What do we know about George Santos? By virtually every account available to us, he’s a strange man who has used the name Anthony Devolder at various points in his life, both in Brazil and in America. We know that both the Devolder and Santos personas are connected with a handful of investigations related to conman-style fraud. We know that the Republican Party is a swamp filled with frauds and as long as they can leverage George Santos or Anthony Devolder for their power, he is just one of the guys.

He’s also a liar. He’s lied about who he is, who his mother is (and when and how she died), who his ancestors are, and his excuses have been the kind of thing a grade school teacher would not accept without a call to a guardian and a meeting with a social worker. He remains in the news cycle because it seems that every day or two a new story illuminating the awkwardness, the darkness, and the seeming transparency of Santos/Devolder’s lies and alleged scams comes to light

On Monday, still more information surfaced in regard to George Santos’ supposed nonprofit charity, Friends of Pets United. It was both depressing and surreal. As with every point of every Santos story, one is left to wonder why and how the Nassau County, New York, Republican was allowed to get away with all of this alleged lying and scamming.

On Thursday, a new $15,125 wrinkle in bad checks was added to the Santos saga. RSSPUBLISHED TO

According to a report from Politico, back in 2017, a year before George Santos would close down his supposed pet charity, the newest House Republican was charged with theft in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. According to the report, checks in his name were written to private dog breeders, but the checks bounced. He was able to get out of this little pickle because of a seemingly lucky chance meeting with an old classmate from junior high.

Attorney Tiffany Bogosian, who attended middle school with Santos but eventually fell out of touch with her classmate, ran into him at a Queens Starbucks in late 2019, she told POLITICO.

Santos told her he just lost a bid for Congress. Several weeks later, she said, Santos asked for help: He’d been awakened by a 4 a.m. knock on the door of his Queens home from NYPD officers who served him with an extradition warrant related to the Pennsylvania theft charge, he told her. On February 15, 2020 she said he stopped by Bogosian’s New York office, where she tried to help him with some legal advice as a friend.

Bogosian then says she sent a letter arguing his case: He had canceled the checks because he lost his checkbook. The checks also reportedly had different signatures than the one on Santos’ driver’s license. And then, because Santos couldn’t run for political office with an outstanding warrant (or so Bogosian relays to Politico), he finally went down to Pennsylvania to speak with prosecutors about the outstanding charge. While there, he told his old school chum he was able to get them to drop the charges after telling them he “worked for the S.E.C.”

Bogosian also told TheWashington Post about how she connected Santos with a client of hers who had received a personal injury settlement. This was when Santos was working for a company that the Securities and Exchange Commission would call a “classic Ponzi scheme” less than one year later: the Florida-based Harbor City Capital investment firm. Bogosian and her client attended Santos’ pitch to try to get $300,000 out of them. Both Bogosian and her client were weirded out by the experience and the client ultimately decided not to invest. Bogosian says Santos yelled at her on the phone after the potential deal fell through.

What makes George Santos unique in the public sphere is how bald-faced a liar he is. This is not to say that people like Donald Trump or Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell or any number of politicians aren’t outrageous liars: They are. What is most fascinating (like a roadside accident fascinating) about Santos/Devolder is that his lies have not a kernel of truth to them. Most liars, like Trump, have vague grains of truth attached to their lies—something for their financial victims to rationalize. Santos doesn’t even do that.

The fact that George Santos has not been ostracized by the conservative movement entirely says all one needs to know about the Republican Party’s rejection of the common reality we all share.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos