On his first day in Congress, Rep. George Santos of New York spent most of his time alone, isolated from his new colleagues. But by week’s end, he had found his place: alongside polarizing Republicans such as Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, as well as members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
As a growing number of fellow Republican representatives called for his resignation, Santos dug in further, appearing last week on “Bannon’s War Room,” the podcast of Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump who was involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
For seven minutes, Santos chatted with Gaetz, who was filling in for Bannon. He spoke little about his political views. Instead, with Gaetz’s support, he swatted away mounting concerns about his lies about his background, his campaign spending and the inquiries he is facing about both ethical violations and potential crimes.
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Santos’ actions in the House chamber so far this year, his willingness to appear on Bannon’s podcast and the few public hires he has made to his staff all suggest that his stance in Congress, should he remain for his full two-year term, will be further to the right than the one he adopted on the campaign trail. His appearance on the Bannon podcast, often a platform for election deniers and far-right conspiracy theorists, has revived campaign questions about where the congressman sits on the conservative spectrum.
During last year’s elections, Democrats tried to paint Santos as a far-right acolyte of Trump, pointing at statements in which he appeared to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election as well as his own loss that year. He had also given a speech in which he compared abortion to slavery and called it “barbaric.” He was in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the Capitol riot, when he falsely said his election had been “stolen” and asked the crowd, “Who here is ready to overturn the election for Donald Trump?”
Santos, who in 2021 described himself as a “MAGA candidate,” argued last year that his opponents were exaggerating his positions. He appeared to play down many of his previous, polarizing stances and suggested he would take a more mainstream Republican approach.
In his first campaign, Santos ran as a staunch opponent of abortion. But he told Newsday during his recent campaign that he opposed a nationwide abortion ban and expressed support for the Supreme Court’s returning questions of abortion to the states. He largely focused on inflation and crime, blaming Democrats for both.
Questions about Santos’ alignment with hard-right groups had already been raised after he attended a gala in Manhattan last month at which white nationalists and right-wing conspiracy theorists were also guests. Santos has not answered questions about his presence at the event, which was held by the New York Young Republican Club, a conservative group. But he hired the group’s executive secretary, Viswanag Burra, as his operations director, according to LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members.
Burra declined to comment on his role in Santos’ office, referring questions to the congressman’s new communications director, Naysa Woomer, who did not respond when asked to confirm Burra’s employment.
Burra, who has been seen leading Santos through the halls of the Capitol complex, has a number of ties to provocative right-wing figures. He previously worked as a producer on Bannon’s podcast and, according to LegiStorm, once worked for Gaetz. He also recently served as a spokesperson for Carl Paladino, a Buffalo, New York-area real estate executive and politician with a track record of racist and homophobic comments. Paladino, who ran unsuccessfully in a Republican congressional primary last year, in 2021 praised Adolf Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today” and has boosted conspiracy theories about mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas.
According to LegiStorm, Santos has also hired Rafaello J. Carone, a man in his early 20s who already has a history of working for scandal-plagued lawmakers, as a legislative aide. Carone was the social media manager for former Rep. Madison J. Cawthorn of North Carolina, who lost a primary last year amid a swirl of controversies and was recently fined by the House Ethics Committee for promoting a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest. That committee has been formally asked to investigate Santos. Carone’s firm, Liberty & Justice Consulting Firm, says on its website that it does “extreme vetting” for clients and touts its work with Virginians for America First, a Republican-aligned group that questioned the results of the 2020 election and recruited poll watchers to root out purported fraud.
Santos’ chief of staff, Charles Lovett, had been his campaign manager. He previously worked as the political director for Josh Mandel, who unsuccessfully ran in a Senate primary in Ohio as a hard-right, pro-Trump conservative.
Whether Santos has hired other staff members is unknown. Woomer did not reply to an email asking for the names of Santos’ Washington staff or an email asking about Santos’ district office, which local media outlets have said has been closed for the last week.
The address Santos’ website gives for his district office in New York City’s Queens borough was used by former Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, whose name remained on an awning there on Friday. A phone number used by Suozzi’s Queens office during his time in Congress was answered by a recorded greeting for Santos’ Washington office. Calls to staff members were sent to voicemail.
When speaking with Gaetz on Bannon’s podcast, Santos said that his office was actively fielding calls from constituents seeking aid.
Whether Santos will join the House Freedom Caucus, which is invitation-only, remains unclear. Though Santos sat with members of the caucus in the House chamber, he did not follow Gaetz’s efforts to coalesce votes against Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California’s bid to become speaker.
Santos’ views became the subject of further speculation after photographs of his voting for McCarthy appeared to show him making a symbol that the Southern Poverty Law Center associated with alt-right movements. Santos’ intent was unclear: A video of his vote on C-SPAN did not show a clear angle of his hands, and Woomer, his communications director, did not respond to an email seeking clarity.
But the photo prompted an outcry on social media and condemnations from fellow politicians. One fellow first-term Republican congressman, Nick LaLota of Long Island, cited the gesture — which he labeled a “‘white power’ sign” — in his statement calling on Santos to resign this week.
On the Bannon podcast, Santos spent much of the interview denouncing his critics, at one point vowing to “outwork any of the pundits and talking heads” calling on him to resign. So far, those voices included eight Republican representatives, six of them from New York.
The most recent, Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, cited Santos’ previous claims of being of Jewish heritage and descended from Holocaust survivors, which are in doubt after media outlets reported that Santos’ grandparents had been born in Brazil. Miller, who is Jewish and who contributed thousands of dollars to Santos’ congressional campaign, said in a statement: “It is not OK to fabricate or lie for political gain. This is especially true when the lie seeks benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people.”
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The Link LonkJanuary 18, 2023 at 08:12PM
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Santos Shows Early Signs of Tilting to the Hard Right - Yahoo News
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