George Santos, Lies, and Jewishness

I am skeptical of the new state and federal criminal investigations of George Santos will lead anywhere. I am persuaded by Eugene Volokh's arguments that campaign lies cannot be prosecuted--that counter-speech from the press and the rival candidate provide a sufficient check. (See this explanation for how opposition research works and why the Democrats failed so badly). Of course, that position rests in part on the difficulty of separating fact and opinion in political speech and in determining falsity in statements about complex policy and voting records. Santos presents something without nuance or uncertainty-factual and provably untrue statements about graduating from a college or having a grandparent born in one country at one time. But many people in American life, including politics, invent their biographies. I imagine SCOTUS would situated this in its recent line of cases refusing to criminalize politics.

There is a tempting counter argument that a candidate lying to get elected is akin to a job applicant lying in an interview--false statements to obtain a paying job (and the power that comes with it). But I think the public and widespread scope of campaign speech--paradoxically, speech is easier to sanction when it is said to a smaller group than a larger one--distinguishes the cases.

There is a nice question of whether this  affected the election and how that affects our sense of whether government can sanction his lies. Santos did not face a primary challenge for the nomination. He won the general election by more than 20,000 votes. I doubt that,when party affiliation is everything for many voters, 21,000 Republican voters would have voted differently had they known the truth about his background, education, and work history. Seeing the House GOP caucus embracing Santos and laughing about the story bolsters that thought. Perhaps Jewish identity would have prevailed over party identity, revolting against efforts to falsely appropriate our history and culture, especially the Holocaust. But I doubt it would have been 21,000 Jewish Republicans worth.

One unrelated point: Should Jews take pride that a political candidate lied to make himself Jewish and to attach himself to the name "Zabrovsky," the kind of name early-20th-century Jews ran away from. Maybe our societal position is not as tenuous as people fear--at least not in New York's Third Congressional District.