George Santos was building to this moment all along.
Not the moment in the House on Friday when the final vote was tallied and the indicted New York Republican lawmaker was solemnly expelled from that sometimes august and sometimes ridiculous body.
No, it was the day before when he strode over to reporters outside the freezing Capitol, wearing dark loafers that he claimed were six years old and speaking defiantly over shouted questions and over the occasional passing protester, when he vowed not to resign “because if I leave, they win.”
Of course he would not succumb, and he would not stop — no matter how bad the odds looked and how trapped and exhausted and insecure he felt inside. That would not be the costume he put on for the world. No: He would lash out at perceived attackers, vague shadows and legal authorities alike, and just say how all this was really just a big mistake and even something of a conspiracy against him.
He would brazen his way through the challenge, as he did when he fled Brazil after being caught using the checkbook of a dead octogenarian, fled because — as his mother told a friend — he was “in a little bit of trouble.” And it would be fine. Next thing you knew he was working in a Queens call center, because if you move quickly enough and change your story sufficiently, then you can almost be living a different life.
And what if that College Point call center with its dusty windows and bleeping headphones and approximately $12-an-hour wage wasn’t really the best escape in the world? Well, you could just claim you didn’t need it; actually, you were rich and there was a trust fund you might access once you got married (to a woman). And if you actually didn’t have much money? This is America. You could go get your bag, like the low five figures Santos said he got for marrying an immigrant, as one of his former roommates told me, and anyway there were roommates to skim from and other minor hustles to pull, and so there was no need to really grind at all.
Over and over, when faced with the sort of challenge that might have ruined or humbled a less flexible individual, Santos chose to charge right ahead, smiling and braving a new costume, like the drag queen pageant participant he had once been in Brazil. Faced with legal repercussions in Amish country for the bad checks he used to nab some dogs in 2017? He contorted his way out — he said his checkbook had gone missing. A former roommate fingered him as part of a credit-card-cloning scam, stealing banking info from ATM machines? Santos claimed he wasn’t involved, and the thief was caught and deported to Brazil. So that was basically the end of that, and Santos moved on.
The lesson Santos learned over and over in his 35 years was that there’s a low price for lying in this cultural moment, whether he spun about Broadway producing or volleyball stardom, and he could keep getting second chances. Even politically. After all, as he once noted on a podcast about his first run for Congress in 2020, Democrat Tom Suozzi didn’t “sling mud” at him. Sure, Santos lost that race, but he wasn’t trashed or unveiled as a fabulist. And then in his 2022 run when his own campaign commissioned a $17,000 deep dive into his background, which uncovered lots of surprising stuff like his eviction cases and missing college degrees, did he throw up a white flag and roll over? No. He said the diploma records were forthcoming, even though they weren’t. New staff replaced the old. And he barreled ahead, flipping the Democratic seat into his hands.
Santos has said he will wear his expulsion like a “badge of honor,” and in that he is following one of his main political mentors, Donald Trump. The quadruple-indicted former president, of course, could plausibly be elected president once again. Like Santos, he is not running away from his critics and prosecutors but turning on them. He stokes a sense of shared victimhood with his supporters, returning to the idea “they” are “coming after you.” He is merely “standing in their way.” Santos, the consummate cadger, stole the same construction for himself in October. Nothing rallies a crowd like an enemy. So why not keep going, even if a prison sentence beckons?
And it does beckon for Santos, whose federal trial is scheduled to start next fall on Long Island. That will be a doozy, if Santos doesn’t take a plea deal in the meantime — his lawyer said in court he was getting more help in preparation, and the thousands of pages of evidence are staggering. Santos stands accused of money laundering, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and more, and it is difficult to find a defense lawyer who thinks the whole case can be fully defeated.
There’s a future that Santos must think about, one he has optimistically termed “endless”: ways to earn money once the $174,000 congressional salary stops, once his likely prison sentence ends. This is not a prospect he relishes. He has mulled the possibilities of Dancing With the Stars and that ilk, something you don’t get if you turn away from the public and retreat, like many disgraced politicians have done reluctantly or penitently before him. You only get the second-act treatment if you commit to the bit.
With all that ahead, who can argue with Santos’s last choices here? Of course he is blustering. Of course he is posting his way through. Perhaps in ten years he’ll be an asterisk, but for now, he’s still here with us, waiting for consequence, waiting for more punishment, waiting for the endless future to unfold.
Mark Chisuano’s new book, The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos is out now.
