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This GOP representative-elect apparently lied about almost everything on his résumé
Swooping in during the final stretch of 2022 is a brazen new entry for scammer of the year: Rep.-elect George Santos, a 34-year-old Republican from Long Island who seems to have completely made up key parts of his work, education, and personal background.
A New York Times article on Monday revealed glaring holes in his résumé, and in the days since, more damning exposés about his background have been published. Here are all the things Santos seems to have lied about and/or failed to disclose during his campaign:
Being Jewish and that his grandparents fled the Holocaust. (His maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, and there is no record of them in databases for European Jewish refugees, the Forward reported.)
Graduating from Baruch College. (There’s no record of this.)
Studying at NYU. (There’s no record of this.)
Working at Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. (There’s no record of this.)
Employing four of the Pulse nightclub shooting victims. (There’s no record of this.)
Running an animal charity. (There’s no record of this.)
Being a landlord. (There’s no record of this.)
Divorcing his ex-wife. (This was not publicly disclosed.)
There are growing calls for the incoming member of Congress to resign and be investigated. Santos, who had flipped a Democrat-held seat in the midterms, remained silent for several days before saying on Thursday that he would answer questions next week.
US intelligence says North Korea shipped weapons to a private Russian company
A private Russian military company has received rockets and missiles from North Korea, the White House announced. North Korea has denied shipping weapons to Russia and called the accusation by US intelligence a "groundless theory."
SNAPSHOTS
Sam Bankman-Fried has been freed on $250 million bail. He will be confined to his parents' home in Palo Alto, California, while he awaits trial. Two of Bankman-Fried’s top former colleagues have pleaded guilty to federal criminal fraud charges and are cooperating with the prosecution against him.
A Chick-fil-A in North Carolina was fined over its "volunteer" program that paid people in meals instead of wages. The Chick-fil-A location in Hendersonville paid seven of its workers who were asked to direct traffic for the drive-thru in meal vouchers instead of the legally required minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Dateline star Keith Morrison opened up about "second-guessing" interviews, the longest cases he's covered, and his rivalry with Josh Mankiewicz. The true crime (and Christmas?) icon took a break from his reporting and podcasting to answer our serious and silly questions.
Jenna Ortega revealed a "cringe" line from the original Wednesday script that she straight-up refused to say. Fans argued that if Ortega had stuck to her script, Wednesday would have come across as a “pick me” character — someone who actively goes out of their way to appear quirky.
IMAGE OF THE DAY
I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a rare biopic that balances the demands of a jukebox musical while also honoring its protagonist’s struggles, Alessa Dominguez writes.
Whitney Houston wasn’t really a publicly introspective woman. That’s part of her mystique, and part of the difficulty and the impetus for so many Houston projects. But I Wanna Dance creates a coherent portrait of what we know. English actor Naomi Ackie has a riveting screen presence, creating her own striking version of Houston — her halting, staccato style of speech, the precise way she moved her lips when she sang, her elegantly measured yet somehow casual and carefree charisma.
When Houston died at 48, it felt very much like she never really had a public catharsis. Beyoncé fired her dad and wrote Lemonade; Britney Spears was released from her conservatorship and is confronting us with her pain over the way her family and the media treated her. Though Whitney never got that moment of reckoning in her lifetime, this new biopic captures the true emotional weight of Houston’s fatigue and her family’s betrayal.
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