Nice Job Everyone, Nice Job

 The Times has an expose on freshman GOP Congressman George Santos.

First, the context. Republicans gained 10 seats in the midterms. If that number had been 5 seats, Democrats would've held on to the House. Democrats lost five swing seats in NY state. Democrats had tried to gerrymander their state, in response to GOP gerrymanders in places like Florida, Ohio and Texas, but the state Supreme Court struck down the map. Right there, that was probably enough to swing those seats towards the GOP.

However, in NY-3, the incumbent did not run, opting instead for a failed bid to become governor. What had been a Lean-D district was suddenly open...and no one checked on who George Santos was.

Now that he's been elected, the Times decided to look into the claims of his personal biography and Hoooolyyyyy Shit.

Basically, the Times looked into his claims about his employment, his education, his charity work...all bullshit. He fabricated companies, said he went to schools he didn't go to...it's amazing. He was arrested in Brazil for stealing a checkbook from someone his mother - a nurse - was caring for. He looks to be - though the Times won't say it - involved in several scams and Ponzi schemes.

He claimed to have worked for a company called Devolder and you get 'graphs like this one:

In the disclosure, Mr. Santos said that he was the Devolder Organization’s sole owner and managing member. He reported that the company, which is based in New York but was registered in Florida, paid him a $750,000 salary. He also earned dividends from Devolder totaling somewhere between $1 million and $5 million — even though Devolder’s estimated value was listed in the same range.

The Devolder Organization has no public-facing assets or other property that The Times could locate. Mr. Santos’s disclosure form did not provide information about clients that would have contributed to such a haul — a seeming violation of the requirement to disclose any compensation in excess of $5,000 from a single source.

Where did THAT money come from? The follow up is even more amazing:

“This report raises red flags because no clients are reported for a multimillion-dollar client services company,” Mr. Payne said, adding: “The congressman-elect should explain what’s going on.”

The Times attempted to interview Mr. Santos at the address where he is registered to vote and that was associated with a campaign donation he made in October, but a person at that address said on Sunday that she was not familiar with him.

How the hell did this not get discovered? He was clearly using his campaign as a personal slush fund:

Campaign disclosures show that Mr. Santos lived large as a candidate, buying shirts for his staff from Brooks Brothers and charging the campaign for meals at the restaurant inside Bergdorf Goodman.

Mr. Santos also spent a considerable amount of money traveling — charging his campaign roughly $40,000 in flights to places that included California, Texas and Florida. All told, Mr. Santos spent more than $17,000 in Florida, mostly on restaurants and hotels, including at least one evening at the Breakers, a five-star hotel and resort in Palm Beach, three miles up the road from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence.

So, we have someone who is telling apparent lies about his life story, running a campaign as a grift to make money, probably has a litany of financial crimes in his background...I mean, he's the perfect Trumpist candidate!

Here's the kicker, though.

Where was this investigation BEFORE the election? Where was the Times, which is the only news organization with the resources to do this sort of reporting?

And most of all, where was the NY Democratic Party? I don't have all the patience in the world with left and left of center critics who slam the Democrats for, I dunno, allowing Joe Manchin to live or not somehow getting 10 Republican Senators to codify Roe.

But the NY Democratic Party is an absolute disgrace from top to bottom. Their failure to "properly" gerrymander their state, Cuomo's disastrous picks for the State Supreme Court and the fact that they had the guy in charge of retaining the House majority lose his own seat...AND THEY LET THIS YEGG WIN AN ELECTION WITHOUT VETTING...Sweet Baby Jesus...