Nassau County Republicans put on an impressive public display last Wednesday with about 30 members standing shoulder to shoulder in doing the right thing, announcing a call for fellow Republican Congressman George Santos to resign.
The GOP leaders cited their shock at the lies Santos told about his professional background, educational history, religion, race and property ownership. And just about anything else you can think of.
“He’s disgraced the House of Representatives and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople,” county GOP Chair Joe Cairo said. “Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”
Unsaid was why Cairo had reversed his announcement two weeks ago that Santos was no longer welcome in the county Republican Party, but he was willing to allow him to serve out his two-year term.
“The lies George Santos told are too numerous to count,” added North Hempstead Town Supervisor Jennifer DeSena, who publicly endorsed and campaigned with Santos. “He lied to me personally when he sought my endorsement, and while I am offended and disgusted at his deceit, my true concerns are for the residents of the 3rd Congressional District.”
But the Republicans’ expressions of shock with Santos’ avalanche of lies bear some fact-checking of its own.
Let’s start with what Republicans did know before the revelations about Santo’s self-described “embellishments” – otherwise known as lies – in the press.
The first time he ran with Nassau GOP backing in 2020 against Congressman Tom Suozzi as a Donald Trump acolyte, Santos called the Mueller Report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race a “hoax.”
The claim that the Mueller Report was a hoax is, well, a lie. The report found that Russia had, in fact, interfered with the 2016 election on behalf of Trump and in at least eight instances Trump had obstructed the investigation.
In the 2022 race, Nassau Republicans knew that Santos had falsely claimed that Ukraine under President Volodymyr Zelensky was a dictatorship, attended the Stop the Steal Rally intended to overturn the 2020 presidential election and said he had given money to a law firm representing the insurrectionists.
The inspiration for Santos and other Trump supporters in seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election? What is known as the Big Lie.
That is the claim that President Biden was not elected in a free and fair election. It has been found to be false in more than 60 court cases presided over by Republican and Democratic-appointed judges, Republican election officials and experts too numerous to count.
It is true that a majority of Republicans still believe in the Big Lie, but it is a lie nonetheless. Trump lost the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes and the Electoral vote 306 to 232.
County Republicans also supported Trump in his 2020 re-election bid after he lied or exaggerated as president, according to a Washington Post count, more than 30,000 times.
So it is hard to imagine that county Republicans are shocked that Santos would lie or object so strenuously that he did.
Recent newspaper accounts have also raised two more questions: What did Nassau Republicans know and when did they know it, to borrow a phrase?
The New York Post reported in December that “senior House Republicans were so keenly aware of alleged inaccuracies and embellishments in Rep-elect George Santos’s professional biography that the topic became a “running joke,” according to multiple sources.
Why did these senior House Republicans, who include Rep. Elaine Stefanik, an upstate Republican who is the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, not alert state or Nassau County Republicans about these inaccuracies?
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Santos’ lies were also known to other well-connected Republicans.
Knowledge of these lies went back to November 2021 when a vulnerability study of Santos conducted by a Washington research firm found a “pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier,” The Times reported.
Some of Santos’ vendors were so alarmed by the report that they urged him to drop out and several members of his campaign staff resigned.
The Times also reported that well-connected supporters suspected Santos of lying and demanded to see his résumé, a former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices, and the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Santos’s story did not add up.
This begs the question of what Nicholas Langworthy, the state Republican chairman who was elected to Congress in 2022, and Cairo knew.
Didn’t any of those who had concerns tell the state or Nassau County Republican chair?
Langworthy was one of the six Republican congressional members from New York who joined Nassau Republicans in calling for Santos to resign last week.
One Republican who did not join the Republican House members in calling for Santos to step down was Stefanik, one of Santos’ biggest early backers.
Her top political aide, Kristin Bianco, was brought in to assist the Santos campaign but grew suspicious when Santos falsely claimed to have secured Trump’s endorsement, according to The Times.
“That prompted her to express concerns about Mr. Santos to plugged-in Republicans, including associates” of Stefanik, the newspaper said.
The Times also reported that in the run-up to the 2022 contest, Dan Conston, a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican super PAC, “also confided to lawmakers, donors and other associates that he was worried information would come out exposing Mr. Santos as a fraud.”
Republican House leaders have not joined Nassau Republicans in calling for Santos to resign – or even be punished – for apparently the same reason: politics.
“We have to think about our brand as a party,” said Blakeman, in explaining last week’s press conference. “Are we a party that’s behind people of good character and integrity who are transparent? Or are we a party that, for cynical reasons, we are going to allow this to continue?”
This is an especially good question given that the Republican county executive before Blakeman, Ed Mangano, is now doing time in prison for taking bribes as is the former Republican Senate majority leader, Dead Skelos, also a Nassau Republican.
On the other hand, the House Republicans have a four-vote margin and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. So much for their brand.
McCarthy has made it clear he has no intention of barring Santos from congressional committees or otherwise penalizing him for winning the election under false pretenses. If nothing else, we can say that McCarthy is at least consistent in how he treats serial liars.
Nassau Republicans have yet to join Nassau Democrats in calling for the House to expel Santos – and risk shrinking the GOP’s margin to three.
Instead, Nassau Republicans have proposed a strategy that will turn 3rd District voters into second-class citizens. – ostracizing Santos from all contact with the party and local governments. This plan was first instituted by the Town of North Hempstead.
The GOP said they would distribute the normal congressional duties to neighboring Republican congressmen. This is not a workable plan.
What is needed now are politicians to place the residents of the 3rd District over politics.
Until then, the residents of northern Nassau County and northeast Queens will pay the price. And that’s the truth.
