0:00

Shortly after being expelled from

0:02

Congress last Friday, after a

0:04

House Ethics Committee report found

0:06

there was, quote, substantial evidence

0:08

that he had broken multiple

0:10

laws, disgraced liar George Santos

0:12

found himself a new gig.

0:15

On Cameo. Cameo, a site

0:17

where you can pay people for

0:19

personal messages, like from celebrities. Santos'

0:22

profile, calling him a former

0:24

congressional icon. That's what

0:26

it says. Last week, Democratic Senator John

0:28

Federman ponied up $343.20 to buy a message

0:30

from Santos to

0:35

send to his colleague Bob Menendez,

0:37

the senator from New Jersey who

0:39

has been accused of taking bribes

0:42

and secretly aiding the Egyptian government.

0:44

Hey Bobby, uh, look,

0:46

I don't think I need to tell you,

0:49

but these people that want to make you

0:51

get in trouble and want to kick you

0:53

out and make you run away, you make

0:55

them put up or shut up. You stand

0:57

your ground, sir. Stay strong.

1:00

Merry Christmas. As

1:02

with everything George Santos touches, his

1:04

expulsion from Congress has turned into

1:06

yet another sideshow, which is equal

1:09

parts silly and gross. But

1:12

since he hopefully will recede from public view

1:14

now, we thought it would be a good

1:16

moment to reflect on how we

1:18

got here. It was almost

1:21

exactly a year ago, December 19th,

1:23

to be precise, that Santos' lies

1:25

were first revealed in a story

1:27

by New York Times reporters Grace

1:29

Ashford and Michael Gold. The

1:32

newly elected Long Island congressman, it turned

1:34

out, was not who he said he

1:36

was when it came to his family

1:38

background, the charities he was associated with,

1:40

or his wealth. It

1:42

was a bombshell report. But

1:45

at the North Shore leader, a small

1:47

local paper in George Santos' district on

1:49

Long Island, the story was nothing

1:51

new. In January of this year,

1:53

the New Yorker Radio Hour ran a

1:55

story about the leader reported by New

1:58

Yorker staff writer Claire Malone. So

2:01

I went out to Long Island to meet

2:03

with Grant Lally, who is the publisher of

2:05

the North Shore Leader, and also with Maureen

2:07

Daly, who is the managing editor of the

2:10

paper. I'm Claire Malone. Yeah, I'm Claire Malone.

2:12

Are you Maureen? I am. Maureen, lovely

2:14

to meet you. I'm getting you to the church. Yeah. How

2:16

are you? I'm good. We're probably going to bring you

2:18

into the conference. Okay. Do you mind if I go

2:20

ahead and go wherever you want to go? Go. The

2:23

North Shore Leader serves kind

2:25

of a wealthy, pretty white

2:28

suburban area of Long Island, and

2:30

it has about a circulation of 5,000, so

2:33

it's pretty small. This is a

2:35

cutting-edge story about a Christmas tree lighting.

2:37

It says Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays across

2:39

the capital. Yes, and this is, I

2:41

believe this is the Oyster Bay, downtown

2:45

Oyster Bay, Main Street,

2:47

associations, holiday celebration they

2:49

have on. So your four lead stories are World

2:51

Cup Party, Thieves Are Very

2:53

Busy, New Year's Eve in Glen Cove,

2:56

and Bayville Lights the Minora. That's it.

2:58

These are locally, I mean this is, you know, I

3:01

mean in our top story inside is, you know, the

3:03

leader told you so. It

3:05

said the leader told you so.

3:07

U.S. Rep. elect George Santos is

3:09

a fraud and wanted criminal. We

3:11

published this just a couple days

3:13

after the time speech came out. Grant

3:18

Lally, the publisher, is a lawyer

3:21

by trade, but he is

3:24

also someone who's in politics. So he

3:26

actually ran, he's run three

3:28

times for the same congressional seat that

3:30

George Santos is now sitting in, and

3:32

Grant is pretty, you know, connected and

3:34

involved in local Republican politics out there.

