Federal prosecutors, in a filing in August 2022, noted that since the publication of a New York Times article exposing fabrications in Santos’s biography, he had essentially embarked on a speaking tour.
This tour culminated on August 19 when Santos pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
While there will be some follow-up appearances, including his sentencing scheduled for February 2025, which could result in multiple years of imprisonment and substantial restitution, Santos’s public pronouncements have largely ceased. Outside the Long Island courthouse, he abandoned his claims of a “witch hunt” and offered a halting apology for his “unethical” conduct and the “lies” he told, promising to make amends.
Beyond this, Santos has little left to say. His meteoric rise and subsequent fall on the national stage are complete, even though his example remains.
Santos’s story resembles a character out of Twain, Melville, or even “Goodfellas”—a grifter from Queens perpetually seeking a quick buck and a good time. A gambler in various ways, Santos wagered on his ability to defraud animal lovers out of donations and even ventured to Atlantic City. He had a penchant for entertainment, seeking to both participate in it and entertain others. He experimented with different careers and biographies, sampling call center jobs and small-time hustles. However, he didn’t achieve widespread fame until he donned the costume of a politician and entered the annals of history. In doing so, he exposed the deep-seated corruption within American politics. He embodied almost everything that is wrong with that established, bureaucratic world; he also served as a warning of what may lie ahead.
He served less than a year in office before his expulsion in December 2023, declaring that he would wear this expulsion like a “badge of honor,” mimicking Donald Trump. Predictably, his hustling continued. Santos’s first quick fix was selling video clips to ordinary people on the Cameo platform, agreeing to say anything, even “Happy Hanukkah,” for the right price. As usual with Santos, this strategy worked—for a while. The disgraced former congressman broke records for the highest first-day, first-week, and first-month earnings on Cameo, as confirmed by the company’s co-founder and CEO earlier this year.
While those videos were entertaining, like many aspects of the Santos saga, they merely served as a sweet topping to a much more perplexing story. What compels someone to lie the way Santos did? And what does it say about the United States that this hustle was so successful for so long?
These questions are distinct from those Santos partially dodged by avoiding a full-fledged jury trial. They are not concerned with hearing in excruciating detail where his money went and who aided his schemes. But they help explain why Santos briefly attained notoriety as a public figure, his chip on his shoulder leading to one of the greatest performances of the 21st century, a wild ride that people could gawk at but likely couldn’t stomach themselves. Nevertheless, there is something intriguing, even relatable, about his shameless self-transformation, his desperate pursuit of fame and riches, his attempt to bulldoze his way into the stratosphere where titans of power seemingly effortlessly earn wealth, merely by being beautiful, amusing, or loud. Couldn’t he embody all these qualities, and more?
He was, after all, a product of America, shaped by a culture that encourages myth-makers to rise and thrive. Through his bizarre antics and dumb luck, he became an American legend, another hustler who got away with the con for a time, utilizing every trick in the book. He didn’t break our political system—he simply revealed how broken it already was.
Although Santos’s fleeting moment in Congress is largely fading into the past, these issues remain even more pressing. The political climate’s number of hucksters has decreased by one, but its fundamental nature remains unchanged. Santos’s story demonstrates how easily one can attract attention and invent a persona, evade consequences, leave a trail of victims, and still portray oneself as a victim. He understood that liars and losers can prevail in this country simply by blustering, being outrageous and shameless, and persistent. He’s not alone.