Pushkin.

So, Jake.

Yeah.

Let me take you back to January 2023. It's a couple of weeks after George Santos has been exposed, and he shows up in Washington, DC.

That was the first day I saw him in person. I remember we were walking through the Canon house office building, and you could hear pin drop because people were like, That's George Santos. Did you see that was George Santos?

This is Nesa Wumer. She was George Santos' communications director. You heard from her in our first episode. She was actually hired back in December of 2022. Her first day, and the first day she would actually meet Santos in person, came in January.

The amount of reporters and cameras that were outside of our office, it reminded me of something that you would see back in the '90s, when Princess Diana would show up somewhere.

Wow. This was Nace's first day on the job as the communications director, whatever. But it was also George Santos' basically first day. I mean, the scandal is happening, but he hasn't even started his tenure as a congressman, or he's just starting.

Correct. Yeah. Their first day is the same first day. The press are also camped outside the office on that first day, and they remain outside the office. Even as the weeks drag on, they're not really losing interest in the George Santos story.

I've had multiple meetings with individual reporters, and they're all saying the same thing. We can't leave until he speaks to the press. Until we get a sound bite, we have to stay. I said, Well, we're going to fix this.

She realizes, Okay, well, this is not Dying Down. We're going to book him on some big name show. He's going to a long sit-down interview with a respected journalist, and we're going to prep him for that. We're going to spend this time, before we have the interview even set up, we're going to spend time prepping.

The hard part was getting him to sit down and prep. He was very just all over the place. I put out this little list of the 15 lies that I've already heard in the news because, as I said, at this time, it was just, obviously, his background from work family, religion, and then the new stuff that was popping up.

What are the burning questions or the burning issues at this particular moment that people want to ask him at this point?

The press is looking into a bunch of allegations that have come to light. One of those stories is that Santos had faced multiple evictions in New York while also claiming publicly that he was a landlord. There's an inherent contradiction there.

That seems so telling that he He's being evicted, and yet he's claiming to be a landlord. That's such a stark contrast.

Yeah. There's also new info and new allegations coming out basically on a daily basis. A New Jersey veteran says that the congressman organized a fundraiser for his dying service dog back in 2016, only to pocket the money himself.

In Brazil, a local performer claims Santos was Ketara Rivash and that he once performed as a drag queen, something the New York congressman strongly denies.

Patch Media reports, Two former Santos roommates told Patch several items went missing while they lived with Santos, including phones, expensive dress shirts, and checks from a checkbook. It's just basically every time Nesa turns around, there's a news story that she has to scramble, figure out what their statement is going to be, and follow up with all the journalists that are asking her questions.

When Nesa is prepping him for this interview, what's her take on it? Does she feel that he is being forthright with her? Does she still have faith in him as someone who is credible or not?

I think Nessa is stepping into this role and saying, I have been hired to do a job, and I'm going to do the best job I can do despite the circumstances. Nesa told me that Santos was always intaining to her in their private conversations, that he had answers for all of these things. When she's in that position where this is her boss, she wants to believe him, and she wants to have his back, and she wants to set him up for success because her boat's tied to his.

Oh, my God. It's just like... Even though I was with him for five months, it probably felt like 500 years at that point. My joke is always my theme song every day, it felt like was the Led Zeppelin song When the Levy Breaks. It's just waiting for that to happen. Oh, wait, it did.

Keep some rain, levy's going to break.

In this episode, we're going to get into what Nesa and others would come to learn about George Santos while trying to sort fact from fiction. Stories that he's told about his family, specifically his mother. And while these stories are not necessarily related to the charges against him, I think they reveal something deeper about his character. And there's one story he told in particular. That really struck a nerve. This is Deep Cover, George Santos. Episode 2, The Congressman.

There are a few people in this world you should not lie, to your lawyer, your doctor, and your communications director.

By the way, I would ideally include spouse in there as well. Just saying. Just saying.

Spoken like a true husband. Okay.

How does it go when she tries to prep him.

