A Long Island newspaper editor on Saturday recalled an alarming initial encounter with then-Republican House candidate George Santos, whose behavior he described as “pure evil.”
The North Shore Leader newspaper is now calling for Santos to resign or be expelled from Parliament.
There was something wrong with him “from the beginning,” editor Grant Lally said on MSNBC of his meeting with Santos, which he described as a “grotesque fraud.”
The candidate at the time sought approval of the work in the 2020 meeting with Lally. But last year the leader called it “fake” and “fabulist” – and “bizarre, unprincipled and incomplete” – and endorsed his Democratic rival for the House seat.
A recent editorial in what Lally describes as the “largely Republican” paper sang, “I told you so.”
“I asked him a lot of questions, a lot of pointed questions, a lot of personal questions — it wasn’t a hostile meeting at all. But it really was a monster from the start.” Lally told MSNBC host Cori Coffin about her encounter with Santos.
“It was elusive. He also liked the attention he was getting, which I thought was very strange for a guy who was only 31 at the time but claimed to be a multi-millionaire financier,” said Lally.
The leader’s stance on Santos three years ago was bolstered by media reports about Santos’ string of lies about college, an honors degree (with a made-up GPA) and working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, to name a few. of its fibers.
Santos also said that the mysterious company he launched in 2021, the Devolder Organization, somehow raised millions of dollars in less than two years.
“We felt very vindicated [by other media] because I called it fake,” Lally said. Santos’ lie was “beyond our wildest expectations,” he added. “I didn’t think anyone would lie about attending Baruch College. I didn’t think anyone would lie about working at Goldman Sachs.”
Lally regretted that the story was not picked up by other media outlets at the time. If he had, he “wouldn’t be dealing with this sociopath in the US Congress right now,” he added.
Lally referenced a recent story that Santos stole $3,000 from a disabled American veteran who needed money for his service dog’s surgery. Santos went on GoFundMe, 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 confident he will be “pretty close to a unanimous vote” to remove Santos from Parliament.
“Nobody can argue that at this point. You cannot sustain this level of evil from anyone,” he said.
Watch Lally’s full interview here:
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