3:37

We've already spotted two Reagan buffs. So how

3:39

many more? That was actually my dad's. My

3:41

dad's sculptor. My dad's sculptor. That one he

3:43

didn't do. The Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, that was,

3:45

we had a sculpture, he had a sculpture

3:48

manufacturing company one time. The

3:50

paper has endorsed Democrats before. They

3:52

endorsed incumbent Tom Swazie

3:56

for this seat previously, who is a

3:58

Democrat. And in 2016, he was a Democrat. In

4:00

2022, the paper endorsed Robert Zimmerman,

4:02

who was Santos's Democratic opponent. I

4:05

mean, when my dad bought the paper, there was

4:08

somebody, and she passed away, but she kind

4:10

of came with the paper. She

4:12

was Tom Swazie's babysitter when he was a baby.

4:21

So we could never endorse against Tom Swazie. When

4:27

did you first become aware of George Santos?

4:29

I got a telephone call from someone who

4:31

had helped me out in my campaign and

4:33

said she was working with

4:35

George Santos, and could we please meet and

4:38

have lunch? What year is this? This

4:40

was January of 2020. And

4:44

it was down the street at the Carplace Diner. I went

4:47

down, I had lunch with him. George

4:49

Santos was sort of sitting back, glowing

4:52

in the attention. And

4:56

he was bizarre,

4:58

would be the best description. He was

5:01

very boastful and very evasive. And

5:04

I had run for this seat before, and we had the newspaper.

5:06

So it was a dual role. He

5:10

was looking for help and support and advice.

5:12

And at the same time, it wasn't an

5:14

interview, but I was sort of sizing him

5:16

up for coverage in

5:18

the future. And I

5:21

mean, I asked him at the time. I

5:23

have friends from Brazil. I

5:25

know a bit about Brazilian society, and he

5:27

posted about his finance, but being in finance

5:29

and being a very successful, wealthy financier, he

5:31

was only 32 at the time, maybe 31

5:34

at the time. So very young.

5:38

And bragging about his millions, and

5:42

it didn't click. It

5:44

didn't mesh with

5:47

truthfulness. I noticed that you guys

5:49

didn't endorse him in 2020. Correct.

5:53

Did you know anything was concretely in it, or was it more just

5:55

appealing? He was not a serious candidate in 2020. I

5:57

mean, it was Tom Soizzi. It was the same district.

6:00

I ran in, but Tom Swazi

6:02

was well established. He was the former

6:04

County Executive. Santos really ran that

6:07

year as a throw

6:09

is, as a non-serious

6:12

candidate. He was just some

6:14

guy running and it was a,

6:16

he was Brazilian, nobody's ever run a

6:18

Brazilian before. So it was almost like

6:21

an outreach candidate. Let's see what he can

6:24

do. And he was

6:26

openly gay. I think he's the first person

6:28

they ran in the county who was openly gay. So

6:30

it was really, you know, let's give him a shot. Let's see what he

6:32

can do. But

6:34

no one at any level expected

6:36

him to be competitive or certainly not

6:39

to win. Sure. Fast forward

6:41

two years. There's redistricting

6:43

that happens in the third district. Two

6:46

things. This is actually

6:48

the key to the whole thing

6:50

this year is everyone

6:53

expects meaning everyone, all the political,

6:55

you know, pros, all the political

6:58

people expected that you

7:00

have a one party democratic government in New York state. And,

7:03

you know, look at any

7:05

time you have a one party government in

7:07

any state, they will redistrict the

7:09

lines to favor their party. And,

7:12

you know, it's called gerrymandering. And in

7:14

February of 2022,

7:16

the legislature came out with a map

7:18

that was heavily gerrymandered to favor the

7:21

Democrats. The governor signed it. And

7:24

this district, the third district

7:26

became a, went from a

7:28

three county reasonably competitive seat

7:31

into a five county completely

7:33

non-competitive seat that wrapped around

7:37

through Queens, up through the Bronx, along

7:39

the shore in Westchester. And then for whatever, and

7:41

I still want to know who designed it, but

7:44

shot a tentacle up to

7:46

Westchester airport, got to

7:48

Westchester airport, went halfway down the runway and

7:51

stopped. It was not a competitive seat. And

7:53

so he wanted to run for it

7:56

and, and, and nobody else wanted to.