Just getting him to sit down and prep was always… It's like getting a child to sit down and do their homework. So very hard.

But she does get the chance to prep him briefly. At a certain point in these conversations, the tone shifts.

I'd say one of the hardest conversations I had was the death of his mother.

In 2021, George Santos tweeted, 9/11 claimed my mother's life. In the aftermath of the New York Times reporting, people find that tweet, and they start asking more questions about that. It was actually mentioned on Santos' campaign website. It's actually still on his website to this day, it says, George's mother was in her office in the South Tower on September 11th, 2001, when the horrific events of that day unfolded. It goes on to say, She survived the tragic events on September 11th, but she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer. This is one of the allegations against him that This is not true. People do not find evidence to substantiate the fact that his mother was there. Nessa knows that this is something he's going to get asked about. In her attempts to prep him, this is something that they talk about in detail.

Wait, what are the holes that people are poking in this story, at least initially, or are there any?

When Sanchez's tweet comes to light, there's a lot of questions because when you say, 9/11 claimed my mother's life, that seems to imply that your mother died on 9/11.

Yeah, that's what I thought when you read it.

Yeah. Then it quickly becomes clear through reporting and just public records that his mother died in 2016.

One of the things we had talked about with him was just did she... Because I saw the timeline of her death, and I had thought, well, I remembered John Stuart was starting to highlight a lot of problems that first responders were starting to die as a result of 9/11 from exposure to the ash and dust that came from the World Trade Center.

So Nesa, in that moment, understands that maybe it was just an error in how Santos chose to phrase the tweet, but that his mother died in 2016 from cancer, which was linked to her time at Ground Zero. That was the claim that Santos was making. Okay. Nesa is saying, Okay, if you're going to be making this claim in public, then let's break it down. Let's talk through the details of this because you will be asked about it.

It seems like he can make that argument somewhat credibly because on the website, it's saying she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer. It seems to me like he's actually got some cover here.

Yes. She's quickly picking up on what he's saying, which is that, no, I'm claiming that she died later as a result of her exposure to ground zero. Okay. But Nesa wants details.

I asked I said, Did she die as a result of 9/11? He said, Yes. I said, Okay, so let's just break it down. Was she in the north or the south tower? He said, The south tower. I said, All right. She was in the south tower on September 11th. Okay. Do you remember what floors she worked on? She worked for a cleaning company, so he did not give out the specific floors. I think he tried to say it was the 34th or something. I said, Okay, well, so she did work in the World Trade Center? And he said, Yes. I said, All right. So she got out of the building. Yes, she got out of the building. I said, Okay, so she escaped. She's safe. I said, But was she exposed to the dust? And he said, Yes. And I thought, Okay.

So finally, this is starting to make sense for Nisa. She can understand the narrative that Santos has been telling. Even though he have all of the details, Nesa is advising him, This is a powerful story. This is an experience that people can relate to.

People will want to see a human side to you like that. I said, maybe that's just that's something you should talk about.

It's interesting because I heard that tape, and I hear her poking a little bit, too.

Well, right. She's doing her job. She's saying, I'm trying to prep you for these interviews. Here's all of the questions that you may be asked about this. So let's try to get some specifics down, right?

And then a few weeks later, I think the New York Times or MSNBC had reached out and said they had found proof that she wasn't in the country. And I thought, Oh, my God, this is... Why are you doing this? I thought, Why?

I mean, that's the question, right? Does she have any answer to that question?

I would argue Nesa is still looking for her why. And Nesa isn't the only one that's trying to make sense out of all this. The guy that I think has gone the deepest down the rabbit hole is a journalist named Mark Chisano, and what he's found reshaped the way I think about George Santos. That's coming up next. I had to call the guy who has done, in my opinion, the best reporting on Santos's family and his background. His name is Mark Chesano, and he wrote a book with a very long title.

The book is called The Fabulous, the Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.

Mark worked for Newsday, basically one of the only major newspapers left on Long Island, and he's covered Santos since his first campaign.

Back then, he had to pick up the phone because no one was really calling him. So he would. He would answer me, or he would send a statement, or he would have someone call me.

