He's a liar. He's a cheater,
and he's probably a criminal.
I'm on Long Island's North Shore,
a place made famous by a man who rose through
the ranks of New York's high society with a fabricated
personal history and dubious sources of wealth.
I'm talking, of course, about George Santos.
That's just one of the many names he goes by.
The 34 year old Republican won election to Congress in
November.
But he's been dodging reporters since his victory after it
emerged that he lied about his heritage,
his career and his finances.
He lied about his grandparents being involved in the Holocaust,
lied about his employees dying in the Pulse nightclub shooting,
lied about where he worked and where he went to
school.
It's all egregious. And he refuses to speak to the
media.
He refuses to speak to elected officials in his district,
and he refuses to speak to the voters who voted
for him.
So we decided to try to find him,
this impostor in Congress. OK,
so we're on the way to George
Santos's district office. He's quite hard to pin down these
days.
You see him in in the House of Representatives.
Wherever he goes, he's chased and hounded by reporters.
But we're hoping to catch him here
in his district, where he should be working diligently for
the people of New York.
Three.
We arrive at his office,
but his name's not yet on the door.
Hi,
this is Congressman Santos's office.
One moment. Thank you.
Hi there. How are you?
My name is Richard Hall.
I'm a journalist with the Independent,
so all media knows to stay outside the office.
OK, At the staff. Is anyone here willing to talk
to me?
Any of his supporters or all the staff statements come
from our official communications staff.
OK, All of which are available to you,
OK. In DC, virtually, etcetera,
we're here serving constituents, OK.
And all media knows to stay outside.
You're welcome to contact our communications officers.
I will definitely do that at any time.
But we just don't want to deter.
That's fair. You know, any attention from
constituents in need who are maybe less welcome because there's
media presence that's absolutely fair.
Yeah, absolutely fair. When when do you change the signs?
Is it is it just move different.
They're in the process of doing it.
OK Yeah, it's brand new.
They were sworn in, what,
two weeks ago? Yeah, very soon.
So all in the works.
We're just, we're working hard.
Busy, busy time for you.
Busy time. Yeah. All right.
OK, so Congress is on break at the moment.
So we expected to find George Santos in his district
office,
just behind us here. They told us if we wanted
to speak to him,
we should direct our enquiries to his DC office.
So we're going to call that office now.
Hopefully we can get to speak to him or someone
on his staff.
Thank you for calling the Washington,
DC office of Congressman George Santos,
representing the Third Congressional District of New York.
For any media request, please
e-mail nyo3press@mail.house.gov That's helpful. So you can't even speak to
anyone.
Now you just have to e-mail him
and I'm sure he'll respond in a timely manner.
Since no one from Santos's team will speak to us,
we thought we'd talk to some of his constituents.
What I've heard is pretty crazy.
How do you make it that far
and literally make up everything?
Graduating from college, not graduating,
working for these places. Not doing it.
It's crazy to me
as a Republican, you know,
Get him out of here.
You lie about that many things.
Who's going to take you seriously now?
But Matthew is not the only one outraged by
Santos's lies. Jodie leads the grassroots community group that has
launched a campaign to get Santos removed.
I
just so angry that when once all this stuff came
out about George Santos that we reached out to
other folks on the district,
really through social media, and we decided to start being
active.
Here's the thing, a lot of this came out before
the election.
Congressman Richard Hall from The Independent.
A lot of the revelations about Mr.
Santos came to light before the election.
Why do you think so many people still voted for
him?
So my understanding is that there was a local publication
that was on to his lies.
But it's not until a national publication like the New
York Times ways in,
did it become a national story.
And by then it was too late.
Grant Lally is the publisher of The North Shore Leader,
the local paper that first raised the alarm about the
holes in Santos's story.
But what we saw was the discrepancy between what he
was reporting
and on his campaign finance disclosures and what we saw
on the ground.
Because he had no campaign.
There was not a lawn sign.
There was not a radio commercial.
There was not a television commercial.
But his campaign finance disclosures claim at that point that
he had already spent a million and a half dollars.
It's a story that is almost beyond belief
that someone would fabricate to this radical extreme.
It's almost impersonation, where someone has assumed a completely different
identity from who they actually are.
And that's what makes this a particularly gripping story.
This story is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
Republicans in Washington have such a slim majority in the
House that they are reluctant to force him out,
even though the local Republican Party have called for his
removal.
And still George Santos is refusing to resign.
Will you
step down? I will. Now,
it's been difficult for us to
to to find George Santos who went to his office.
We tried to call his campaign.
If you could speak to him now,
what would you say to George Santos?
Tell them resign. Go away.
If you've used people, you've abused their trust,
you've taken their money. Just go away.