Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: So, Jake, let me take you back to January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. It's a couple weeks after George Santos has
Speaker 2: been exposed, and he shows up in Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: That was the first day I saw him in person.
Speaker 3: I remember we were walking through the Cannon House office
Speaker 3: building and you could hear a pin drop because people
Speaker 3: were like, that's George Santos. Did you see that was
Speaker 3: George Santos. This is Masa Wumer. She was George Santos's
Speaker 3: communications director. You heard from her in our first episode.
Speaker 3: She was actually hired back in December of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and her first day and the first day she would
Speaker 3: actually meet Santos in person, came in January. The amount
Speaker 3: of reporters and cameras that were outside of our office,
Speaker 3: it reminded me of something that you would see like
Speaker 3: back in the nineties, like with when Princess Diana would
Speaker 3: show up somewhere.
Speaker 1: Wow, this was Nace's first day on the job as
Speaker 1: the communications director whatever, But it was also George Santos's
Speaker 1: basically first day. I mean, the scandal's happening, but he
Speaker 1: hasn't even started his tenures of congressman, or he's just starting.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their first day is the same first day, and
Speaker 2: the press are also camped outside the office on that
Speaker 2: first day, and they remain outside the office even as
Speaker 2: the week's dragon. They're not really losing interest in the
Speaker 2: George Sandos story.
Speaker 3: I've had multiple meetings with individual reporters and they're all
Speaker 3: saying the same thing. We can't leave until he speaks
Speaker 3: to the press, until we get a sound bite. We
Speaker 3: have to stay. And they said, well, we're going to
Speaker 3: fix this.
Speaker 2: So she realizes, Okay, well this is not dying down.
Speaker 2: We're going to book him on some big name show.
Speaker 2: He's going to do a long sit down interview with
Speaker 2: a respected journalist, and we're going to prep him for that,
Speaker 2: and we're going to spend this time before we have
Speaker 2: the interview even set up, We're going to spend time prepping.
Speaker 5: The hard part was getting him to sit down and prep.
Speaker 3: He was very just all over the place, and so
Speaker 3: I put out like this little list of like the
Speaker 3: fifteen lies that I've already heard in the news, because,
Speaker 3: as I said, at this time, it was just you know,
Speaker 3: obviously his background from you know, work, family, religion, and
Speaker 3: then the new stuff that was popping up.
Speaker 1: What are the burning questions of the burning issues at
Speaker 1: this particular moment that people want to ask him.
Speaker 2: At this point, the press is looking into a bunch
Speaker 2: of allegations that have come to light, and one of
Speaker 2: those stories is that Santos had faced multiple evictions in
Speaker 2: New York while also claiming publicly that he was a landlord.
Speaker 4: So there's an inherent contradiction there.
Speaker 1: That seems like so telling that he's being evicted and
Speaker 1: yet he's claiming to be a landlord. This is just
Speaker 1: stark contrast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also new info and new allegations coming out
Speaker 2: basically on a daily basis.
Speaker 6: A New Jersey veteran says that the congressman organized a
Speaker 6: fundraiser for his dying service dog back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: only to pocket the money himself.
Speaker 7: In Brazil, a local performer claims Santos was Katara Ravash
Speaker 7: and that he once performed as a drag queen, something
Speaker 7: the New York congressman strongly denies.
Speaker 4: Hash media reports quote.
Speaker 8: Two former Santos roommates told Patch several items went missing
Speaker 8: while they lived with Santos, including phones, expensive dress shirts,
Speaker 8: and checks from a check book.
Speaker 2: So it's just basically, every time Lisa turns around, there's
Speaker 2: a new story that she has to scramble, figure out
Speaker 2: what their statement is going to be, and follow up
Speaker 2: with all the journalists that are asking her questions.
Speaker 1: So when Nisa is prepping him for this this interview,
Speaker 1: what's her take on it. Does she feel that he
Speaker 1: is being like forthright with her? Does she still have
Speaker 1: faith in him as someone who is credible or not.
Speaker 2: I think Nasa is stepping into this role and saying,
Speaker 2: I have been hired to do a job, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to do the best job I can do despite
Speaker 2: the circumstances. And you know, Nasa told me that Santos
Speaker 2: was always maintaining to her in their private conversations that
Speaker 2: he had answers for all of these things. And so
Speaker 2: when she's in that position where this is her boss,
Speaker 2: she wants to believe him, and she wants to have
Speaker 2: his back, and she wants to set him up for
Speaker 2: success because her boats tied to his.
Speaker 4: You know, oh my god, it's just like it.