What was Mark's early take on Santos in those first interactions?

Mark told me that Santos seemed somewhat evasive.

He definitely would allied details and tell you stuff that didn't totally make sense. But it was hard to tell in the beginning, this is what a lot of first-time candidates are like, right?

As time went on, of course, it would become clear to Mark and everyone that Santos was not being transparent about his life on the campaign trail. It strikes me reading through different stories of Santos' stories that he's told about himself, that a lot of the stories about him seem to start with the story of his mom. What was the story about his mother that he was telling?

Yeah, his mom was pretty central to his campaign. She really loomed large. He called her a Wall Street executive, one of the first female executives on Wall Street or something of that effect. He said that she escaped the South Tower during 9/11. He said that she was a big political actor. He claims that she had donated over, I think he said something like 20 years, donated to Republican politicians. He even said that she campaigned for Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, that is, and brought him along with her, that he had fond memories of this. This was the image that he painted of her. The funny thing with Santos is that the truth and the fiction is intermingled, and sometimes what starts as a pebble of truth, as one of his relatives told me, turns into this large mountain of lies.

Well, there's a bunch to unpack there. But one thing that jumps out is that when he was talking to Nesa about prepping for that press conference, Nesa says that he described his mother as working for a cleaning company in the World Trade Center. So that's at odds with her being a Wall Street executive here, no?

Yes. You've hit on one of the first key discrepancies that people pick up on. Santos tells this story about his mother, and because we have the internet, everyone can compare notes. He tells the story differently. In certain tellings, she's a financial executive. In other tellings, she's working as a cleaner in the towers. It's a bit hard to parse out if any of that is true. But also, he's projecting a version of his mom that in many ways mirrors the version of himself that he was promoting. Mark is very keen to figure out what parts of the story that Santos told about his mom, what parts of that can be substantiated. He even travels to Brazil to report out what the family's history there is like.

To be careful, I tried to really see what, if any of that story about his mother was true. All I can say is what we found out is certainly not true. No campaign finance records show any evidence of her donating. She does not appear to have voted in any election in New York or elsewhere. She also does not appear to be a citizen, at least according to her own immigration records. So totally not the story that he was telling.

So pretty quickly, Mark breaks this down, and he's able to say so much of the story that Santos tells about his mother just doesn't check out.

Yeah, and what seems to be clear to me that there's a pattern here with Santos, which is where there are small lies, if you dig deeper, there are bigger lies.

Yeah. It's just like Mark said, the pebble that becomes the mountain.

Then there's this 9/11 story, which very central to the story he was telling about her, and I think struck a nerve in New York, where people do have 9/11 stories, and everyone talks about where you were that day. And doubly so on Long Island, where so many of his constituents were cops or firefighters or bankers, too, who were in the building. So a big deal to lie about. But again, very hard to prove a negative, but her own immigration paperwork said that she was not in the country at the time. In fact, she herself filed paperwork in, I think it was June of that year from Nitzaroi, which is the city outside of Rio where she grew up. Again, you can lie on paperwork. It's sometimes immigrants aren't exactly clear on where they were and when, but no evidence to suggest that she was escaping. In fact, in Santos's campaign materials, he said that she escaped the South Tower from her office as a financial executive, which, again, there's no evidence that she was involved in finance at all.

What do we actually know for sure about Santos, his family, their background?

The real story of George Santos starts in Queens. The family did not have a lot of money. Santos says he grew up in abject poverty, and that appears to be true. His mother took care of him and his sister. According to Mark, George Santos and his mother, Fatma, had a very close but also complicated relationship?

They seem to have been very close, and also in the way that many close relationships work, also butted heads a lot. I spoke to one person who worked on the campaign with Santos. This is later on, after she's dead, years after she's dead, by the way. And Santos would still have a shakiness to his voice when he mentioned her in a way that didn't seem to be acting. It seemed real. He would live with her as an adult from time to time. They were actual roommates. And even that was... It would have its ups and downs. There would be moments when he was living, say, in another part of Queens, and he would come to visit her and see her because he seemed to miss her. One roommate told me. On the other hand, sometimes they were living together, and he would get in these huge fights with her, screaming, screaming, cursing, so intense that his mother, Fatima, would go into her own bedroom and close the door and start crying. This was the back and forth with them.

