" defense is one for the ages.

Cairo can help by publicly urging Santos to step aside and vowing never to back him again. Likely incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can help, too, by refusing Santos any real role on committees.

Santos’ deceptions warrant serious official investigation. Financial regulators should determine whether he played a role in an alleged Ponzi scheme at a firm with which he was affiliated. Charity regulators should see whether his "Friends of Pets United" group was legitimate. Federal election officials should explain his purported $700,000 loan to a campaign account two years after indicating annual income of $55,000. What of the funds GOP candidates reportedly paid him as an alleged "consultant"? State election officials should reconcile his address with his voting location. Perhaps the House should make sure he's even a U.S. citizen — a qualification to serve. 

Anyone who lies so blithely about who he is or what he does cannot be trusted with public power. Perhaps a combination of outside investigations and party disfavor will eventually solve Long Island's Santos problem. Of course, Santos could save everyone the trouble by stepping aside now.