A Long Island newspaper publisher on Saturday recalled an alarming early meeting with Republican candidate for House George Santos, whose behavior he described as “pure evil.”
The North Shore Leader newspaper is now calling for Santos to resign – or be kicked out of the House of Representatives.
Something was wrong with him “from the beginning,” publisher Grant Lally told MSNBC about his meeting with Santos, which he described as “a freak scam.”
The candidate at the time asked for the newspaper’s support in the 2020 meeting with Lally. But the Leader called him last year a “fake” and “fabulist” – and “weird, unprincipled and sketchy” – and endorsed a Democratic contender for a House seat.
A recent editorial in what Lally described as a “typically Republican” newspaper crowed: “Tell you.”
“I asked a lot of questions, a lot of pointed questions, a lot of personal questions — it wasn’t an unfriendly meeting. But it was weird from the beginning. Lally told MSNBC host Cori Coffin about the meeting with Santos.
“He was evasive. He also just enjoyed attention, which I thought was very strange for a man who at the time was only 31 years old, but claimed to be a multimillionaire financier,” said Lally.
Leaders’ statements about Santos for the past three years have been supported by press reports about Santos’ lies about graduating from college, graduating summa cum laude (with a grade point average he made), and working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, to name just a fraction of the fibs which.
Santos also said that a mysterious company launched in 2021, the Devolder Organization, may collect millions of dollars in two years.
“We think it’s very true [by other media] because we have called him a fake,” Lally said. Santos’ lie “beyond our wildest expectations,” he said. “We didn’t think anyone would lie about attending Baruch College. We don’t think anyone is lying about working at Goldman Sachs.
Lally is saddened that the story was not picked up by other media outlets at the time. If it had, “we wouldn’t have to deal with these sociopaths in the US Congress right now,” he said.
Lally cited a recent story in which Santos allegedly stole $3,000 from a disabled American veteran who needed the money for surgery on his service dog. Santos created a GoFundMe appeal, raised $3,000, then allegedly took the funds and disappeared.
“The dog was not operated on, and the dog died. This is pure evil,” added Lally, who is sure to be “close enough to the same vote” to kick Santos out of the House.
“No one can support him at this time. You cannot support this level of crime by anyone,” he said.
Check out Lally’s full interview here: