The Santos Saga: Just When You Think It Couldn’t Get Worse, It Does

Since we first learned in December that George Santos is a serial liar who makes his Republican colleagues look like the salt of the earth, we’ve been able to categorize the stories that have come out about him into roughly two groups. The first category—which we’ll call “Wow, That’s Messed Up”—includes all of the downright deplorable things he’s said and done, like falsely claiming his grandparents fled the Holocaust and that his mother died due to 9/11-related health issues, despite documented evidence that she was out of the country on the day of the attacks. Then there’s the second category: “Okay, That’s Absurd but Vaguely Amusing,” which includes stuff like his telling people he was a male model who was going to appear in Vogue and that he’d produced Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway.

But as of late, a third category has begun emerge. It’s called “That Is Deeply F–ked Up and If You Weren’t Booted From Congress Over the Other Stuff, You Definitely Should Be for This,” and it encompasses, for instance, the allegation that he absconded with money raised for a disabled veteran’s dying service dog—a dog that died after not getting the lifesaving surgery it needed—and the allegation leveled on Friday that he sexually harassed a would-be employee in his Washington office.

That latter allegation was made by Derek Myers, a prospective congressional staffer, who included a formal complaint he made with the House’s Office of Congressional Ethics in a series of tweets. (Myers said he also filed a police report with the Capitol police.) According to the complaint, Myers had applied to work in Santos’s DC office as a legislative correspondent and staff assistant; after he was offered the job, he met with the staff there and was “assigned a desk” on January 24. Myers states that while he spent the day working, his title was “volunteer,” as his paperwork had not yet been processed. He alleges that the following day, he was alone with Santos in the congressman’s “personal office, going over mail correspondence,” when the newly sworn-in lawmaker “plac[ed] his hand on my left leg, near my knee,” and extended an invitation to do karaoke that night. Myers says he did not accept and that Santos proceeded to put his hand into Myers’s “inner thigh” and touch his groin. He says in the complaint that he “quickly pushed the congressman’s hand away” and went back to his desk shortly after.

Myers claims that five days later, on January 30, he was called into Santos’s office and questioned about his previous work as a journalist; he had his job offer rescinded two days later. (According to The New York Times, Myers was arrested last year and charged with wiretapping for publishing audio of a murder trial that a source had recorded and sent him; the Society of Professional Journalists condemned the arrest and said it showed a flagrant “disregard for press freedom and violation of not only the First Amendment but state and federal law.”) According to audio of the January 30 meeting that Myers recorded and provided to Talking Points Memo, Santos claimed that Myers’s arrest was “not concerning to us, it’s concerning to this institution.” Asked by the Post if he thought he lost his job offer due to rejecting Santos’s advances, Myers wrote in an email: “The timing certainly raises the prospect of the answer being ‘yes.’” Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, declined the Post’s request for comment.

Last week the Republican congressman said he would temporarily recuse himself from his seats on the House’s small business and science committees until he could “clear” things up. While the latest allegations could theoretically lead to a discussion among the GOP re: removing Santos from office, it’s extremely unlikely that that will happen given the other things Kevin McCarthy has condoned over the last several years. Santos’s conduct is, of course, the subject of multiple prosecutorial investigations, with probes being conducted by the New York attorney general, the Nassau County and Queens County district attorney offices, and federal prosecutors in New York. He is also being probed by the FBI over the aforementioned allegations related to the dog—which Santos has called “fake.” He has claimed he is “not a criminal” and that he’d only resign if he were asked to by every single one of the “142,000 voters who voted for me.” As of last week, more than 75% of his constituents believe he should quit, so perhaps we’ll get there!