It was once simply after midday on an early September Saturday when the first name got here.
It already were an peculiar day. Typically, I’d be tackling a undertaking or cajoling my spouse into an afternoon hike close to our house in upstate New York. Instead I used to be in a resort room in Philadelphia, having simply completed a journalism panel on political disinformation — an issue I knew smartly after just about a 12 months of overlaying George Santos.
And then his title seemed on my caller ID.
“This is George Santos. I hear you’ve been trying to get a hold of me.”
It was once true. I were attempting to pay money for him in a method or any other since final November, when my colleague Michael Gold and I had been first assigned to glance into the incoming Republican congressman from Long Island and Queens. We briefly discovered ourselves down a rabbit hollow of secrets and techniques and lies.
By now, the biographical fictions are widely known: the jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs that he by no means had, the Baruch and N.Y.U. levels he by no means received and the volleyball workforce he by no means performed on. There had been additionally unresolved fraud fees in Brazil — a precursor to what would quickly practice.
Santos now faces 23 prison counts — together with 10 new ones added previous this month — for numerous monetary schemes, a lot of which contain his marketing campaign. He has pleaded now not responsible.
But at the same time as I spent the higher a part of the previous 12 months overlaying each and every size of his marketing campaign and felony trial — poring over his marketing campaign filings, looking at each and every interview and ringing up his outdated colleagues, members of the family, enthusiasts and pals — I had by no means had a real dialog with the guy.
This was once now not for a loss of attempting. Michael and I made a large number of makes an attempt to achieve him, calling or texting him at once and leaving messages along with his legal professional and workforce contributors. Michael rang the doorbell at his indexed cope with, handiest to in finding that he hadn’t lived there for months.
I did catch him on the telephone as soon as, however the name all of a sudden ended when he heard my title. He referred to as again a minute later to explain that he does now not “hang up on people,” however confident me he would now not be answering my questions, now or ever.
His silence left me feeling a little like a landlocked oceanographer. I knew his birthday, his canine’s title, his verbal tics and inclinations, however I couldn’t get to the guy himself.
Suddenly, all that modified.
Roughly part a dozen telephone calls adopted — continuously initiated by means of him, infrequently by means of me — that forged me headfirst into the ocean. Combative and collegial in equivalent measure, they teased solutions to the questions I’d spent a 12 months of my existence asking.
“Am I ever gonna be your friend? No,” he instructed me on that first Saturday. He would cross on to shed light on that he held me for my part chargeable for a lot of his misfortune, and was once no fan of The Times.
Over time, his stance softened.
“Were you a piece of annoyance in my life for a while?” he requested on a decision a couple of month later. Absolutely, he spoke back, putting a profanity into the phrase.
“But I don’t wish you harm; I don’t wish you ill.”
The conversations touched on his felony case, his political views, his most well-liked present at a toddler bathe, either one of our pets and the many, many of us who’ve wronged him.
We referred to as every different by means of our first names. The conversations had been on the report, with the exception of for a couple of cases the place he stipulated that he was once talking on background or off the report.
I got here to know his humorousness and his penchant for operating on the weekends, his positivity and style. And the extra we spoke, I got here to know one thing else as smartly: the bizarre enjoy of being confided in and lied to at the identical time.
The first name
For an speedy I used to be frozen, seeing his title on my telephone. Then my journalistic instincts kicked into equipment.
“I’m hearing some murmurings that you might be about to negotiate a plea deal,” I instructed him.
“Wild rumors,” he spat again.
I defined what I’d heard about prosecutors the usage of the leverage of extra proof and even fees to drive defendants into pleading.
“That’s not what’s happening,” he stated.
“OK.”
I used to be starting to surprise why he had referred to as.
“Is there anything else? I would love your perspective on the reporting about the case itself, anything you think we’re missing …”
This time he slightly let me get the query out.
“I think the reporting, on all ends, of every single journalist in this country has been bad,” he stated, earlier than launching into an inventory of what he thought to be the low issues. There had been the allegations that he had stolen a scarf, the accounts of his falsely telling people he was once a journalist and the stories that he was once being propped up by means of Russian or Chinese oligarchs. And, after all, his previous as a intended drag queen.
“I do drag for a freakin’ festival in Brazil, and now I have a career!” he exclaimed.
He was once in particular preoccupied by means of the declare that he stole cash meant to benefit a death canine, again and again insisting that he had by no means met the guy who accused him of the robbery and claiming to have proof that he was once now not dependable. (The Times has reviewed textual content messages which seem to display that at the very least, the two were in touch.)
