George Santos Bets Against Himself

Got time for a moment of sublime absurdity? Believe me, if this story had broken over the weekend it would have featured prominently in the Carnival of Fools, my ongoing chronicle of political idiocy. The Carnival, which began in September 2024, has several spiritual fathers, and prime among them is my man George Santos, that lovably criminal rapscallion who got himself elected to Congress with a hilariously fraudulent résumé: he claimed to be a banker at Goldman Sachs during a period when he was, in fact, a drag queen trading under the name “Kitara Ravache” in the barrios of Rio de Janeiro.

There was clearly something pathological about Santos’s behavior: Before his term was even over, he had been indicted by federal authorities for multiple flagrant campaign-finance violations. He was then expelled from Congress (by his own party). After a plea deal in August 2024, he was carted away to federal prison. And that was the end of George Santos, or so we thought.

I’m not going to lie, I loved all of it at the time. Some kinds of corruption and dishonesty are just so comically absurd that you can’t even get too angry about it; Santos was already getting his comeuppance, so there was nothing left to do except rubberneck at the spectacle. The feds could indict Santos on several counts of wire fraud, but as far as I was concerned they could never indict Santos for so fearlessly living — and then concealing — His Truth.

Then Donald Trump won office. And in November of last year, he commuted George Santos’s sentence, freeing him. It was a fitting denouement for the man; among noteworthy fraudsters, with which Washington has always been stocked, he could skulk back into the shadows as a passingly noteworthy example.

Some fraudsters make comebacks, but I doubt there will be any such for George Santos. Because as it turns out, character is usually destiny. We discovered yesterday that Santos is now being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trade Commission for . . . you guessed it, fraud! Specifically, insider trading on the notorious political betting market Kalshi.

You might be wondering how Santos could be an “insider” in any event, given that he’s an ex-con living in New York. Well, one thing he knows for sure is himself. And in a brazen con job, he first announced that he would be attending January’s State of the Union address. Since Kalshi brags about having “markets in everything,” even the utterly trivial, there was a lot of money flowing around that night, with bets placed on which political celebrities would be in the House gallery. With his Twitter confirmation, the “odds” of his attendance soared in the market. And then Santos secretly bet heavily against himself attending. Needless to say, he wasn’t there (on Twitter he claimed “airport delays” had prevented him from making it). And he cleaned up with the deception, until Kalshi noticed to whom it was paying out tens of thousands of dollars.

Insider trading scandals on these new political gambling markets are now a genuinely scandalous fact of life. They are also incredibly easy to conceal and difficult to police. Which is why I love George Santos for being so howlingly, stupidly obvious in his fraudulence. It’s downright heartwarming in a way. Did he not think that regulators would inquire into the identity of the one guy in the market who suddenly bet against Santos appearing? Did he not think Kalshi would recognize what was going on?

I can’t tell you whether Santos is going to be charged over this — the Trump DOJ has not been particularly diligent about enforcing the law against its allies — but it certainly says something that they’re even willing to reveal that they’re investigating him. And I thank God that there still exist people as self-defeatingly, rake-steppingly stupid as George Santos. I don’t think he’ll stop until he’s (back) in prison, because I don’t think he knows how to stop. I know where I’m placing my bet.