7:58

Not competitive. It was a

8:00

Democratic seat. No Republican

8:02

could have won it. It doesn't matter whether, red

8:04

wavier or no red wavier, that was a Democratic

8:06

seat. So he's running for it. No

8:10

one else, no other candidate filed. And

8:12

then the New York State Court of Appeals, the top

8:14

court, issued a decision

8:17

throwing out the map, claiming it

8:19

was too partisan and that they

8:21

also had not followed the proper

8:23

procedures under New York law for

8:27

a redistricting commission to meet. They basically,

8:29

people boycotted and didn't allow the commission to meet. So

8:32

the Court of Appeals threw it out, said there's no time.

8:35

Legislature is actually enjoined and barred from trying

8:37

to weigh in at that point. The

8:40

court issued a brand new map for New

8:42

York State. And at that point, the

8:45

Republican Party around here has already

8:47

canceled the local primary, right? And

8:50

George Santos is the presumed candidate. They gave

8:52

a very short window, about 10 days, for

8:55

if anyone else wants to jump in and

8:57

wage a primary, you have 10 days to

8:59

stand up a congressional campaign, raise a million

9:01

dollars, go out and collect 2,000 signatures. Grant,

9:03

did you consider it? I

9:06

talked to a few people about it. Because I saw

9:08

that I could see instantly that the new district was

9:10

a lean, a

9:13

marginally Republican district. I was browsing the

9:15

website and I saw, there's one headline, mass

9:18

thugs, Rob Storin Huntington, national

9:22

crime. Was crime a big issue out here? What

9:24

were the things that were kind of resonating with

9:26

Republican voters? I think

9:28

crime definitely was. The

9:32

biggest stories are the local, often the

9:34

students, the success stories.

9:36

But I'd say the second most important

9:39

thing to the readers is the crime.

9:42

So let's talk, for listeners who would be unfamiliar,

9:44

can you talk a little bit about the

9:48

issues that George Santos brought up?

9:50

Or was it mostly, he had an interesting

9:53

biography. What was it about Santos that resonated

9:55

over the Democrats? What was

9:57

interesting was... He

10:00

really didn't run, and this is

10:02

part of what we saw, which

10:04

really nobody else, frankly even in

10:06

other parts of the region saw,

10:08

is that there was no

10:11

campaign. He did nothing. There

10:14

was not a campaign office open, not

10:16

a lawn sign printed or put on

10:19

a lawn, not a mailer sent to

10:21

people's homes, not a TV commercial, on

10:23

television, not a radio ad on... nothing

10:25

until Labor Day. So

10:27

if you walked around in August, you

10:30

have no idea. No

10:32

idea who George Santos is, you wouldn't even

10:35

know his name. But

10:37

and this is what we saw, we

10:39

pulled his campaign filings, his campaign finance

10:41

disclosures, and he claimed to

10:43

have already spent over a million dollars on

10:45

a congressional campaign. Some people run entire congressional

10:48

campaigns on a million dollars or less. And

10:51

he by August doing with nothing claims

10:54

he already spent a million dollars. And that was a

10:56

disconnect that we saw. And we said, this

10:59

is something really wrong here. It's kind of like, what

11:01

did you do with the million we gave you last

11:03

week, where to go? And you do look at

11:05

the filings. And what is great

11:07

with the FEC and

11:10

with our system is you

11:12

do have to record everything up to that $199.99.