Okay, so he has this stormy relationship with his mom, really close to living together. How old is he when his mom gets cancer?

He would have been in his late 20s when his mom died of cancer.

How does that play out for Santos?

Fatima gets sick, and Santos seems to have taken that very hard and tried to take care of her, tried to help her.

While this is going on, Santos appears to have struggled to pay rent more than once. So at the time where his mother is sick with cancer, Santos is appearing in court, and told me about one such moment like this back in 2015.

At one time, he shows up in court, one of his interactions with housing court in New York, where he's trying to explain why he didn't pay the rent. And one of his excuses is that he's caring for his mother. Which, don't know if that means that he wasn't actually able to pay, but it does show their relationship and their bond, their proximity. She gets sick, she remains sick, and unfortunately, she dies in 2016. Some people see this as a real moment of transition for Santos, that he loses, obviously, his close friend, someone who's very important to him, and that that's when he seems to lose control of his own story and narrative.

It's just really poignant. The idea that his mother's dying, and he's basically so poor that he's going before the court and saying, I can't pay my rent, and I'm caring for my dying mother. It's so interesting. He invents these stories to engender our sympathy But here it almost sounds like the real one is perfectly sympathetic in its truthful form.

Yes, although I will say, because we were talking about George Santos, when you think you have reached the truth, there is usually a catch.

Well, I mean, yeah, maybe I'm a complete sucker to think that he would tell the judge the truth. I have this feeling that you're about to tell me something about his mother's death that's going to completely undermine the sympathy that I just fell for Unfortunately, yes.

What Mark has found through his reporting around Fatima's death is just really striking, specifically one story around Fatima's funeral.

Santos' mother, Fatima, passes away. Santos says that he's unable to pay for the funeral costs. He and his sister have had a hard time caring for her, and they need money, basically. Luckily, they're all part of this church community, St. Rita's in Queens, very close-knit, beautiful church. It's a really nice communal place, and people there remember Santos and his sister. The church has a... They put out a call for help, and they collect money for the family. It's in one of those collection box, like typical Catholic church. That box is that that basket is handed to Santos. What we know is that the funeral home was never paid their debt for for Fatima's service. We don't know exactly what happened with that box, but it left the church's hand and didn't seem to leave Santos's.

How much money are we talking about here?

One of Mark's sources estimated it was somewhere around $6,000.

Wow. I mean, okay, this is so crazy. I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. He collected this money from all these people in this church under the guise that he was going to pay the funeral home for his mother's funeral, and he takes the money and never pays the funeral home.

That appears to be what happened.

I'm really speechless. On some level, We're talking about, how do you wrap your mind around lies? There's lies of opportunism that we feel we understand that politicians will bend the truth, embellish the truth, inflate their resumes in ways that make them look greater than they really are. It's not right, but we get it. That's part of the grimy business of how politics is done. But this is just something altogether different, right?

Yeah.

What's your take on this?

No, I'm with you. I was astounded by this and at a loss for words, even now.

I mean, it just raises the question, what, if anything, do we hold sacred? He clearly was close to his mom. That seems undeniable. He's living with her. Maybe they fought, but they were also very close. Then he's lying about the manner of her death as a way of self-promotion. Then when it comes time to put her to rest, he goes to the community of which she was a part of, asks for their help in her name to honor her properly, and then embezzles the money. That's just a level of deceit that cannot be explained by opportunity him alone.

Yeah, you have to wonder what was motivating him at that point. We don't know what his financial state was in that moment. It's possible that he was really desperate and needed that money. That's maybe one explanation for why the funeral home never got that money. But we just haven't gotten answers on this, so we won't know more about it. And of course, there's lots of things we still haven't gotten answers on. And when you're dealing with Santos, even the people closest to him, including his own staffers, have spent a lot of time just trying to pride the truth out of him. More on that after the break. I want to bring us back to Nesa, Santos' communications director, because when we last heard from her, she was prepping for this big TV interview where she had hoped that he would come clean.