He went on to in finding fault with the other people Michael and I had spoken to for our preliminary article, which he stated contained “a lot of factual and timeline errors.”
(When I asked specifics, he would handiest say that his workforce had asked a large number of corrections, they all left out. Our requirements workforce, which usually receives requests for corrections, discovered none from Santos or his representatives.)
He took intention at particular people in journalism and politics, who he stated had slandered him with concocted stories that might reside perpetually in print and on-line searches.
“As a journalist, and quite frankly, as a journalist who wrote the very first story about me, how does that even make you feel?” he requested me.
It was once a just right query.
Our reporting on his marketing campaign’s monetary irregularities and unorthodox fund-raising has been adopted up on by means of just right govt teams and legislation enforcement.
Still, only a few other people had heard of George Santos when Michael and I began making calls. Two months later, he was once being parodied on “Saturday Night Live,” his existence abruptly open to ridicule and threats.
Some of the protection and observation has taken on a meanspirited tone, mocking his look and sexuality. He has won loss of life threats — the maximum virulent from a Florida guy, described in reports as a homosexual rights activist, who left Santos a voice mail message promising to bash his “head in with a bat” till his mind was once splattered throughout the wall. The guy, who additionally threatened Santos’s husband and used an anti-gay slur, is now dealing with federal felony fees in the Southern District of Florida.
“We’ve had to defend ourselves,” he instructed me.
“That’s horrible. I’m really sorry to hear that, George,” I stated.
“I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one story that nobody talks about,” he answered, earlier than telling me how his 5-year-old niece disappeared from a playground in Queens, handiest to be situated 40 mins afterward a surveillance digicam with two Chinese males.
He stated the incident was once the topic of an lively police investigation, implying closely that it would had been in retaliation for his vocal stance towards the Chinese Communist Party.
“So you think it was China?” I requested, clarifying.
“Look, I don’t want to go into like, conspiracy theory,” he stated. “But you know, if the shoe fits, right?”
In all, the first name lasted just below 45 mins. I used to be in a daze for the remainder of the day questioning if all that had in reality simply came about, and why. Was it frustration that had led him to achieve out, or interest?
There was once one different query that was once bothering me as smartly: his tale about the Chinese Communist Party kidnapping. I reached out to a colleague with connections to police officers to be told extra about the investigation.
A high-ranking police reliable showed that officials were referred to as and had appeared into the incident. But they discovered no proof of Chinese Communist Party involvement, or of any kidnapping in any respect.
“We found nothing at all to suggest it’s true,” the reliable stated. “I’d lean into, ‘he made it up.’”
‘I’m working towards you guys now’
I initiated the 2d name every week later, catching him on his method to a migrant safe haven out of doors Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens the place, weeks previous, he seemed at a protest.
The look was once a part of a post-indictment technique to courtroom consideration in just about any method imaginable — news meetings, Twitter Spaces, protests, even a town-hall collecting — to speak about anything else with the exception of himself.
After some pleasantries, we were given down to industry.
“What do you need from me?” he requested.
I instructed him that I’d been questioning why he referred to as me final week.
“Oh, that’s a great question,” he answered. “It’s because I’m running toward you guys now. I’m not running away from you guys.”
He were silent too lengthy, he instructed me, and allowed false narratives to take dangle. The hassle was once, now that he had the time, he was once having hassle getting the consideration.
“My name is not as very convenient for clicks as it was in January or February,” he stated wryly.
Soon sufficient he was once arriving at his vacation spot and bid me a well mannered good-bye.
But he referred to as me again later that night time to be sure that we had been completed. Over the coming weeks, he would name me a handful extra occasions to talk about the day’s political maneuverings and to rage at his critics — a lot of whom, he stated, weren’t themselves above reproach.
It were given in order that my spouse would come to know his voice on the different finish of the telephone. When he would name, she would roll her eyes, figuring out that no matter we had been doing would have to wait. George was once calling.
Santos defends himself
In maximum of our conversations, Santos remained fiercely, even relentlessly, sure. But now not all the time.
“I literally threw my entire life into the toilet and flushed it to get elected,” he instructed me, briefly including that he would do it everywhere once more.
Well, now not it all.
In his telling, he’s responsible handiest of surrounding himself with the improper other people. He spreads the blame amongst back-stabbing experts and unscrupulous marketing campaign aides.
There was once Samuel Miele, who was once indicted in August on fees of impersonating a staffer of the former House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, as he made fund-raising calls on Santos’s behalf.