11:19

That can go without being

11:21

detailed. So there were

11:23

so many expenses that were just $199.99. So

11:27

I don't have to tell you what I spent that

11:29

on. And that's just a red flag that kind of

11:31

says, wait a second here, you know, you

11:34

can't be buying everything for $199.99. We

11:38

heard story after story after story about

11:42

him doing bizarre things about

11:44

bragging about his mansions. And

11:47

you hear the story and you say... We hear these

11:49

stories and we know everybody. We know a lot of

11:51

people in the district. And so Santos

11:54

would tell one lie to one person, another lie to

11:56

another person, and we would hear from both of those

11:58

people, compared to the other person. notes and realize,

12:01

I mean, he's a total, this is, he's

12:03

making all of this up. He's

12:05

a total liar. And so when

12:07

you know he's a total liar, then you start looking more

12:09

closely. And look, he

12:12

was, he was so well known,

12:14

at least in, in the

12:16

more active political circles to be a

12:18

liar that by early summer, he

12:21

was already being called George Scamtoas. Did

12:23

you talk to Democrats about the weirdness

12:26

with Santos? You know, the DCCC, the

12:28

Democratic, posted a, I thought, very weak,

12:31

uh, bit of research on, on Santos. So we

12:33

looked at that. It was about 75 pages

12:35

or so, but most of it was pretty much

12:38

boilerplate. And it raised

12:40

a lot of the questions that we had, but

12:42

didn't really provide answers. He put down in February,

12:44

I believe it was February of 2022, that he

12:46

loaned his, his

12:49

campaign. He personally loaned his campaign $700,000. Now this is

12:51

a guy who had no assets, zero

12:57

assets, just 18 months

12:59

before. And

13:01

that was disclosed in his 2020 personal

13:04

financial disclosures. Plus they made like $55,000

13:06

a year. Yeah, I mean 55,000. So where did, where did a million

13:10

and a half dollars in earnings come from? And by

13:12

the way, do we know

13:14

anything about that $700,000?

13:16

Look, I suspect

13:19

my suspicion is that it's fake, that he just put

13:21

it down. It was never, it

13:23

never happened, but he put it down on

13:25

the reports to try to enhance himself. Uh,

13:28

so he could go to wealthy people on the

13:31

North shore, uh, tell them

13:33

he's Jewish and tell them all sorts of

13:35

lies, uh, and say, I really need

13:37

money. And, and I'm in, but I put 700,000 of

13:39

my own money in. I'm

13:42

wealthy like you are, but I really need your help

13:44

too. How did this, this blatant

13:46

of a lie happen? I mean, does some

13:48

fault come to the local GOP where they

13:50

just never, you

13:52

know, look, congressional campaigns are

13:54

by law, separate legal entities,

13:56

local, local, the local parties

13:59

cannot. Finance

14:02

cannot control congressional

14:04

campaigns. So the story

14:06

comes out in September. What's the

14:08

reaction? What do you hear? Different

14:11

reactions. Some people said, oh, we knew this

14:14

all along. This is not surprising. George Scamto's.

14:16

George Scamto's. We've been calling him that already.

14:21

So some people said, yeah, we

14:24

understand it. Other people were hostile.

14:26

We got a lot of negative

14:29

pushback from some local

14:31

Republican party officials. We

14:33

had people outraged. What

14:36

are you attacking our own for? And

14:39

we will still get that. We're hearing

14:41

that in social media. And, well, this

14:43

was a Republican. Why would you say

14:46

anything against him? And, you

14:49

know, the truth is the truth. And we

14:51

didn't write his history. He did. We

14:54

exposed it. Yes. But there

14:56

was some feedback from the party, from

14:59

lifelong people who worked to get people elected their

15:02

whole life, volunteered and all that. And there was

15:04

a bit of a, you know, you shouldn't have

15:06

done this. What is it? I mean,

15:08

this is kind of a bigger question, but like we're

15:12

obviously in the era of super partisan politics. This

15:14

is now very, you know, there's a

15:16

lot of very Republican towns out here. What

15:19

makes a Republican truly unelectable?

15:22

If they knew in June what they know

15:24

now, he would never have been never been

15:26

the nominee. He was running as

15:28

a sacrificial

15:30

candidate and they

15:32

couldn't find when really was hard to find anyone else

15:34

to run. And

15:36

then suddenly the New York

15:39

State Court of Appeals transforms

15:41

what was a guarantee from cannon fire

15:43

into a congressman. Great.