Speaker 3: Even though I was with him for five months, it
Speaker 3: probably felt like five hundred years at that point. And
Speaker 3: my joke is always my theme song every day felt
Speaker 3: like was the led Zeppelin song when the levee breaks.
Speaker 5: It's just waiting for that to happen. So oh wait,
Speaker 5: it did.
Speaker 4: Keeps this God.
Speaker 2: So in this episode, we're going to get into what
Speaker 2: Nisa and others would come to learn about George Santos
Speaker 2: while trying to sort fact from fiction stories that he's
Speaker 2: told about his family, specifically his mother. And while these
Speaker 2: stories are not necessarily related to the charges against him,
Speaker 2: I think they reveal something deeper about his character. And
Speaker 2: there's one story he told in particular that really struck
Speaker 2: an earth. This is deep cover George Santos Episode two,
Speaker 2: The Congressman.
Speaker 3: There are a few people in this world you should
Speaker 3: not lie. Your lawyer, your doctor, and your communications director.
Speaker 1: By the way, I would ideally include spouse in there
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: Just say to say, spoken like a true husband. Yess Okay.
Speaker 1: So how does it go when she tries to prep him?
Speaker 3: Just getting him to sit down and prep was always
Speaker 3: it was like it's like getting a child to sit
Speaker 3: down and do their homework, so very hard.
Speaker 2: But she does get the chance to prep him briefly,
Speaker 2: and at a certain point in these conversations, the tone shifts.
Speaker 5: I'd say one of the hardest conversations I had was
Speaker 5: the death of his mother.
Speaker 2: So in twenty twenty one, George Santos tweeted nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: claimed my mother's life. And in the aftermath of the
Speaker 2: New York Times reporting, people find that tweet and they
Speaker 2: start asking more questions about that, and it was actually
Speaker 2: mentioned on Santos's campaign website. It's actually still on his
Speaker 2: website to this day. It says, quote, George's mother was
Speaker 2: in her office in the South Tower on September eleventh,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, when the horrific events of that
Speaker 2: day unfolded, And it goes on to say she survived
Speaker 2: the tragic events on September eleventh, but she passed away
Speaker 2: a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.
Speaker 4: And this is.
Speaker 2: One of the allegations against him that this is not true.
Speaker 2: People do not find evidence to substantiate the fact that
Speaker 2: his mother was there. And NASA knows that this is
Speaker 2: something he's going to get asked about, so in her
Speaker 2: attempts to prep him, this is something that they talk
Speaker 2: about in detail.
Speaker 1: Wait, what are the holes that people are poking in
Speaker 1: this story? At least initially or are there any.
Speaker 2: So when Santos's tweet comes to like, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of questions because when you say nine to eleven claim
Speaker 2: my mother's life, that seems to imply that your mother
Speaker 2: died on nine eleven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I thought when you when you read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then it quickly becomes clear through reporting and
Speaker 2: just public records that his mother died in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: And one of the things we had talked about with
Speaker 3: him was just did she because I saw the timeline
Speaker 3: of her death and I had thought, well, I remembered
Speaker 3: John Stewart was starting to highlight a lot of problems
Speaker 3: that like first responders were starting to die as a
Speaker 3: result of nine to eleven from exposure to the ash
Speaker 3: and dust that came from the World Trade Center.
Speaker 2: So Nisa, in that moment understands that maybe it was
Speaker 2: just an error in how Santos chose to phrase the tweet,
Speaker 2: but that his mother died in twenty sixteen from cancer
Speaker 2: which was linked to her time at Ground zero. That
Speaker 2: was the claim that Santos was making. OKAYNSA is saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: if you're going to be making this claim in public,
Speaker 2: then let's break it down. Let's talk through the details
Speaker 2: of this because you will be asked about it, right.
Speaker 1: And it seems like he can kind of make that
Speaker 1: argument some incredibly because on the website it's saying she
Speaker 1: passed away a few years later when she lost her
Speaker 1: battle to cancer. You know, it seems to me like
Speaker 1: he's actually got some cover here.
Speaker 2: Yes, and she's quickly picking up on what he's saying,
Speaker 2: which is that no, no, no, I'm claiming that she
Speaker 2: died later as a result of her exposure to ground zero.
Speaker 4: Okay, but Nesa wants details.
Speaker 3: And I asked him, I said, did she die as
Speaker 3: a result of nine to eleven? And he said yes.