Whether After you sit down with someone like Chuck Todd or Tucker Carlson, they're all going to be equally tough on you. I want to find the right one who's going to be tough, firm but fair.

Do you have any guesses on who they go with?

I have no idea.

They do not get Chuck Todd. They do not get Tucker Carlson, but they do get a journalist from across the pond, Piers Morgan.

When Piers' team reached out, I thought, This is it. This is my opportunity. We'll it with a well-known British journalist who has zero skin in the game when it comes to American politics, and he's going to be equally tough on a Republican as he would be with a Democrat. So I thought, he's going to be in the United States this week. Let's set this up and get it over with. Rip this bandaid off and we'll be done.

The peers interview, prepping for that, what are you hoping or expecting that he'll say?

The truth.

So George sits down for an interview with Pears Morgan on his show called Piers Morgan Uncensored. And Piers goes there. He asks Santos about his mother. I want to turn to something that's That's actually very personal to you, and that's your own mother.

And this question of whether she was working, as you claimed, in her office in the south tower of the Twin Towers on September the 11th, and then passed away, as you said, a few years later when she lost a battle to cancer.

Now, there is no record of your mother, Fatima DeVolder, ever having worked in the Twin Towers. So was that true?

That's true. Why is there no record of her working there?

I don't know where people are looking or what they're looking for.

But there is, as you know, because of what happened afterwards, there's a record of everyone that worked there.

There's no doubt about who worked there.

I'm sorry. Well, there's no doubt about who was working in the towns.

There's no doubt of who worked in the buildings on the-There was a full record done of everybody.

No, I He's very aware.

The way that I look at this, and I've read this case before, and respectfully, please, I won't debate my mother's life as she's passed in '16.

I think it's quite unsensitive for everybody to want to rehash my mother's legacy.

It's painful to listen to. You can feel his mind churning to come up with something.

Yeah. As the journalist, you never want to be a part of the story, but I found at a certain point I needed to say the thing that I was thinking the whole time. I started getting into that with Mark, the reporter who wrote the book on George Santos. I'll share a little bit here. I grew up in Santos's district. My father was a first responder on 9/11. He was a New York City police officer, and he did develop cancer that is believed to be related to his exposure, and he passed away in 2017. I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you. The story that he's telling has a lot of resemblance to the story that my family shares. There is this community, specifically on Long Island, that cares a lot about this specific issue of benefits for first responders and has a lot of sympathy and empathy for that situation. I think it's just a very specific lie.

It is in the same way that his story about Jewish heritage was very specific. But I think he has a good ear for some of these things. He's not from Long Island, but like most New Yorkers, he knows it very well and understands, I think, all of its highs and lows, the glittery Hamptons part of Long Island, but also this story of first responders and great tragedy, and the gritty reality of Long Island. I think that he was aware of that and used that.

Your dad was a New York City police officer, right?

Yes.

Was he a motorcycle cop? Am I remembering that correctly?

You are. My dad rode a motorcycle for a highway unit, actually based out of Queens.

Okay, wow.

Yeah. I mean, I will be honest and say I did not expect the conversation with Nessa or with Mark to go there, but in both cases it did. Obviously, it's something that as much as I want to stay objective and remove myself from the reporting, I can't forget the fact that this is a huge part of my life and my family and our legacy, honestly. I almost can't put to words how angry I feel hearing that someone is co-opting that narrative for their own personal gain. Because it's a real narrative that has taken people's lives and destroyed families, and people live with that. The fact that he would potentially try to claim this when there's been no evidence to corroborate it is just infuriating.

He's appropriating. He's using the legacy of the Holocaust, and then he's, in this case, using the legacy of first responders. These are two tragedies that resonate with his constituents, and he's claiming them both as his own in a way that has to understand is going to engender sympathy and bolster his popularity.

