Paul Ryan: Why Is George Santos Still in Congress

Donald Trump mainstreamed blatant, endless lying within the Republican Party but newly elected congressman George Santos seems to have taken lying to a level on par with that of Der Trumpenfuhrer.  Seemingly, NOTHING in his biography is true other than yes, he was born in Brazil.   Not surprisingly, many voters in his New York state district are furious they were played for fools especially as it is becoming clear that some in Republican leadership positions knew he was an utter fraud.  Yet Kevin McCarthy - who happily sold his soul to gain the speaker's gavel - and other congressional Republicans refuse to call on Santos to resign no doubt because they need every Republican member possible and fear a special election to replace Santos could see a Democrat winner.  Despite the abject moral bankruptcy of McCarthy and his lieutenants, some Republicans want Santos gone, including former House speaker Paul Ryan.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the still raging controversy.  Here are article excerpts:

While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is still defending Representative George Santos, whose web of biographical lies continues to unravel as we speak, the last Republican to wield the gavel is siding with the handful of Republicans who want Santos out. “This isn’t an embellished candidacy, it’s a fraudulent candidacy,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a Thursday interview. “He hoaxed his voters. So, of course, he should step down.”

“I can’t imagine the guy is going to stay very long,” he added, apparently not accounting for the current Speaker’s desperation for every Republican vote he can get a hold of.

McCarthy, who is leading the smallest Republican majority since 2001, has not called for the resignation of Santos, the freshman lawmaker from New York whose life story has proven to be a Mr. Ripley–esque fabrication. Instead, he’s argued that––barring criminal charges––Santos still “has a right to serve.”

“The one thing I do know is you apply the Constitution equal to all Americans,” McCarthy told reporters on Thursday. “The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican conference. There are concerns with him, so he will go before [the House Ethics Committee]. If anything is found to be wrong, he will be held accountable exactly as anyone else in this body would be.”

The GOP leadership’s current calculus could change if criminal charges are leveled against Santos, who is under investigation by New York prosecutors and faces a separate campaign finance complaint. Additionally, prosecutors in Brazil, where his family emigrated from, said last week they intend to revive years-old fraud charges against Santos after he popped back on their radar this month.

Since winning a Long Island congressional seat last year, a trickle of recent reporting has exposed Santos as a serial liar who embellished or fabricated a shockingly large part of his life story during his congressional campaign. He wildly inflated his professional and academic record; deceptively described his ethnic and religious background; suggested that his mother both died in and survived the September 11 terrorist attacks; and made up a host of other personal details. When confronted with this ballooning scandal, Santos has repeatedly said he has no interest in leaving Washington.

 The New York Times piece cited above has this:

In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him.

Campaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on. But when the report came back on Mr. Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier.

Some of Mr. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race, and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing. When Mr. Santos disputed key findings and vowed to continue running, members of the campaign team quit, according to three of the four people The New York Times spoke to with knowledge of the study.

The existence of the vulnerability study underscores one of the most vexing questions still surrounding the strange saga of George Santos: How did the gate-keeping system of American politics — Republican leaders, adversarial Democrats and the prying media — allow a fabulist who boasted about phantom mansions and a fake résumé get away with his con for so long?

The answer to last question is easy: the media increasing just parrots what candidates say and never do investigative report in a timely manner.