Speaker 3: I said, okay, so let's just break it down. Was
Speaker 3: she in the north of the South Tower? And he
Speaker 3: said the South Tower? I said, all right, so she
Speaker 3: was in the South Tower on September eleventh, Okay, like,
Speaker 3: do you remember what floors she worked on? And he
Speaker 3: just you know, she worked for a cleaning company. So
Speaker 3: I did not have the He did not give out
Speaker 3: the specific floors. I think he I think he tried
Speaker 3: to say it was like the thirty fourth or something,
Speaker 3: and I said, okay, Well, so she did work in
Speaker 3: the World Trade Center and he said yes. I said,
Speaker 3: all right, so she got out of the building. Yes,
Speaker 3: she got out of the building. I said, okay, so
Speaker 3: she escaped, she's she's safe. And I said, but you know,
Speaker 3: was she exposed to the dust and he said yes,
Speaker 3: And I thought, okay.
Speaker 2: So finally this is starting to make sense for Nissa.
Speaker 2: She can understand the narrative that Santos has been telling,
Speaker 2: and even though he doesn't have all of the details,
Speaker 2: NASA is advising him. You know, this is a powerful story.
Speaker 2: This is an experience that people can relate to.
Speaker 3: You know, people will want to see a human side
Speaker 3: to you like that. And I said, maybe that's just
Speaker 3: that's something you should talk about.
Speaker 5: Hmm.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I heard that tape and I hear
Speaker 1: her kind of poking a little bit too.
Speaker 2: Well, right, she's doing her job. She's saying, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to prep you for these interviews. Here's all of the
Speaker 2: questions that you may be asked about this, So let's
Speaker 2: try to get some specifics down.
Speaker 8: Right, m hm.
Speaker 3: And then a few weeks later, I think the New
Speaker 3: York Times or MSNBC had reached out and said they
Speaker 3: had found proof that she wasn't in the country, and
Speaker 3: I thought, oh my god, this is like, why are
Speaker 3: you doing this? It just I thought why, like why?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the question, right, Does she have any
Speaker 1: answer to that question?
Speaker 2: I would argue NASA is still looking for her why
Speaker 2: And NISA isn't the only one that's trying to make
Speaker 2: sense out of all this. The guy that I think
Speaker 2: has gone the deepest down the rabbit hole is a
Speaker 2: journalist's named Mark Gisano, and what he's found reshaped the
Speaker 2: way I think about George Santos. That's coming up next.
Speaker 2: I had to call the guy who has done, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, the best reporting on Santos's family and his background.
Speaker 2: His name is Mark Gisano, and he wrote a book
Speaker 2: with a very long title.
Speaker 7: The book is called The Fabulous, the Lying, Hustling, drifting, stealing,
Speaker 7: and very American legend of George Santos.
Speaker 2: Mark worked for Newsday, basically one of the only major
Speaker 2: newspapers left on Long Island, and he's covered Santos since
Speaker 2: his first campaign.
Speaker 7: Back then, he sort of had to pick up the
Speaker 7: phone because no one was really calling him, and so
Speaker 7: he would he would answer me or he would send
Speaker 7: a statement or he would have someone call me.
Speaker 1: What was Mark's early take on Santos, like in those
Speaker 1: first interactions.
Speaker 2: So Mark told me that Santos seemed somewhat evasive.
Speaker 7: He definitely, you know, kind of would allied details and
Speaker 7: sort of tell you stuff that didn't totally make sense.
Speaker 7: But it was hard to tell in the beginning. This
Speaker 7: is what a lot of first time candidates.
Speaker 2: Are like, right, And as time went on, of course,
Speaker 2: it would become clear to Mark and everyone right that
Speaker 2: Santos was not being transparent about his life on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail. It strikes me reading through different stories of
Speaker 2: Santo's stories that he's told about himself that a lot
Speaker 2: of the stories about him seemed to start with the
Speaker 2: story of his mom. So what was the story about
Speaker 2: his mother that he was telling?
Speaker 7: Yeah, his mom was pretty central his campaign. You know,
Speaker 7: she really loomed large. He called her a Wall Street executive,
Speaker 7: you know, one of the first female executives on Wall
Speaker 7: Street or something of that effect. He said that she
Speaker 7: escaped the South Tower during nine to eleven. He said
Speaker 7: that she was a big political actor. He claims that
Speaker 7: she had donated over I think he said something like
Speaker 7: twenty years donated to Republican politicians. He even said that
Speaker 7: she campaigned for Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, that is, and brought
Speaker 7: him along with her, that he had fond memories of this.
Speaker 7: So this was his the image that he painted of her.