Santos has now not been charged in that scheme and stresses that he fired Miele the “nanosecond” he discovered.
He is extra sour about his now-soured dating along with his marketing campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks.
He maintains that she is to blame for any and all marketing campaign finance problems. He maintains he was once her sufferer, as the recipient of criminally negligent recommendation at very best, embezzlement at worst.
“I was never even a signer on a single bank account,” he stated as soon as, the usage of an expletive for emphasis. “I didn’t have the power, or card, to go in the bank and say, ‘Give me five bucks.’”
He insists that almost all of the federal fees towards him are a choice of errors and misunderstandings, a lot of them led to by means of his treasurer’s dishonesty or incompetence.
“I am ready to prove my innocence,” he instructed me. “People think that I’m just going to get steamrolled. No, I’m going to prove my innocence.”
Marks has difficult that plan. Earlier this month, she pleaded responsible to one rely of conspiracy, pronouncing that she and Santos filed falsified marketing campaign stories with fictional donations and a faux $500,000 private mortgage from Santos to his marketing campaign.
In one among our conversations, earlier than her indictment and the 2d spherical of fees, I requested him outright about the loans and whether or not he was once nervous that she may testify towards him.
“All the money is legitimate,” he confident me. “All the money came from me, period.”
In a next dialog, he attempted to explain that handiest the timing was once improper. He stated he made the $500,000 mortgage to his marketing campaign in September and October 2022. Why marketing campaign finance stories indicated the mortgage was once made previous, in March, handiest Marks knew, he stated.
It sounded imaginable. Perhaps the loans, similar to Schrödinger’s cat, could be each pretend and actual at the identical time, if the cash got here in in the future after March 2022.
It was once additionally imaginable that George was once mendacity to my face.
He was once surprisingly compelling in our conversations. But simply as ordinary was once the cognitive dissonance of being misled so overtly.
I got here to recall to mind him a bit of like Wile E. Coyote working off a cliff — ready to stay from falling as long as his legs stored shifting.
Something to consider
In one among our first conversations, I had discussed to George that for far of the final 12 months, The Times had requested me to put aside my same old Albany protection to duvet him.
He introduced this up a number of occasions in next calls, chiding me for spaces by which he felt my paintings was once poor — like once I took a couple of days off previous this month and ignored his media blowup involving a Jewish peace activist and an unidentified child.
“You’re taking off on the wrong week,” he instructed me. “I had the absolute existential meltdown of anger yesterday, something that I never display.”
The guy had approached Santos in the House whilst he was once keeping the unidentified child, and requested what the congressman was doing about Israel’s bombing in Gaza. Things escalated briefly. George, a staunch defender of Israel who has made controversial claims of Jewish heritage, quickly was once screaming at the guy, calling him “human scum.”
He stated that he had felt cornered and prone as a result of he was once keeping a toddler. “It was scary,” he instructed me.
I used to be reminded of one among our early conversations, once I requested him if he would ever imagine resigning, simply to make the circuslike consideration prevent.
He disregarded the thought out of hand.
Not handiest did he want to improve his circle of relatives, he stated, however he beloved being a congressman. He beloved operating with other people. And of all of the issues he has stated, that is the one this is maximum plausible.
Despite being excluded from House committees and rejected by means of a lot of his local people, Santos has solid forward, introducing greater than 40 expenses.
He has given dozens of speeches on the ground of the House and attended native occasions, as despite the fact that perhaps, if he stored on message, an afternoon would come when other people stopped asking whether or not he had stolen from a death canine.
And why now not? From an early age, he has been manifesting a existence like this for himself — a lifetime of result and tool. Now that he’s made it, why let it cross?
“Me leaving office doesn’t end this, this will be for the rest of my life,” he instructed me in that first name.
Even if he was once to renounce, it’s not going that his felony issues would depart. One of the more recent fees, irritated identification robbery, carries a two-year necessary minimal sentence. He is about to be arraigned on the new fees at the finish of this month.
Resigning would additionally do little to ease the burden of being George Santos — his exploits serving as tabloid fodder, his title a punchline. Indeed, stepping away out of the highlight would accomplish little for him — in particular if the highlight is the place he needs to stay.
“In office I actually have a platform,” he instructed me. “I have a voice.”
When I instructed George I might be writing a tale about our conversations, he reacted angrily. I attempted to guarantee him that we’d be honest and that the article may if truth be told serve his objective: to get his original voice in the market.
He stated that he would by no means talk to me once more.
Ashley Southall and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Audio produced by means of Sarah Diamond.