15:46

Yeah. There you go. That's the

15:48

movie title. I

15:50

mean, did the story just not get traction in the way

15:53

that you thought it might? Well, you know,

15:55

I mean, Robert Zimmerman called. I

15:58

know he tried very hard when we. put these

16:00

stories out to promote the stories

16:02

to the

16:05

daily newspapers. I don't know exactly what he

16:07

did. He told me at one point he

16:09

said 85,000 social media

16:11

blasts out and he sent

16:13

daily reports on what

16:16

we had reported to the

16:19

major daily newspapers. So as a

16:21

media reporter, to me that's very

16:24

interesting. Okay, you write the

16:26

story in September, the

16:28

Democratic candidate is aware of it, you get

16:31

some pushback from local Republicans, okay, the

16:33

guy still wins in November. December

16:35

comes and The New York Times

16:38

publishes this investigation

16:40

into Santos that has some of

16:43

the stuff that you guys had but also goes a little further

16:45

of lying about jobs, lying about a

16:47

pet charity. It was great journalism. I

16:49

mean The New York Times did

16:52

great work on this and

16:55

it's also reflective that if

16:57

you have the resources and

17:01

you can put a team of reporters, you

17:04

can do the research and

17:06

the background research and

17:08

dig up these materials. I mean, this wasn't an

17:10

easy bit of reporting. This was reporting

17:13

in the United States and reporting in Brazil. When

17:15

you saw that story, was there, or when you saw

17:17

it more, was there any like saltiness

17:19

or oh, I wish we could have pushed

17:21

it harder or was it sort of,

17:24

oh, okay. No, I was actually very happy

17:26

to see it come out because it really

17:28

vindicated us because I mean, George Santos was

17:30

running around telling people openly that he was

17:32

going to sue us and he was going

17:34

to shut us down for having published the

17:36

expose that we published on him. Did

17:39

you ever have any worry about that? Because

17:42

everything was well sourced and we had

17:44

backup for everything we said. So George,

17:46

did you ever hear from George Santos

17:48

after that original September story? No,

17:51

I have not spoken to George Santos and

17:53

he would not even speak to us after

17:56

we endorsed Tom Swasey in

17:59

2020. Have

18:02

you guys talked to the New York Times? Yeah. The

18:04

people who broke the story? Yeah, I mean, I've spoken to

18:06

Grace Ashford and, you know. Yeah.

18:10

You weren't credited in that story. Was

18:12

there any bad

18:15

feeling about that? You

18:17

know, it's a competitive world. I'm glad that they followed through

18:19

on the story we

18:21

started. It would have been nice to be

18:23

credited. To

18:27

that end, you guys have been doing a lot of press

18:30

around this story. Oh my God, it's

18:32

killing me. It's just killing me. I mean... Is

18:35

it helping subscribership or circulation at all?

18:38

It definitely... The newspaper's gotten a lot

18:40

of attention and good attention. So

18:43

it's actually very gratifying to get that. The

18:46

social media is just blowing out of

18:48

the water. We're just constantly getting new

18:52

subscribers, new followers, and

18:54

great comments. Great follow-up, direct

18:56

messages, congratulating us and

18:59

thanking us for doing the story. It

19:02

is disappointing that George Santos

19:04

was elected, even though we

19:06

had exposed these massive

19:08

issues with him. But

19:12

he actually trailed Lee Zeldin

19:14

by three to four points. Behind

19:17

Lee Zeldin in this district, Lee Zeldin got almost 58%

19:20

in this district. He got 54%. Yeah.

19:24

It did have an impact. The shame

19:26

of it is a lot of people just

19:28

vote reflexively. They just

19:30

vote one party or the other. And

19:33

so they say you could run anything, anyone or

19:35

anything on a ballot, and they would still get

19:37

40% of the vote because people

19:39

don't think about it. The

19:42

depths and breadth of the lies are so

19:44

tremendous. I don't know. What does this say

19:46

about us that this guy has got

19:49

all the way into Congress? I

19:52

think it says basically we want to

19:54

believe and we want to. We're

19:57

always looking for that person.

20:00

to fulfill the check

20:02

all the boxes for us. And

20:04

maybe that's unrealistic. I come from Brooklyn so

20:07

we have that kind of if

20:09

it's too good, it's too good. What was the Ed

20:11

Koch thing you were saying earlier? Oh, well, Ed Koch

20:13

always said that pick your top 10 issues. If

20:16

you agree with me on six of them, vote for me. If

20:18

you agree with me on 10, have your

20:20

head examined. Have you noticed

20:22

that people read less local news? Is

20:24

it about the same? Like, has there been any

20:27

change on? I think

20:29

they read about the same. There's a real, we

20:31

have a really loyal readership. Our

20:33

website traffic is up 31,000%. It's

20:37

a drop in the bucket. Somebody

20:43

asked me, I said, well, I know there's smoke coming out of

20:45

the service. Claire

20:49

Malone is a staff writer for The New

20:51

Yorker. This story first aired in January of

20:53

this year. Thanks for listening to

20:55

the Midweek Podcast. Is there

20:58

a topic or story you'd like to

21:00

hear OTM cover in 2024? Send

21:02

us questions, tips and

21:05

suggestions to onthemedia at

21:07

wnyc.org. We'd love to hear

21:09

from you. I'm Michael Loehringer.