Speaker 7: And the funny thing with Santos is that the truth
Speaker 7: and the fiction is sort of intermingled, and sometimes what
Speaker 7: starts as a pebble of truth, as one of his
Speaker 7: relatives told me, you know, turns into this kind of
Speaker 7: large mountain of lies.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a bunch to unpack there, but one thing
Speaker 1: that jumps out is that when he was talking to
Speaker 1: NASA about prepping for that press conference, NASA says that
Speaker 1: he described his mother as working for a cleaning company
Speaker 1: in the World Trade Center. So that's at odds with
Speaker 1: her being a Wall Street executive here.
Speaker 2: No, yes, you've hit on one of the first key
Speaker 2: discrepancies that people pick up on. You know. Santos tells
Speaker 2: this story about his mother, and because we have the Internet,
Speaker 2: everyone can kind of compare notes. He tells the story differently,
Speaker 2: so in certain tellings she's a financial executive, in other tellings,
Speaker 2: she's working as a cleaner. In the towers, and it's
Speaker 2: a bit hard to parse out if any of that
Speaker 2: is true. But also, you know, he's projecting a version
Speaker 2: of his mom that in many ways mirrors the version
Speaker 2: of himself that he was promoting. Mark is very keen
Speaker 2: to figure out what parts of the story that Santos
Speaker 2: told about his mom, what parts of that can be substantiated,
Speaker 2: and he even travels to Brazil to report out, you know,
Speaker 2: what the family's history there is.
Speaker 7: Like, so to be careful. I tried to really see
Speaker 7: what if any of that story about his mother was true.
Speaker 7: And all I can say is what we've found out
Speaker 7: is certainly not true. No campaign finance records show any
Speaker 7: evidence of her donating. She does not appear to have
Speaker 7: voted in any election in New York or elsewhere. She
Speaker 7: also does not appear to be a citizen, at least
Speaker 7: according to her own immigration records. So totally not, you know,
Speaker 7: not the story that he was telling.
Speaker 2: So pretty quickly Mark breaks this down and he's able
Speaker 2: to say, so much of the story that Santos tells
Speaker 2: about his mother just doesn't check out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what seems to be clear to me that
Speaker 1: there's a pattern here with Santo's which is where there
Speaker 1: are small lies. If you dig deeper, there are bigger lies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like Mark said, the pebble that becomes
Speaker 2: the mountain.
Speaker 7: Then there's this nine to eleven story, which very central
Speaker 7: to the story he was telling about her, and I
Speaker 7: think struck a nerve in New York where people do
Speaker 7: have nine to eleven stories and everyone kind of says,
Speaker 7: you know, talks about where you were that day, right,
Speaker 7: and doubly so on Long Island, where so many that
Speaker 7: his constituents were cops or firefighters, right, or bankers too,
Speaker 7: who were you know, in the building, So a big
Speaker 7: deal to lie about. And again, you know, very hard
Speaker 7: to prove a negative. But her own immigration paperwork said
Speaker 7: that she was not in the country at the time.
Speaker 7: In fact, she herself filed paperwork in I think it
Speaker 7: was June of that year from Nitsiroi, which is the
Speaker 7: city outside of Rio where she grew up. So again
Speaker 7: you can lie on paperwork. It's sometimes immigrants sort of
Speaker 7: don't aren't exactly clear on where they were and when.
Speaker 7: But no evidence to suggest that she was escaping, and
Speaker 7: in fact, in Santos's campaign materials, he said that she
Speaker 7: escaped the South Tower from her office as a financial
Speaker 7: executive right which again there's no evidence that she was
Speaker 7: involved in finance at all.
Speaker 1: So what do we actually know for sure about Santo's
Speaker 1: his family, their background.
Speaker 2: So the real story of George Santos starts in Queens.
Speaker 2: The family did not have a lot of money, you know,
Speaker 2: Santos says they he grew up in abject poverty, and
Speaker 2: that appears to be true. His mother, you know, took
Speaker 2: care of him and his sister. According to Mark, George
Speaker 2: Santos and his mother, Fatima had a very close but
Speaker 2: also complicated relationship.
Speaker 7: They seem to have been very close and also in
Speaker 7: the way that many close relationships work, also kind of
Speaker 7: butted heads a lot. I spoke to one person who
Speaker 7: you know, worked on the campaign with Santos. This is
Speaker 7: kind of later on after she's dead, years after she's dead,
Speaker 7: by the way, and Santos would still kind of have
Speaker 7: a kind of shakiness to his voice when he mentioned her,
Speaker 7: right in a way that didn't seem to be acting.
