Former roommate: Santos had ‘delusions of grandeur’

A former roommate of Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday that the lawmaker now under fire for lies along the campaign trail exhibited “delusions of grandeur” when they lived together in New York City.

“I suppose the biggest thing that I took away from it was just delusions of grandeur,” Gregory Morey-Parker told Don Lemon of his time living with Santos on “CNN This Morning.” 

“He’d go to bars with rolls of hundred-dollar bills and three days later he would have no money,” Morey-Parker said. “Things just started continuously spiraling and getting, like, kind of ridiculously crazy.” 

Santos’s mother was a housekeeper in Manhattan, and it “didn’t seem feasible” for Santos “to supposedly come from all this generational wealth,” the ex-roommate said, further alleging that Santos had stolen a Burberry scarf from him and later wore it to an event the day prior to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  

Morey-Parker also said he’d known the controversial congressman by another name, Anthony Devolder.  

“I’ve never known him as George Santos,” he said. “I was actually quite surprised. I guess he went by his middle name and his mother’s name, but I’ve always known him as Anthony Devolder.”

Just days before he was sworn in to the 118th Congress, Santos admitted to fabricating pieces of his work and education history as he campaigned to represent his Long Island district in the House.

The number of false claims Santos has made includes that he’d earned a college degree and worked directly with top Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and Santos also walked back claims he was Jewish and that his company had lost employees in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida.

Santos is now under federal investigation over his finances and faces calls from both sides of the aisle to step down from his newly assumed House seat.

Democrats have called for House GOP leadership to oust Santos over the lies if he doesn’t resign on his own, and some Republicans have called for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the matter.

Last week, one of Santos’s fellow GOP congressmen from New York became the first sitting Republican House lawmaker to urge Santos to step down.

On Tuesday, the House Republican Steering Committee recommended that Santos sit on the House Small Business Committee and House Science, Space and Technology Committee.