Santos even had a suspended driver's license.

In late 2021, an opposition research firm hired by Santos’ team to conduct a “vulnerability study” on the candidate found no evidence of Santos’ purported degrees from Baruch College and New York University, the New York Times reported on Friday.

The company did find records of evictions, a suspended Florida driver’s license, his involvement with a company accused of a Ponzi scheme, and that the openly gay candidate had been married to a woman, the news outlet reported.

The research firm’s findings startled some members of Santos’ team so much so that they urged him to drop out of the race, according to the report.


https://nypost.com/2023/01/14/george-santos-dismissed-calls-to-drop-out-after-startling-background-check/

Santos's Lies Were Known to Some Well-Connected Republicans

In late 2021, as he prepared to make a second run for a suburban New York City House seat, George Santos gave permission for his campaign to commission a routine background study on him.

Campaigns frequently rely on this kind of research, known as vulnerability studies, to identify anything problematic that an opponent might seize on. But when the report came back on Mr. Santos, the findings by a Washington research firm were far more startling, suggesting a pattern of deception that cut to the heart of the image he had cultivated as a wealthy financier.

Some of Mr. Santos’s own vendors were so alarmed after seeing the study in late November 2021 that they urged him to drop out of the race, and warned that he could risk public humiliation by continuing. When Mr. Santos disputed key findings and vowed to continue running, members of the campaign team quit, according to three of the four people The New York Times spoke to with knowledge of the study.

The episode, which has not been previously reported, is the most explicit evidence to date that a small circle of well-connected Republican campaign professionals had indications far earlier than the public that Mr. Santos was spinning an elaborate web of deceits, and that the candidate himself had been warned about just how vulnerable those lies were to unraveling.






https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/nyregion/george-santos-republicans-lies.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Idaho Republican 'Deeply Sorry' For Comparing Human Women To Dairy Cows

Earlier this week, newly minted Republican Idaho state Rep. Jack Nelson (R-Jerome) went to his very first meeting of the state House Agricultural Affairs Committee, where he introduced himself by saying “I’ve milked a few cows, spent most of my time walking behind lines of cows, so if you want some ideas on repro and the women’s health thing, I have some definite opinions.”

He then laughed at what he thought was his own very funny joke.

Surprisingly enough, the comparison of women to farm animals did not go over particularly well, resulting in a whole lot of criticism both in op-eds and on social media.

“The way I phrased my statement about women and reproductive rights yesterday completely missed the mark,” Nelson said in an emailed statement to the Idaho Statesman. “I am deeply sorry. I recognize the mistake and commit to doing better in the future."




https://www.wonkette.com/idaho-jack-nelson-women-cows-abortion

George Santos Raised Money for Company the SEC Says Was a Ponzi Scheme

WASHINGTON—Embattled Rep. George Santos persuaded at least one person to make a six-figure investment in a Florida-based company that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later said was a Ponzi scheme, according to people familiar with the matter and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Santos was hired in 2020 to raise capital for the company, Harbor City Capital, and landed at least one significant investment from a wealthy investor, the people said. When the investment failed to deliver on the promised returns, according to one of the people, Mr. Santos sought to reassure the investor by saying he had personally raised nearly $100 million and had invested his own family’s money in Harbor City.

Mr. Santos, a 34-year-old freshman Republican member of Congress from Long Island, is facing calls to resign from Democrats and a number of New York Republicans amid investigations into his campaign finances and lies he told during his campaign, pertaining to his education, work history, wealth, ancestry and other matters. The Republicans’ narrow majority in the House made his vote crucial for the election of Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

Mr. Santos has admitted to lying about working at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. but has defended his experience in the financial-services sector, saying in one interview: “I did work in the industry for a number of years.”

Mr. Santos’s financial-industry experience, according to his résumé, included a job in 2017 with a company that organized conferences for money managers and private-wealth investors, as well as his 2020 stint at Harbor City Capital. Harbor City has been in receivership since soon after the SEC accused it of being a Ponzi scheme in a 2021 civil lawsuit. Mr. Santos was paid for work he did at Harbor City, according to the receiver, Katherine Donlon. She declined to comment further on Mr. Santos’s work for Harbor City.




https://www.wsj.com/articles/george-santos-raised-money-for-company-the-sec-says-was-a-ponzi-scheme-11673669864

Tweet of the Weekend

Introducing Miss USA

Trump Said Accuser Thought It 'Sexy to Be Raped'

Donald Trump claimed that E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of sexual assault, said that “rape was sexy” and “indicated that she loved it” when he was deposed in connection to her defamation lawsuit in October, Insider reports.