Speaker 7: It was kind of it was it seemed real. He
Speaker 7: would live with her as an adult, you know, from
Speaker 7: time to time they were actual roommates, and even that
Speaker 7: was kind of it would it would have its ups
Speaker 7: and downs.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: There would be moments when he was living, say, you know,
Speaker 7: in another part of Queen's, and he would come to
Speaker 7: visit her and see her because he seemed to missed her,
Speaker 7: one roommate told me. And on the other hand, sometimes
Speaker 7: they were living together and he would get in these
Speaker 7: kind of huge fights with her, screaming, screaming, cursing so
Speaker 7: intense that his mother, Fatima, would go into her own
Speaker 7: bedroom and close the door and start crying. So this
Speaker 7: was kind of the back and forth with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he has this kind of stormy relationship with
Speaker 1: his mom, really close to living together. How old is
Speaker 1: he when when his mom gets cancer.
Speaker 2: He would have been in his late twenties when his
Speaker 2: mom died of cancer, And.
Speaker 1: How does that play out for Santos.
Speaker 7: Fatima gets sick, and Santos seems to have taken that
Speaker 7: very hard and tried to take care of her, tried
Speaker 7: to help her.
Speaker 2: While this is going on, Santos appears to have struggled
Speaker 2: to pay rent more than once. So at the time
Speaker 2: where his mother is sick with cancer, Santos is appearing
Speaker 2: in court, and Mark told me about one such moment
Speaker 2: like this back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 7: At one time he shows up in court one of
Speaker 7: his interactions with housing court in New York, where he's
Speaker 7: trying to explain why he didn't pay the rent, and
Speaker 7: one of his excuses is that he's caring for his mother, right,
Speaker 7: which you know, don't know if that means that he
Speaker 7: wasn't actually able to pay, but it does sort of
Speaker 7: show their relationship and kind of their their bombs, their proximity.
Speaker 7: So she gets sick, she remains sick, and unfortunately she
Speaker 7: dies in twenty sixteen. Some people see this as a
Speaker 7: real moment of transition for Santos that he kind of
Speaker 7: loses obviously his sort of close friend, someone who's very
Speaker 7: important to him, and that that's when he seems to
Speaker 7: kind of lose control of his own story and narrative.
Speaker 1: That's really it's just really poignant, like the idea that
Speaker 1: he's like his mother's dying and he's basically so poor
Speaker 1: that he's going before the court and saying I can't
Speaker 1: pay my rent and I'm caring for my dying mother.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting he invents these stories to kind of
Speaker 1: engender our sympathy, but here it almost sounds like the
Speaker 1: real one is perfectly sympathetic in its truthful form.
Speaker 2: Yes, although I will say, because we were talking about
Speaker 2: George Santos, when you think you have reached the truth,
Speaker 2: there is usually a catch.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yeah, maybe I'm a complete sucker to
Speaker 1: think that he would tell the judge the truth. And
Speaker 1: I have this feeling that you're about to tell me
Speaker 1: something about his mother's death that's going to completely undermine
Speaker 1: the sympathy that I just fell for him.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately. Yes, So what Mark has found through his reporting
Speaker 2: around Fatima's death is just really striking. Specifically, one story
Speaker 2: around Fatima's.
Speaker 7: Funeral, Santa's mother, Fatima passes away, Santos says that he's
Speaker 7: unable to kind of pay for the funeral costs, right,
Speaker 7: He and his sister have had a hard time caring
Speaker 7: for her and they need money basically, And so luckily
Speaker 7: they're all part of this church community, Saint Rita's and
Speaker 7: Queen's very close knit, kind of beautiful church. It's a
Speaker 7: really nice kind of communal place, and people there remember
Speaker 7: Santos and his sister, and so the church has a
Speaker 7: they put out a kind of a call for help,
Speaker 7: and they collect money for the family, right, and it's
Speaker 7: in one of those collection box like typical Catholic church,
Speaker 7: and that that box is that that basket is handed
Speaker 7: to Santos. And what we know is that the funeral
Speaker 7: home was never paid their debt for Fatima's service. So
Speaker 7: we don't know exactly what happened with that with that box,
Speaker 7: but it left the church's hand and didn't seem to
Speaker 7: leave Santos's.
Speaker 1: How much money are we talking about here?
Speaker 2: One of Mark's sources estimated it was somewhere around six
Speaker 2: thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, okay, this is so crazy. I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. Like he
Speaker 1: collected this money from all these people in this church
Speaker 1: under the guys that he was going to pay the
Speaker 1: funeral home for his mother's funeral, and he takes the
Speaker 1: money and never pays the funeral home.
