Embattled Rep. George Santos has claimed that reports and videos documenting him performing in drag are both “outrageous” and “categorically false.”
But nearly a dozen years ago, Santos himself appears to have confirmed that he participated in drag shows while he was a teenager living in Brazil.
A Wikipedia page accessed by POLITICO shows a user named Anthony Devolder — a Santos alias — writing that he “startted [sp] his ‘stage’ life at age 17 as an gay night club [sp] DRAG QUEEN and with that won sevral [sp] GAY ‘BEAUTY PAGENTS [sp].’”
The Wiki biography was last edited on April 29, 2011. It contains basic information that matches up with the newly sworn-in congressman, including Devolder being born on July 22, 1988, to a Brazilian family with a European background.
Santos has used the name Anthony Devolder elsewhere for online accounts.
His office referred calls for comment to an outside aide, who did not immediately respond. But if the person who created the Anthony Devolder Wiki bio was anyone other than Santos, it would mean someone used the same alias and same biographical details as him a dozen years ago, all for a user page no one else would see.
The surfacing of the Wiki biography is another twist in a weeks-long saga of lies and embellishments. The New York Republican has been caught fabricating his own resume on everything from his business career, educational achievements and the nature of his mother’s death. He has admitted that he misled about critical parts of his biography, but has also insisted that other politicians have done the same.
The Wiki bio for Anthony Devolder, which is full of spelling and grammatical errors, appears to contain fantastical descriptions of his supposed career in show business. It claims that he had a part in Disney’s “Hannah Montana,” among other examples.
It was, it appears, just the first in several attempts by Santos to edit his bio on the internet encyclopedia — steps that further show the degree to which he has gone to curate his life story.
In November, a Wiki user named Devmaster88 edited the Wikipedia page for then congressman-elect George Santos (a page separate from the Wiki bio for Anthony Devolder). The user changed the section about Santos’ personal life and made edits to his middle name. Around that time another account, georgedevolder22, also made edits to Santos’ public Wikipedia page, removing the entire middle name, Anthony Devolder, so that the biography was shortened to George Santos.
The identity of the users is not revealed by Wikipedia. But both accounts have subsequently been blocked from the site. Moderators, as part of the ban, wrote that Devmaster88 was “abusing multiple accounts” and that it was likely an extension of Georgedevolder22.
Santos, a Republican, has pushed back on relatively few accusations that he has lied about his past. But he did deny the drag performances that were first revealed by MSNBC reporter Marisa Kabas, who posted a photo she alleges to be of Santos dressed in drag in 2008. Kabas also spoke with a Brazilian drag queen who allegedly was friends with Santos when he lived near Rio de Janeiro and used the stage name Kitara.
On Thursday, the New York Post translated a video from Portuguese in which a person who appears to be Santos discusses performing in drag. The video was laterposted online by the Daily Mail.
Santos has rebuffed repeated calls from fellow Republicans to resign his seat over the fabrications, even as he has come under investigation over his finances. In recent days he denied separate allegations from New Jersey veterans claiming that he absconded with thousands of dollars earmarked for life-saving surgery for one of their sick dogs.
In the 2011 Wiki bio, the user Anthony Devolder sprinkles show business credits that ring similarly untrue. He describes his Hollywood career as taking off after a meeting with a producer of the 1996 blockbuster “Independence Day.” He name drops the director Steven Spielberg (he misspelled his last name as “Spilberg”), and claims to have started in “a few T.V shows and DISNEY Channel shows such as ‘the suite life of Zack and Cody” and the hit “Hanna[h] Montana.”
The Wiki bio concludes with Santos writing that, two years prior, he “taped his very first movie startting [sp] Uma Turman, [sp] Chris Odanald, [sp] Melllisa George, [sp] and Alicia Silver Stone [sp] in the movie “THE INVASION.”
“The Invasion” is a 2007 sci-fi/thriller with roots in the “Body Snatchers” storyline and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.