Yeah, and I think that this is a moment where that really clarified for me. You could look at the lies that he's told and say, Well, to what end is he doing this? Then I think when you focus on a few of these stories, you see the intentionality. You see that there is a reason that it's this specific lie, and it's speaking directly people who would then put him in office. There are still first responders who are receiving treatment related to illnesses that stem from their time at Ground Zero. There were real people who were harmed here because they were lied to, but also because in some cases, their stories were used against them in a way.

It's crazy, though. Did he not think he was going to be confronted with these facts that there's a record everyone that worked there because of how much significance that attack had? I mean.

Yeah, it's a good question. You see this time and time again with George Santos, where he's faced with an allegation. He claims to have evidence or proof, but then we never see that evidence, right? But the thing that is striking to me is there are certain lies that he has admitted were lies.

What? What's an example of that? Yeah.

He admitted, Okay, I didn't go to Barouk.

Looking back on that lie, that seems like small fry compared to this. I mean…

Yeah. I mean, why does he still hold on to this story about his mother, even when so many people have challenged him on it. There's one version of the story that Santos tells, which is that his mother passed away in 2016 from cancer, and that appears to be true. That's all he said. Yes. But then there's another version, or there's an extended a related version, if you will, that links her illness to her experience at Ground Zero. That's the part that most people have come to the conclusion is not true, cannot be substantiated, but it is a part that Santos has doubled down on. But again, with those retractions, he'll admit, Okay, I didn't go to Barouk, but my mother did die as a result of 9/11. What do you make of that?

This was the crazy part about reporting this book is I would go down these rabbit and start thinking about what is the nature of truth? What can I actually tell the reader is real about this guy's story? Typical relationships between human beings. We assume what someone is telling you is true because that's the easiest way for a society to function. There were moments when I was working on this where I would start making excuses for Santos, who knows, maybe she worked as a cleaner in one of the towers, and Maybe she got out after that experience. Who knows? That could be true. Unfortunately, Santos hasn't given us any more details or any more explanation other than his lies. I think it really is up to him to tell us what's real.

I think that's the tricky thing about Santos is that he's not making up stories wholesale. He's mixing truth and fiction weaving in bits of his own story that are really painful and difficult and creating this thing that is difficult to disentangle and difficult to challenge, and it's just confounding.

I'd agree with you. I'm left feeling that even though so much of what has been uncovered might feel morally wrong, there hasn't really been any consequences in this point in time for George Santos. He's telling lies. He's co-opting people's stories. He's betraying people close to him. But there's no real accountability for any of this.

It's interesting. We live in a moment where sometimes when someone accuses you of being a liar, it's actually an asset with your constituents. It's like, Oh, it's the New York Times. The Democrats are calling me a liar. And in fact, you just double down on your position, and then It's like, look, my enemies are really out to get me. But it seems like Santos is dangerously close to the tipping point at which, how long is he going to be able to do this before he actually has to face the music?

Absolutely. I mean, George Santos flies under the radar for a really long time. But as he is in office that first year, something is starting to shift. There are investigations going on both with the Justice Department and in the house, and you get the sense that Santos and others are starting to feel like the walls are closing in. Maybe these investigations are going to start to catch up with him. Coming up next time on Deep Cover, George Santos.

For me, I'm furious because I spent... Some of my friends that I asked to support George, I mean, all of them, they know me, and they were hoodwinked to know that I was hoodwinked, but they were upset that they were dragged into this. It was my responsibility. I am mad at myself for not doing my own due diligence.

For more on Mark Giussano's reporting on George Santos, check out his book, The Fabulousst, The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and very American legend of George Santos. This series is produced by Amy Gaines McQuade and Joey Fishground. Our editor is Karen Chakergy. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Mastering by Jake Gorsky. Fact-checking by Anika Robbins. Our show art was designed by Sean Carne. Music in this episode is from Luis Guerra and Epidemic Sound. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, and Greta Cohn. I'm Jake Halpern.