George Santos threatened me after I wrote about him : NPR

I was finishing my work day here in Los Angeles when my phone rang at 5:37 pm from a blocked number. It was former Congressman George Santos. He was seething with rage.

The day before, I published a story revealing that the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had opened investigations into his trading activity on the Kalshi prediction market site.

Company officials detected that he was betting against his appearance at Trump’s State of the Union address in February, just as he posted a video on X gushing to his followers about how excited he was to attend. With the help of three sources, I was able to confirm that Kalshi referred the matter to federal authorities in the Southern District of New York and Washington.

Before the story, I emailed him and he called me from a blocked number. So when my phone rang again due to a blocked number, I had a pretty good idea who it could be.

Santos, whose political rise and fall was characterized by a notorious trail of lies and falsehoods, claimed that my story was riddled with errors. He said, “My lawyers have been calling the Department of Justice all day and they can’t find any investigation.”

While we were talking, I asked if I could record the call. He said no. But I was in front of a keyboard, furiously writing down each word.

I asked him who his lawyers are and he refused to answer. I asked him if he really has lawyers. He replied: “I’m fucking George Santos, of course I have a legal team.”

He then proceeded to insult and attack NPR’s reputation, the type of investigation that is common when reporting on people trying to discredit journalists and news organizations for stories they don’t like.

What Santos said next made me recoil, even by his outlandish and brash standards.

“This story is going to put a gun in your face,” Santos said.

I asked him what he meant by that.

“You know what I mean.”

It didn’t exactly seem like an imminent threat to my life that a convicted fraudster, as Congress explained it, who lives thousands of miles from me in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, was directing violent words at me.

It felt more strange than threatening, but then it became even more strange and confusing.

While he was calling me from a blocked number, I located his cell phone from a public records search and sent him a text message confirming it was him. He greeted him launching into a total denial. “I NEVER SAID ‘this story would point a gun in your face, I said ‘it would blow up in your face,'” he wrote in a text message.

Then he called me “a crazy man,” “a clown,” among other broadsides.

Santos was already denying his violent threat before I publicly confronted him for doing so.

Not long after, he used his favorite megaphone,

“I’ve interacted with hundreds of reporters in my life…never once was I threatening or aggressive…brazen? Sure, but aggressive and threatening? NEVER!” he wrote.

In the post, he added: “He is now demanding that I reveal the names of my attorneys ‘or else’ (God only knows what that means).”

Which is a fiction. I asked him who his lawyers are, but the “or else” is Santos’ fantasy, perhaps his way of making me the threatening actor in all of this.

Threats against journalists are disturbingly common. Most are attacked by online trolls or aggressive lawyers and public relations agents trying to protect their clients.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know when it’s frivolous or hyperbole, or when you should take it seriously.

I wondered if I should report this. After all, drama and attention are oxygen for someone like Santos, who has become something of an internet troll since President Trump commuted his prison sentence, giving him back his freedom and access to X.

But given their misinterpretations of how it all happened and their quick work trying to cover their tracks, I thought it was worth setting the record straight.

Since I broke the story about the federal investigations into Santos, the Associated Press reported that Polymarket cut ties with Santos, who had been paid by Kalshi’s rival company to boost social media posts featuring some of its prediction markets.

He also appears to hope to generate new business on Cameo, the site where celebrities are paid to record personalized videos.

Santos is now offering a 55% discount on his Cameo videos, which means that for $150, you’ll record yourself saying almost anything. Although there’s no guarantee he won’t deny it later in X.