Speaker 4: That appears to be what happened.
Speaker 1: I'm really speechless. On some level, we're talking about, like
Speaker 1: how do you wrap your mind around lies? So there's
Speaker 1: lies of opportunism that we feel, we understand that politicians
Speaker 1: will bend the truth embellish the truth, inflate their resumes
Speaker 1: in ways that make them look greater than they really are.
Speaker 1: And it's not right, but we get it. That's part
Speaker 1: of the grammy business of how politics is done. But
Speaker 1: this is just something altogether different, right, Yeah, what's your
Speaker 1: take on this?
Speaker 4: No, I'm with you.
Speaker 2: I was astounded by this and at a loss for
Speaker 2: words even now.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just raised to the question, what, if anything,
Speaker 1: do we hold sacred. He clearly was close to his mom,
Speaker 1: that seems undeniable with her. Maybe they fought, but they
Speaker 1: were also very close. And then he's lying about the
Speaker 1: manner of her death as a way of self promotion.
Speaker 1: And then when it comes time to put her to rest,
Speaker 1: he goes to the community of which she was a
Speaker 1: part of, asks for their help in her name to
Speaker 1: honor her properly, and then embezzles the money. That's just
Speaker 1: a level of deceit that is that cannot be explained
Speaker 1: by opportunism alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to wonder what was motivating him at
Speaker 2: that point, And we don't know what his financial state
Speaker 2: was in that moment, so it's possible that he was
Speaker 2: really desperate and needed that money and that's maybe one
Speaker 2: explanation for why the funeral home never got that money.
Speaker 2: But we just haven't gotten answers on this, so we
Speaker 2: won't know more about it. And of course there's lots
Speaker 2: of things we still haven't gotten answers on.
Speaker 4: And you know, when you're dealing with Santos, even the.
Speaker 2: People closest to him, including his own staffers, have spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time just trying to pry the truth
Speaker 2: out of him. More on that after the break. I
Speaker 2: want to bring us back to NASA, Santos's communications director,
Speaker 2: because when we last heard from her, she was prepping
Speaker 2: for this big TV interview where she had hoped that
Speaker 2: he would come clean.
Speaker 3: Whether you sit down with someone like Chuck Todd or
Speaker 3: Tucker Carlson, they're all going to be equally tough on you,
Speaker 3: and I want to find the right one who is
Speaker 3: going to be tough but like firm but fair.
Speaker 2: If you have any guesses on who they go with,
Speaker 2: I have no idea. They do not get Chuck Todd,
Speaker 2: they do not get Tucker Carlson, but they do get
Speaker 2: a journalist from across the pond, Piers Morgan.
Speaker 3: When Peers' team reached out, I thought, this is it,
Speaker 3: this is this is my opportunity. We'll do it with
Speaker 3: a well known British journalist who has zero skin in
Speaker 3: the game when it comes to American politics, and he's
Speaker 3: going to be equally tough on a Republican as he
Speaker 3: would be with a Democrat. So I thought, he's going
Speaker 3: to be in the United States this week. Let's set
Speaker 3: this up and get.
Speaker 5: It over with. Rip this band aid off and we'll
Speaker 5: be done.
Speaker 2: The Peers interview prepping for that, what are you hoping
Speaker 2: or expecting that he'll say the truth? So George sits
Speaker 2: down for an interview with Piers Morgan on his show
Speaker 2: called Piers Morgan Uncensored, and Piers goes there. He asks
Speaker 2: Santos about his mother.
Speaker 8: I want to turn to something it's obviously very personal
Speaker 8: to you, and that's your own mother and this question
Speaker 8: of whether she was working, as you claimed, in her
Speaker 8: office in the South Tower of the Twin Towers on
Speaker 8: September the eleventh, and then passed toways you said a
Speaker 8: few years later when she lost a battle to cancer.
Speaker 8: Now there is no record of your mother, Fatima Divolda,
Speaker 8: ever having worked in the Twin Towers, So what's that true?
Speaker 8: That's true? Why is there no record of the work?
Speaker 6: I don't know where people are looking or what they're looking.
Speaker 8: For, but there is obviously no because of what happened afterwards,
Speaker 8: there's a record of everyone that were there. There's no
Speaker 8: doubt about who were there. I'm sorry, Well, there's no
Speaker 8: doubt about who is.
Speaker 6: There's no doubt if who worked in the buildings on the.
Speaker 8: There was a full record done.
Speaker 7: I'm very aware.
