A campaign worker for Rep. George Santos (RN.Y.) said they wouldn’t be shocked if the Republican “walked an offender out of a building,” and another described something that didn’t feel “right” during the campaign in a resume embellishment report legislature published Wednesday.
The Talking Points Memo article comes as GOP officials — both in the House and Long Island — increasingly call for his resignation.
“Lying on your resume is one thing,” said one staffer, whom Talking Points Memo granted anonymity to. “But I think George will be a perpetrator who walked out of a building because of this financial mess.”
The report comes two days after government watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the incumbent Republican congressman had violated federal campaign finance laws and concealed “the true sources” of the $705,000 he loaned to his campaign in 2022. .
The anonymous staffer also discussed Santos’s delays in filing a personal financial disclosure, which was not filed until September 2022.
“I thought the lack of a financial disclosure, the messy books and the reporting wasn’t great,” the staffer said.
Representative George Santos (RN.Y.) will attend a closed-door GOP caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.
The staffer claimed that it was challenging to work with Santos’ campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, and that they couldn’t get a weekly “cash and payout” report from her.
Toby Gotesman, who briefly served as a fundraising consultant on the campaign, also described her conversations with Santos about finances during the campaign.
“He explained to me how certain things worked with the campaign, and there were certain things he couldn’t know, and I had to deal with Nancy if anyone wanted to give more than the limit,” Gotesman said.
“Now… I see what he did, and then I began to think that I am here introducing my lifelong friends to this man and asking them for money. I wish I hadn’t.”
She recalled Santos bragging about buying a $10,000+ Hermès bag and describing something that didn’t feel “right” and she couldn’t put her finger on.
“You know how your first instinct of a red flag is always what bites you in the butt later?” she said.
Gotesman, who has ancestors who survived the Holocaust, is also an artist who has depicted Holocaust themes in her various paintings. She said the Republican, who falsely described himself as Jewish during the campaign and said his grandparents were Holocaust refugees, told her he was Catholic and said she “thought he was a sociopath” after hearing his claims on YouTube .
“It occurs to me now, I think he has that idea of me. … He knew I was a Holocaust painter. He knew very well,” she said.
“How do you sit down with a very famous holocaust artist and not say a word about your own family?”
