George Santos Joins Cameo as “Former Congressional Icon”

Newly ousted Representative George Santos already has a new job: making videos on Cameo. And at least there’s proof of this latest addition to his résumé.

Cameo is a website where people can pay for a personalized video from their favorite celebrities. Santos, who has dubbed himself a “former congressional ‘icon,’” is charging $200 for a video or just $10 for a personalized message.

In one of his first videos on Cameo, Santos says, “They can boot me out of Congress, but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger than life personality, nor my good faith and the absolute pride I have for everything I’ve done.”

Santos does not specify what he means by “everything I’ve done,” but if he’s referring to his work in Congress, then perhaps he should have less pride in it. During his 11 months on Capitol Hill, Santos introduced 40 bills or resolutions. All of them died in committee without a vote.

Santos also co-sponsored 152 bills. The only one that became law was an act creating a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Santos did, however, lie about his professional, academic, and athletic background. He has falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He also lied about founding an animal rescue charity and producing the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

He was federally charged with 23 counts of various types of financial fraud. Santos pleaded not guilty to the initial 13 in May, and he has denied the additional 10 that were filed in October in a superseding indictment. Earlier this year, he agreed to a deal with Brazilian authorities investigating him for financial fraud so he could avoid prosecution.

Santos did become the sixth member of Congress ever expelled, when his colleagues finally gave him the boot on Friday. A House Ethics Report revealed Santos repeatedly used his campaign to solicit donations, only to use that money for personal expenses, including buying designer goods and makeup, getting cosmetic procedures, and “smaller purchases at OnlyFans.”

Santos told reporters last week that he plans to write a book and wouldn’t rule out a turn on the reality competition show Dancing With the Stars. But for now, he’s just on Cameo.

If you buy a Cameo video for him, though, maybe try to avoid giving him your credit card information directly. You could end up like Representative Max Miller.

House Republicans released more of Hunter Biden’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Monday’s revelation appeared to be yet another major miss.

“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” Representative James Comer, who chairs the committee and has spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens, said in a video.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world.”

The payments did come from an account linked to Owasco, a company Hunter Biden set up to handle income from foreign business deals. The Oversight Committee released one bank statement showing Owasco transferred $1,380 to Joe Biden on September 17, 2018—when Biden was not in office.

What Comer does not say is that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018, a committee aide told the Washington Examiner, speaking anonymously. (That’s a total of less than $4,500.)

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem as though Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

In 2019, Hunter’s then personal assistant, Katie Dodge, sent multiple messages regarding his bills. In one, sent on January 17, she said that Biden would pay his son’s bills “in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career.”

That email included a PDF of the payments Hunter needed to make. The document showed Hunter owed $1,380 to his father for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck. Dodge had reminded Hunter about the $1,380 truck repayment he owed his father in an email she had sent three days earlier.

“The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck,” Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Monday. “When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”

Republicans repeatedly cite Hunter when arguing that the president is guilty of corruption. House GOP leaders could move this week toward a vote on formally opening an impeachment probe into Biden. But Republicans consistently fail to show that Biden is guilty of anything.

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, depicting several national parks overrun with immigrants.

The ad used artificial intelligence to create images of different national parks in the style of vintage travel posters. The parks, which include the Grand Canyon and the National Mall, are filled with tents that supposedly belong to undocumented immigrants.

“More crime. Less tourism. No beauty,” the ad says. “Democrats’ National Parks.”

The ad is an attempted jab at Democrats who voted last week to block a bill that would prohibit using public lands for temporary housing for migrants applying for asylum. The bill passed in the House on Thursday by a vote of 224–203. Six Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Many Democrats have warned that the bill is a Republican messaging tactic ahead of 2024, when GOP candidates are expected to make draconian immigration policies a major part of their platforms.

Those critics were proven right Monday with the RNCC ad. The ad combines two popular Republican talking points: opposing immigration and accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. But not only is the ad deeply xenophobic, it’s also false. A study released in July by a team of economists from Stanford University found that immigration has not caused crime rates to increase in 140 years.

Trevian Kutti, one of Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference trial, seems to have broken her bond with an off-the-cuff Instagram Live last week—and may even be indicted again.

On Tuesday, the publicist implied that she would “fuck up” the life of state witness Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia poll worker whose life was turned upside down by conspiracy theorists, after the trial.

“As a matter of fact there’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows this whole thing is a lie, who knows I never did anything, who knows I never—who knows she begged me for help,” Kutti fumed, according to an Instagram Live video captured by MeidasTouch. “There’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows I’m gonna fuck her whole life up when this is done.”

Kutti, who previously worked for Kanye West and R. Kelly, faces three charges in the election interference case: conspiring to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, violating the state’s racketeering law, and intimidating witnesses to make false claims of election fraud.

She spent the better part of the Instagram Live session asking for donations to help her in her legal battles.

“We got this. So I just wanted to give an update. I think all of you know what I’m dealing with in Georgia. I just want to come and say look, the fight is the fight. I have some things coming up very soon where I’ll be delivering a few blows and I just want to let ya’ll know I’m here for ya’ll,” Kutti shared.

Legal experts predicted that the Live overstepped Kutti’s bond agreement, which plainly bars her not just from intimidating witnesses but also from posting about the case on social media.

“I suspect we’ll see a motion to revoke Trevian Kutti’s consent bond for witness intimidation of Ruby Freeman within the next two hours and would not be shocked if she’s indicted again for an additional racketeering act by the Grand Jury,” posted Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

“It’ll be the state’s burden to demonstrate to the court the meaning of Trevian Kutti’s statement and that it was a violation of the terms of her bond and the public interest favors remand if the state so moves. I don’t think they’ll have a hard time with that showing here,” he added.

This year’s oil magnate president of COP28, the United Nations–backed climate change summit, is desperately trying to walk back a string of incendiary comments in which he claimed there was “no science” behind the effort to phase out fossil fuels.

“I respect the science in everything I do. I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as COP28 president. We have always built everything, every step of the way, on the science, on the facts,” Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber said during a hastily arranged press conference on Monday.

“I know that there are strong views among some [countries], about the phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels. Allow me to say this again: This is the first [COP] presidency ever to actively call on parties to come forward with language on all fossil fuels for the negotiated text,” he said.

But Al Jaber’s insistence on the “facts” falls in stark contrast to what he said just a few days ago.

Al Jaber—who happens to be the president and host of the Dubai-based COP28 as well as the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc—upset the international consortium of climate scientists after he challenged former Irish President Mary Robinson during a She Changes Climate event on November 21.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” Al Jaber said at the time.

“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he added after Robinson cited reports that Adnoc was planning to invest in more fossil fuel initiatives.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres railed against those claims on Friday, arguing that “the science is clear.”

“The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe,” he said.

Other climate scientists joined the chorus, affirming that Al Jaber’s terminology was “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial,” reported The Guardian.

More than 100 countries signed a joint statement last month calling for the phaseout of the limited energy source.

Last week, the summit released the most damning climate report to date, which noted that 2023 was both the hottest year on record and the coolest for years to come.