Speaker 6: So the way that I look at this, and I've
Speaker 6: rest this case before, and respectfully, please, I won't debate
Speaker 6: my mother's life as she's passed in sixteen, and I
Speaker 6: think it's it's quite unsensitive for everybody to want to
Speaker 6: rehash my mother's legacy.
Speaker 1: It's painful to listen to like you can feel his
Speaker 1: mind kind of churning to come up with something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, as the journalist, you never want to
Speaker 2: be a part of this story. But I found at
Speaker 2: a certain point I needed to say the thing that
Speaker 2: I was thinking the whole time, and I started getting
Speaker 2: into that with Mark.
Speaker 4: The reporter who wrote the book on George Santos.
Speaker 2: I'll share a little bit here. I grew up in
Speaker 2: Santos's district. My father was a first responder on nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. He was a New York City police officer,
Speaker 2: and he did develop cancer that is believed to be
Speaker 2: related to his exposure, and he passed away in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: So sorry to hear that, Thank you.
Speaker 2: The story that he's telling has a lot of resemblance
Speaker 2: to the story that my family shares. There is this
Speaker 2: community specifically on Long Island that cares a lot about
Speaker 2: this specific issue of benefits for first responders and has
Speaker 2: a lot of sympathy and empathy for that situation, And
Speaker 2: so I think it's just a very specific lie.
Speaker 7: It is in the same way that his story about
Speaker 7: Jewish heritage was very specific. But I think he has
Speaker 7: a good year for some of these things. And he's
Speaker 7: not from Long Island, but like most New Yorkers, he
Speaker 7: kind of knows it very well and kind of understands
Speaker 7: I think all of its kind of highs and lows,
Speaker 7: the kind of glittery Hampton's part of of Long Island,
Speaker 7: but also this this story of first responders and great tragedy,
Speaker 7: right and the kind of gritty reality of Long Island.
Speaker 7: And I think that that he was aware of that
Speaker 7: and kind of used.
Speaker 1: That your dad was a New York City police officer, right, Yes?
Speaker 1: Was he? Was? He a motorcycle cop? Am I'm memory
Speaker 1: that correctly?
Speaker 2: You are? My dad rode a motorcycle for a highway
Speaker 2: unit actually based out of Queen's Okay, Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I will be honest and say I did not expect
Speaker 2: the conversation with NASA or with Mark to go there,
Speaker 2: but in both cases it did. And obviously it's something
Speaker 2: that as much as I want to stay objective and
Speaker 2: remove myself from the reporting, I can't forget the fact
Speaker 2: that this is a huge part of my life and
Speaker 2: my family and our legacy, honestly, and I almost can't
Speaker 2: put towards how angry I feel hearing that someone is
Speaker 2: co opting that narrative for their own personal gain, because
Speaker 2: it's a real narrative that has taken people's lives and
Speaker 2: destroyed families and people live with that. And the fact
Speaker 2: that he would potentially try to claim this when there's
Speaker 2: been no evidence to corroborate.
Speaker 9: It is just kind of infuriating, like he's appropriating, he's
Speaker 9: using the legacy of the Holocaust, and then he's in
Speaker 9: this case, using the legacy of first responders.
Speaker 1: These are two tragedies that resonate with his constituents, and
Speaker 1: he's claiming them both as his own in a way
Speaker 1: that he has to understand is going to and gender
Speaker 1: sympathy and bolster his popularity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that this is a moment where
Speaker 2: that really clarified for me. You know, you could look
Speaker 2: at the lies that he's told and say, well, to
Speaker 2: what end is he doing this? And then I think
Speaker 2: when you focus on a few of these stories, you
Speaker 2: see the intentionality. You see that there is a reason
Speaker 2: that it's this specific lie and it's speaking directly to
Speaker 2: people who would then put him in office. There are
Speaker 2: still first responders who are receiving treatment related to illnesses
Speaker 2: that stem from their time at Ground Zero. There were
Speaker 2: real people who were harmed here because they were lied to,
Speaker 2: but also because in some cases their stories were.
Speaker 4: Use against them in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy though, Like, did he not think he
Speaker 1: was going to be confronted with these facts that there's
Speaker 1: a record everyone that worked there, because of how much
Speaker 1: significance that attack had.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 2: You see this time and time again with George Santos,
Speaker 2: where he's faced with an allegation, he claims to have
Speaker 2: evidence or proof, but then we never see that evidence, right.
Speaker 2: But the thing that is striking to me is there
Speaker 2: are certain lies that he has admitted were.
Speaker 1: Lies, Like what was what's an example of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he admitted, Okay, I didn't go to Baruch.
