Congressman Santos and the Fine Art of “Capital Introduction”
Meet soon-to-be Congressman George Santos (R-New York). I wrote about his fake resume yesterday, where just about every detail of his life was a lie. The scandal is not that he’s a fabulist or a crook; it’s that this man is being considered an asset by his party’s political leaders.
It’s living proof that four years of Trump and a practice of denying reality means that one of the entities proposing to participate in governance has no standard beyond winning.
Today, questions are being asked about where the money came from for his rapid rise, i.e. ”Who paid for this?”
How did a guy with only a GED, living in Queens with his ailing mother, working at a DISH network call center, who skipped out on paying $12,000 in rent suddenly start making millions in the “capital introduction” business?
What the hell is capital introduction? I guess it sounds better than “I stole it” or "I've been to Moscow many times."
Kadia Goba at the newly-established Semafor tells us what is known:
When he first ran for Congress in 2020, Santos, who appears to have suffered from financial trouble for much of his adult life, filed disclosures listing no assets and a salary of $55,000, which he earned as a vice president at LinkBridge Investors, a business development firm. But the filings from his most recent run suggest he came into sudden riches, making between $3.5 million and $11.5 million from a company he founded called the Devolder Organization in 2021. He loaned his campaign more than $700,000…
…At LinkBridge, he said, he worked in the so-called “capital introduction” industry, which typically brings together investors and hedge funds. He eventually left that job for Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm the Securities and Exchange Commission accused in April 2021 of running a $17 million Ponzi scheme. Santos was not charged in the fraud, and he says he departed in March, shortly before the company ran into legal trouble, in order to strike out on his own. He incorporated Devolder in May, a few weeks after the S.E.C. filed suit against Harbor City…
Devolder was dissolved in September 2022 after failing to file an annual report. Given that timing, Rep.-elect Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., has raised the question of whether it was created merely to funnel illegal campaign donations. Santos added further to the mystery by reviving Devolder in Florida last week after the New York Times ran its initial bombshell story about fabrications in his resume, at an address reportedly owned by a former Harbor City executive.
Side Note: The Washington Post reported that as of July 2022, Devolder’s revenue was less than $50,000, according to data modeling from the financial data company Dun & Bradstreet.
Whew! Something smells rotten there. Maybe “capital introduction” means money laundering. Maybe it’s moldy borscht.
Researcher William Bredderman looked into the money for the Daily Beast, and as is typical with any inquiry into the wanna be Congressman, there was more than meets the eye:
For much of his professional career, which included a stint as regional director at an alleged Ponzi scheme, the Republican used the name George Devolder. However, as he ventured further into the world of politics, he began to increasingly use the name George Devolder-Santos or simply George Santos….
…He stood out to the Washington Post earlier this year for his remarks in the aftermath of Russia’s bloody, unprovoked assault on Ukraine.
“It’s not like Ukraine is a great democracy. It’s a totalitarian regime. They’re not a great bastion of freedom,” the congressman-to-be told the paper.
He has insisted that Ukraine “welcomed the Russians into their provinces”—an apparent reference to President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion to prop up rogue separatist parties—and that Ukrainians in the east “feel more Russian than Ukrainian,” even though every single Ukrainian province overwhelmingly voted for independence in 1991.
Dig a little deeper, and there’s tens of thousands of dollars flowing from Andrew Intrater and associated entities. And his job is to “manage the investments of Intrater’s cousin, Viktor Vekselberg, one of Putin’s wealthiest and most influential courtiers.”
If those names ring a bell, it’s because they were used frequently when it comes to stories about Donald J Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. A half million dollars from Vekselberg via Intrater ended up in the same LLC used to pay adult film-star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to remain quiet about the allegations of her affair with Donald Trump a decade earlier.
Finally, even though wannabe Speaker Kevin McCarty is being supportive of Santos getting seated on January 3, the Washington Times says there was hinky stuff going on prior to election day:
A campaign staffer trying to raise money for Republican Representative-elect George Santos called up donors last year pretending to be Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff, a GOP insider claims.
The source, connected closely to the New York Republican Party, told the Washington Times that Mr. McCarthy’s aides first learned of the Santos staffer’s behavior in August 2021 when a suspicious donor flagged as “unusual” the contact from Mr. McCarthy’s congressional office.
State GOP operatives found out the scheme by the Santos campaign staffer involved not only impersonating McCarthy Chief of Staff Dan Meyer but sending follow-up emails to the donors from a fake email address.
Whatever. Maybe the GOP will start requiring proof of felony indictments in order to qualify for financial support.
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com