Guest Post by Becky Behrends, M.D. and VP of Research for Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com)

George Santos, the newly elected Republican congressman, has created a media storm over his extensive lies and falsehoods. The New York Times reported that nearly all of Santos’s claims made during his campaign about his personal and professional life were false.

Santos won a seat in Congress for the 3rd Congressional district in Long Island, New York, helping the Republicans to cinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

Here is the list of lies that emanated from Santos:

– Claims to be Jewish (not true- said his parents survived the holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium. Santos’s heritage is actually Brazilian)

– Claims to have worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup (not true)

– Claims to have graduated from Baruch College in NYC with a degree in economics and finance (the college is unable to verify this)

– Claims to have founded and run an animal rescue operation- Friends of Pets (IRS cannot find any such registered charity)

– Claims to have lost employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016. (upon review of obituaries, none of the 49 victims appear to have worked for Santos)

– Claims to have been hurt by Covid-19 eviction protections given to renters on 13 properties (no such list of properties per IRS investigation, and in fact, Santos faced multiple evictions as a renter)

– Claims that his family had a consulting company, Devolder, which managed $80 million in assets and that he was a “managing member”(this company was dissolved, with no transparent financial disclosures and no website). Santos – claims his campaign received $700,000 from Devolder. It is questionable as to whether that was a lawful campaign contribution.

This is just a glimpse of the long list of lies and yarn-spinning that George Santos has been involved in. Why wasn’t he properly vetted? He is an openly gay Latino. Was he, therefore, hands-off in terms of any serious investigation by Republican officials or the media?

The problem is how serious should we be about the Democrats’ moral outrage over Santos when they have “lots of ‘splainin to do” about their own party politicians?

Let’s look at a (partial) Democrat Dirty Laundry List of Deception:

– Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) used fake Native American credentials to secure her position at Harvard as a law professor. She even claimed her high cheekbones were proof of Native American ancestry!

– Senator Richard Blumenthal (D- Conn.) campaigned as a bogus Vietnam veteran. Never served there.

– Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Calif) is still pushing the notion that the Russian Collusion charge against Trump was legitimate when it has been thoroughly debunked.

– Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif) hid an affair he had with a Chinese spy.

– Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas claims the southern border is secure and “closed”!!!

– VP Kamala Harris said in the 2020 presidential campaign, “Joe Biden will not end fracking”. Biden has not only ended fracking but plans to end fossil fuel consumption in America. Anwar oil drilling? Gone. Keystone Pipeline? Gone.

But the Top Prize for Prevarication goes to the pathological liar currently occupying the White House, Joe Biden himself! The “Big Guy,” as Hunter Biden once famously said. The Mendacity Meter goes through the roof on him.

The Federalist has updated their list of Biden’s lies- as of March 2022, it totals 204—-and still counting, folks! Stay tuned!!

Biden lied about the following:

– Graduating in the top half of his law school class at Syracuse (he actually graduated near the bottom)

– Being arrested in S. Africa when he tried to visit Nelson Mandela during anti-apartheid protests (made up story- S. African authorities have no evidence of this)

– Driving an 18-wheeler (implying he was a truck driver- no proof of this)

– His law school record ( he withdrew from the 1988 presidential race when it was revealed that he had been caught plagiarizing in law school)

– A speech he gave ostensibly as his own in which he plagiarized the entire speech from the British Labor Party Candidate Neil Kinnock

– Pinning a Silver Star on a Navy Captain in Afghanistan (never happened)

– Being raised in a Puerto Rican community at home (no such thing)

– When lightning struck his home in 2004 (“everything was ruined, almost lost a few firefighters”- AP report said it was a small fire in the kitchen, controlled in 20 min. No one was injured)

– Said he was once offered a job by an Idaho lumber company (they have no record of that)

– Visiting Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue after the 2018 massacre there (no such visit, says the Rabbi)

– Says his son Beau died in action in Iraq (not true, Beau died of brain cancer in 2015)

– Said in 2022 that he was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965 (no record exists showing this)

– Biden’s first wife and baby daughter were killed in an auto accident in 1972. For years he accused the truck driver who crashed into her as being at fault and “drunk.” This was not true, and the drivers’ family and fellow politicians pleaded with Biden to stop saying this, but he carried on with this assertion for 20 years before he finally stopped. In fact, Mrs. Biden was at “fault.”

For the fawning, “we’ll cover for you, no matter what” media, Biden’s lies are described as:

Misstatements. Misleading but explainable if you know the “context.” The factual edges just shaved off a bit. The woke women of The View claimed that old Joe is simply “endearing, and after all, people do make mistakes”.

Or is his legacy of lies just a shining example of a calculated con job? Now, it is so embedded it crosses into pathologic territory, ie, pathologic liar. Biden believes his own lies, which are about as common as crabgrass.

So what happens when a chronic prevaricator and pathologic liar becomes President?

In his role as President of the United States, the lies become even more dangerous to democracy. One can’t believe hardly anything he says.

Biden claimed gas prices were “down from over $5 when I took office”. When Trump left office, the national average price of gas was $2.38.

Biden claimed inflation is a good thing because wages will rise. ( Try explaining that to millions of Americans who have to use “higher” wages to pay for high-priced gas and groceries- sounds like phantom wages- up in smoke!)

Biden claims the southern border is secure even as millions have streamed across the border since he took office, including human traffickers, drug cartels, criminals, and illegals with no testing for covid while US citizens are subject to vaccine mandates.

The Afghanistan debacle will go down in history as one of the most humiliating, avoidable military tragedies.

Billions of dollars of high-tech military equipment were left behind for the terrorists, sell out of our Afghanistan allies, and US lives lost. Not to mention the emboldening of aggressive actions of other nations such as Russia. Was

Afghanistan the green light for Putin to invade Ukraine since he saw the weakness in American resolve with Biden? When the 13 fallen service members killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul were delivered to the Dover, Delaware Air Force Base, a family member yelled at Biden, “I hope you burn in hell.”

If we need to clean our American house of lying politicians, we need to start with the President as well as members of Congress. Biden and Santos, among many others, have no business occupying the offices they are currently in. They have no moral authority to do so.

“Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, and treating people with respect.” Stephen Covey

But sadly, the case we are witnessing in America is the following:

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” H.L. Mencken