Speaker 1: Looking back on that lie, that seems like small fry
Speaker 1: compared to this.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, and I mean why does he still
Speaker 2: hold on to this story about his mother even when
Speaker 2: so many people have challenged him on it. There's one
Speaker 2: version of the story that Santos tells, which is that
Speaker 2: his mother passed away in twenty sixteen from cancer, and
Speaker 2: that appears to be true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's all he said.
Speaker 2: Yes, But then there's another version, or there's an extend version,
Speaker 2: if you will, that links her illness to her experience
Speaker 2: at ground zero. And that's the part that most people
Speaker 2: have come to the conclusion is not true, cannot be substantiated.
Speaker 2: But it is a part that Santos has doubled down
Speaker 2: on again with those retractions, like he'll admit, okay, I
Speaker 2: didn't go to Bruke, but my mother did die as
Speaker 2: a result of nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what do you make of that?
Speaker 7: This was kind of the crazy part about reporting this
Speaker 7: book is I would go down these rabbit holes and
Speaker 7: start thinking about, like what is the nature of truth?
Speaker 7: You know, like, what can I actually like tell the
Speaker 7: reader is real about this guy's story. You know, typical
Speaker 7: relationships between human beings, You just we assumes what someone
Speaker 7: is telling you is true because that's the easiest way
Speaker 7: for a society to function. And so there were moments
Speaker 7: when I was working on this where I would start
Speaker 7: making excuses for Santos, like, oh, who knows, maybe she
Speaker 7: worked as a cleaner in one of the towers and
Speaker 7: maybe she kind of got out you know during you know,
Speaker 7: after that kind of experience. Who knows that could be true. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: Santos hasn't given us any more details or any more
Speaker 7: explanation other than his lies. So I think it really is,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of up to him to sort of
Speaker 7: tell us what's what's real.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's the tricky thing about Santos
Speaker 1: is that he's not making up stories wholesale. He's mixing
Speaker 1: truth and fiction and weaving in bits of his own
Speaker 1: story that are really painful and difficult and creating this
Speaker 1: this thing that is difficult to disentangle and difficult to challenge,
Speaker 1: and it's just confounding.
Speaker 2: I'd agree with you, And I'm left feeling that even
Speaker 2: though so much of what has been uncovered might feel,
Speaker 2: you know, morally wrong, there hasn't really been any consequences
Speaker 2: in this point in time for George Santos. He's telling lies,
Speaker 2: he's co opting people's stories, he's betraying people close to him,
Speaker 2: but there's no real accountability for any of this.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like we live. We live in a moment
Speaker 1: where sometimes when someone accuses you of being a liar,
Speaker 1: it's actually an asset with your constituents because it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the New York Times. The Democrats are calling me
Speaker 1: a liar, and in fact, you just double down on
Speaker 1: your position, and then you know it's like, look, my
Speaker 1: enemies are really out to get me. But it seems
Speaker 1: like Sanos is dangerously close to the tipping point at
Speaker 1: which you know, how long is he going to be
Speaker 1: able to do this before he actually has to face
Speaker 1: the music?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, George Santos flies under the radar for
Speaker 2: a really long time, but as he is in office
Speaker 2: that first year, something is starting to shift. There are
Speaker 2: investigations going on both with the Justice Department and in
Speaker 2: the House, and you get the sense that Santos and
Speaker 2: others are starting to feel like the walls are closing in.
Speaker 2: Maybe these investigations are going to start to catch up
Speaker 2: with him coming up next time on Deep Cover George Santos.
Speaker 10: For me, I'm furious because I spent some of my
Speaker 10: friends that I asked to support George.
Speaker 7: I mean all of them.
Speaker 10: They know me, so they're you know, and they were
Speaker 10: hoodwinked and know that I was hoodwinked, but they were
Speaker 10: upset that they were dragged into this and it was
Speaker 10: my responsibility, you know. I am mad at myself for
Speaker 10: not doing my own due diligence.
Speaker 1: For more on Mark Gisano's reporting on George Santos, check
Speaker 1: out his book The Fabulous, The Lying, hustling, grifting, stealing
Speaker 1: and very American Legend of George Santos. This series is
Speaker 1: produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Joey fish Ground. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Karen Chakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Mastering by Jake Gorski. Fact checking by Aica Robbins. Our
Speaker 1: show art was designed by Sean Carney. Music in this
Speaker 1: episode is from Luis Garra An Epidemic Sound special thanks
Speaker 1: to Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler and Greta Cone. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: calpern