Said Trump: “She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until the commercial break. In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped.”

Trump was misrepresenting comments Carroll made about why she doesn’t like to use the word rape in a 2019 interview.



https://politicalwire.com/2023/01/14/trump-said-accuser-thought-it-sexy-to-be-raped/

Santos campaign deliberately charged donors' credit cards without consent.

FEC records show the donor who spoke to TPM gave at least $2,000 to the Santos campaign between March and June of 2021. According to the donor, they did not intend to make any contributions following their initial donation for Santos’ 2020 run. When they saw the charges on their credit card statement, the donor reached out to WinRed, a platform for Republican donations that was used by the Santos campaign.

“I contacted WinRed donor support because that was listed as the merchant on my Amex statement. That was a whole months-long process because they couldn’t find these transactions even though they were listed as the merchant,” the donor said. “They had no record of them in their system.”

The donor provided TPM with copies of emails they exchanged with WinRed’s donor support team. In one of the messages, the donor indicated they were not getting any response from the Santos campaign. In another, a customer service representative said WinRed was unable to find any record of the two $1,000 contributions.

In that message, WinRed asked the donor to provide personal information including their email, the last four digits of their credit card, and the charge ID number from their credit card statement.

Santos’ filings with the FEC also indicate the donor was refunded $2,000 on June 4 of that year. However, getting the refunds wasn’t the end of the saga for the donor.

As they were working with WinRed, the donor said new charges began to appear on their American Express card. They provided TPM with copies of their credit card statements showing four more charges from the Santos campaign between June and July of 2021.

These four new charges were for three different amounts that added up to $7,400. Two of the charges came on the same day. Combined with the two contributions that were refunded, the credit card statements provided by the donor indicates they were charged a total of $9,400 by the Santos campaign during the 2022 cycle. That amount is well over the legal limit for individual contributions in a given election cycle, which is $5,800. It is also, the donor said, not anything they intended to give.




https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/george-santos-tina-forte-flag-credit-card-charges

Minnesota Democrats pledge recreational marijuana will become legal in 2023

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Minnesota Democrats on Thursday pledged that they would pass recreational marijuana this session with their new majorities in both chambers, which helps clear a path for the effort previously stymied by Republicans.

"I believe 2023 will be the year we legalize adult-use cannabis," says Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, the bill's author. "Cannabis should not be illegal in Minnesota. Minnesotans deserve the freedom and respect to make responsible decisions about cannabis themselves. Our current laws are doing more harm than good."

The sweeping legislation that's nearly 250 pages long would legalize the purchase, sale and use of recreational cannabis for Minnesotans 21 or older. It would also expunge low-level cannabis convictions, which Democrats say is an equity issue because Black residents are disproportionately arrested for possession, according to data from the ACLU.

The bill advanced out of the Minnesota House two years ago but didn't go anywhere in the Senate, then controlled by Republicans. Still, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, in a statement noted concerns and urged Democrats not to rush to pass. It is scheduled for its first hearing next week, but will likely take months to move through the legislative process because it will be discussed in multiple committees.



https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/house-dems-introduce-legalized-recreational-pot-bill-gov-walz-says-hes-ready-to-sign-it-into-law/

Illinois enacts sweeping abortion, gender-affirming care safeguards

CHICAGO (AP) — Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday signed into law sweeping reproductive health care legislation to protect out-of-state abortion seekers, adding Illinois to the list of states that have placed legal reinforcements around the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In addition to shielding reproductive and gender-affirming health care patients and providers from legal action originating across state lines, the act will also protect the Illinois licenses of health care providers licensed in multiple states who provide treatment legal in Illinois but may cost them their license in a state where it’s not. The measure also prevents insurers from charging more for out-of-network care when in-network providers object to treatment on moral grounds.

“Here in Illinois, we know that reproductive care is health care,” Pritzker said. “A medical decision should be made between a patient and their health care provider.”

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June left abortion legalization up to the states, Planned Parenthood of Illinois has seen people seeking treatment from 33 states, compared with 10 to 15 before the ruling. Planned Parenthood spokesperson Mary Jane Maharry said roughly 30 percent of its patients are from outside of Illinois, compared to about 6 percent pre-Dobbs.





https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/illinois-enacts-sweeping-abortion-gender-affirming-care-safeguards