The New York City district office of Rep. George Santos was closed on Wednesday because the Republican was otherwise occupied: He was pleading not guilty to 13 federal charges.
Despite a criminal indictment, an ongoing House Ethics Committee probe, and his own admission that he churned out more whoppers than the local Burger King franchise, Santos remains the congressional representative for the 3rd District. A staffer told The Daily Beast that his storefront office at 242-09 Northern Blvd. in Queens will reopen at 9 a.m. on Thursday as usual.
Only now, any constituent who ventures there will not be seeking help from a man who simply got elected telling lie upon lie about everything from his ethnicity to his education; they will be going to a man formally accused of being a conman.
One young activist trying to get Santos bounced from the Capitol says that constituents in need of help negotiating the federal bureaucracy have expressed a worry that is likely unique in the history of the U.S. Congress.
“Some of them that I’ve talked to were afraid to give [Santos] their Social Security number because they don’t wanna be a part of his next scam,” the activist, Aidan Davis, said Wednesday. “People know that you shouldn’t give somebody like that your personal information. But when he’s your congressman, it’s a problem.”
Davis is 18 and a resident of Santos’ district and he voted for the first time during the midterm elections. He did not vote for Santos, but many people in his Plainview, Long Island, neighborhood did.
“There was no reason to think that he wasn’t legit, to be honest,” Davis said.
He said Santos won over voters who were worried about crime.
“They wanted to send a message to Democrats like, ‘Hey, fix your message on crime. We’re gonna vote Republican. We feel like we’re gonna be safer with them,’” Davis said.
And Santos seemed to be a unique kind of Republican to carry that message.
“He portrayed himself as this, ‘Hi, I’m a half-African-American businessman who's also Jewish, who has all these credentials with these Wall Street companies. I’m gonna go to Washington and make it better,’” Davis recalled.
Then came the drip-drip-drip of revelations that Santos had been telling lie after lie after lie.
“[The neighbors] feel like he tricked them,” Davis said. “They feel betrayed. He isn’t actually half-lack. He isn’t actually Jewish. His experience in the business world is dubious at best.”
Davis added, “Just the fact that he fundamentally misrepresented who he was to his voters, that has a lot of people in my neighborhood just really, really pissed off.”
A former housing and environmental lobbyist named Jody Kass Finkel was angry enough to come out of retirement. She organized a “Resign Santos” petition. She also founded Concerned Citizens of NY 03, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan group of constituents working to remove George Santos from office.”
Davis joined the group and, being a savvy Princeton undergraduate, ran the Twitter effort.
“Especially on social media, there have been people that are saying like, ‘Oh, you know, representatives lie about stuff all the time. Why are you guys targeting Santos?’” Davis said. “And I sort of get the perspective that, ‘Yeah, politics isn’t really an honest game.’”
But Santos has taken it to a whole new level.
“Just the the complete level of grift and dishonesty and fraud that he’s perpetrated on the people of New York 3 is something we haven’t seen before,” Davis added.
The group is also employing snail mail to get Republicans to sign onto a resolution sponsored by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) to expel Santos from Congress.
“What we’ve been doing is a postcard and campaign with constituents in their district,” Davis said. “We’re sending postcards to addresses in their district, basically saying, ‘Call your representative. Tell them that you support Santos being expelled.’ That’s sort of how we've been putting on pressure.
They have also been issuing press releases aimed at members of the New York congressional delegation “saying basically, ‘You’ve called for Santos to be expelled. You’ve called for him to resign. Now here’s your chance to take action,’” Davis said.
In the estimation of Davis and Finkel and others, one major barrier to such action is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said on Tuesday that he will not call on Santos to resign right now. Santos has been echoing Trump in saying the indictment is a “witch hunt” and gives every indication that he intends to remain in office until he is removed. At his appearance in federal court, he said he needs permission to travel because he intends to seek re-election.
Around the time on Wednesday that Santos was being released on $500,000 bond, Davis was describing to The Daily Beast what it’s like to have Santos be your man in Washington.
“Right now, all the, all the people I talk to at Princeton, all my friends, when I tell them that I’m a constituent of Santos, that he’s my congressman, they all know about all the crimes that he’s committed and all the lies that he’s told, and they see it as sort of just a reflection of a broken system, “ he said.
He figures that might change if there is a conviction and an expulsion.
“That could show that our institutions aren’t rewarding lying and fraud, but are actually fighting against it,” he said.
He added, “I’m happy that the justice system is doing its job in holding Santos accountable. If he is removed from office and if he’s thrown in jail for everything that he’s done, I do think that it’ll make people have more faith in politics.”
If that happens, Santos’ name would be removed from the awning outside the building that now houses his district office, and locals would be able to seek help from a new representative without having to worry that providing their Social Security number might make them the target of a scam.
“The residents of New York 3 will finally be free of this fraudster of a congressman,” Davis said.