House Rep. George Santos is said to have dressed up as a drag queen named "Kitara" when he lived in Brazil more than a decade ago. As more details about the congressman's complicated life come to light, more questions are being raised about his true identity.
According to an article from the Substack site "The Handbasket" by reporter Marisa Kabas, a photo from 2008 shows Santos in a drag costume. Santos is said to have used a number of aliases in the past because he had trouble telling the truth.
Eula Rochard, a drag queen in Brazil and a former friend of Santos, gave Kabas the most recent information about Santos's childhood.
The report says that Santos and Rochard met when Rochard was already a well-known drag queen in a city near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
She said of Santos, who used to go by Anthony back then, "I think I met him when he was 16 or 17." "He would hang out at my place while his mom played Bingo."
People say that Santos has gone by the names Anthony Devolder and Anthony Zabrovsky.
The first-year congressman became a joke all over the country after he was caught lying about his college education, work history, and Jewish heritage, among other things.
The personal story he used to run for office was mostly debunked by a bombshell report in the New York Times just before the start of his first term.
Local, state, and federal officials are looking into the lawmaker's long list of lies and his campaign financing, and prosecutors in Brazil have reopened a fraud case from 2008 against him.
Santos has refused to step down, even though he is the first openly gay Republican who was not already in the House to be elected.
Rochard told Kabas that she recently saw Santos on Brazilian TV and told her friends who knew Santos when she did that she thought it was him. When her friends didn't believe her, she found the old photo and posted it on Instagram.
She told Kabas, "The photo was taken in 2008 at the Pride Parade on Icarai Beach in Niteroi." "George went missing for a little while and then came back to Brazil with a lot of money. The picture was taken around the same time."
According to the report, Rochard said that Santos never did drag as a job.
She is said to have said, "He didn't have what it takes to be a pro." "George wasn't cool enough for that."
Rochard insisted that Santos had "lied about everything."
"He used to make up stories, and most of them were about money, like how his dad was rich," she told Kabas. "But then people started to wonder why his mom worked as a maid. There's nothing wrong with being a maid, but if his father was wealthy, why?"