Just when you think the George Santos stories can’t get worse, they do.
The one is by Patch staff reporter Jacqueline Sweet. In “Disabled Veteran: George Santos Took $3K From Dying Dog's GoFundMe”, Sweet reported late yesterday that in March 2016 the disabled veteran Richard Osthoff, who was living in a tent in an abandoned chicken coop in Howell, NJ, had a problem with his service dog Sapphire, a pit mix given him by a veteran’s charity. Sapphire had developed a stomach tumor that would be deadly without surgery, and Osthoff learned that surgery would cost $3,000. A vet tech steered Ostoff to a pet charity named Friends of Pets United, a charity that it turns out was run by Anthony Devolder — who now calls himself George Santos.
Osthoff and another veteran, retired police Sgt. Michael Boll (who tried to help in 2016), both told Patch that Santos set up a GoFundMe for Sapphire that raised the $3,000, then closed the GoFundMe site and disappeared. Sapphire died some weeks later.
Josh Marshall reported late yesterday:
In a rarity for Santos, he flatly denies the story. “Fake. No clue who this is,” he texted Semafor. But read the story. The confirmation is overwhelming. There are numerous social media posts from 2016 showing Santos running the GoFundMe.
(As if anyone would believe anything Santos said!)
The story gets worse when Osthoff finds out that the surgery won’t happen and writes to Santos: Santos brushes him off, saying that Osthoff is trying to mooch off Santos’s charity!
As Josh Marshall wrote: “This is deep level sociopathy.”
So it’s perfect for a Republican, no? Is it any wonder that McCarthy and his fellow DC Republicans are still backing Santos?