Wade Vandervort / AFP via Getty Images

• Federal prosecutors are looking into Rep-elect George Santos’ finances, per media reports.
• Santos has admitted to lying about parts of his work and education history.
• Santos’ most recent financial disclosure shows a $750,000 salary from a company he founded.

Republican Rep-elect George Santos has already admitted to lying about parts of his resume. Now, it’s his money that’s drawing federal scrutiny.

The US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York is looking into his finances, a source familiar with the matter told CNN and CBS. 

The probe is not a formal investigation at this time and is focused on the source of his wealth, per ABC News.

When Santos first ran for Congress in 2020, he listed a salary of $55,000 and no assets, public filings show, ABC News reported. Santos’ most recent financial disclosure, filed in September, shows a salary of $750,000 and various assets and dividends that amount to at least $2.6 million. The salary is drawn from Devolder Organization, a company he founded in 2021.

Santos also lent $705,000 to his campaign through Devolder, per a Federal Election Commission form filed on December 8. That move, as the Daily Beast reported, may not be legal.

The news of the probe comes on the heels of a New York Times investigation, released on January 19, that revealed Santos lied about several parts of his resume, including his higher education and work history.

Santos previously claimed he had worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. On Monday, he admitted that sections of his work history – including the stints at both Goldman and Citigroup — were made up.

“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” Santos, 34, told the New York Post on Monday.

Among the other controversies Santos has recently been caught in are false claims of a Jewish ancestry and falsely claiming to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010.

Santos has said he still intends to take his seat in the House in January.

Santos did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

• Southwest canceled thousands more flights on Wednesday amid an ongoing wave of travel chaos.
• The airline’s struggles have started spilling over into the travel industry as a whole.
• Stranded passengers are facing rental car shortages and ongoing delays. 

Southwest Airlines’s ongoing cancelation chaos has reverberated throughout the entire travel industry, indirectly impacting scores of passengers beyond the thousands of already-displaced Southwest travelers, many of whom remain stranded in airports across the US following a wave of flight cancelations.

Of the more than 3,000 flight cancellations in the US on Wednesday, Southwest was responsible for more than 80%, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. The company announced Tuesday that affected passengers won’t be able to rebook their flights until Saturday, December 31.

The deadly winter storm that whipped through the country over the weekend ruined plans for hordes of holiday travelers, but Southwest’s antiquated and atypical systems left the airline uniquely vulnerable to fallout from the conditions, airline experts said Tuesday.

While many airlines seemed to be returning to normal operations as the week began, Southwest’s struggles have now seeped into the travel ecosystem at large, forcing other domestic airlines and rental car companies to try and meet skyrocketing demand. 

Other airlines are caught up in the Southwest snowball effect

Waleska Rivera, 43, isn’t even a Southwest ticket holder, but she blames the airline for her travel mishaps even still, she told Insider on Wednesday. 

The Colorado woman and her family were booked on a JetBlue flight from Denver to San Juan, Puerto Rico, scheduled to depart late Tuesday evening with a connection through New York, she said. On Tuesday afternoon, JetBlue announced that the first leg of their trip had been delayed, rendering any chance of making their New York connection fruitless, Rivera said.

Anxious to reach her injured mother in Puerto Rico, Rivera hopped on the phone looking to rebook as soon as possible.

“The first thing JetBlue tells me is to cancel my travel,” Rivera said. “Don’t travel,” she said the airline representative told her.

Rivera explained that she was desperate to reach her elderly mother who took a tumble earlier this month, asking for rebookings, refunds, anything to assuage her frustration. The airline, she said, didn’t offer to rebook the family on a different airline, nor did JetBlue provide compensation, Rivera said, initially blaming the delay on weather conditions.

The soonest Rivera could be rebooked to Puerto Rico was this coming Friday, she said. The JetBlue representative told her that displaced Southwest passengers have been snatching up available tickets, inadvertently displacing JetBlue passengers who need to rebook after their own delays or cancellations. 

A spokesperson for JetBlue did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

With Southwest’s operations essentially stalled, thousands of stranded passengers have turned to other airlines, leading to a spike in demand for tickets during what is already one of the busiest travel periods of the year. 

Twitter users have shared screenshots of outrageous ticket prices across several different airlines amid the pandemonium, with costs climbing upwards of $2,000 for a single domestic ticket in some instances, prompting accusations of price-gouging.

American Airlines and Delta both said they would cap fares for select cities, but ticket prices continued to climb Wednesday amid increasing demand. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told NexstarDC on Wednesday that he was talking with airlines to try and keep them from taking advantage of passengers. 

Southwest Florida International Airport

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The tumult is no longer exclusive to air travel

Stranded Southwest passengers have increasingly turned to other forms of travel as they search for solutions, leading to rental car shortages at airports across the country. 

Several rental companies at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport were completely out of rental cars on Tuesday, even as desperate passengers stood in line for hours hoping to secure transportation, according to WBALTV-1.

Travelers in St. Louis faced a similar struggle. Passengers who weren’t lucky enough to secure a car before the supply ran out, spent the night on the floor of Midway Airport, while others sought strangers with which to carpool, KTVI reported. 

An Enterprise Rent-A-Car manager in Houston told KRIV that desperate people shelled out $1,000 to $2,000 to get a car before the store ran out of vehicles. 

A spokesperson with Enterprise Holdings, which oversees Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, and Alamo, told Insider on Wednesday that the companies have seen a “significant increase” for rental requests in recent days at both airport and neighborhood locations, including a “large jump” in one-way rental requests.

A Hertz representative offered similar sentiments in a statement to Insider, saying the company was dealing with increased demand for new bookings, reservation modifications, and one-way rentals.

(NewsNation) — The city of Jackson, Mississippi, is facing yet another water crisis, this time caused by a winter storm that killed dozens in the northeast and left a swath of the country buried under snow.

In Jackson, where flooding in August pushed the city’s wastewater treatment plant to a breaking point, pipes froze Christmas Day and left residents such as Tekemia Bennett without water yet again.

“It’s almost like the Grinch just came and took it all away again,” Bennett said Wednesday on “CUOMO.” “The worst part is that it’s becoming a normal, when it shouldn’t be … normal for no water in this day and time.”

Mississippi State Rep. Ronnie Crudup said Wednesday on “NewsNation Live” that repairs are being made to the water system, but it won’t be an easy or quick fix.

“But we’re just hoping that we can get through the wintertime and the rest of the year without any more disturbances like this,” Crudup said.

Following partial collapse of the water system in August, the Environmental Protection Agency said in late October that the drinking water was finally safe to drink. Some trace the city’s water troubles back to the 1970s, and the city was under a boil advisory for a month before the August incident.

Bennett said the nearest shower for her and her four children is 20 miles away, and she’s been forced to defecate in a bag since she can’t flush the toilet. In describing the conditions, she said, “I’m gonna get raw with it because the world needs to know that this is a true struggle.”

“Is it fair that I’m having to live like this?” Bennett said. “No water is no joke.”

City officials have attributed the latest problem to “mystery” leaks that have been difficult to identify. Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said city crews have found more than 20 leaks throughout the city, NewsNation affiliate WJTV reported.

Repairs are underway to the city’s water treatment facility, but major work is still needed to completely fix the system.

“I don’t want our residents to believe that those projects in and of themselves will lead to, you know, a more sustainable or resilient system. Right? They will contribute towards it, but it won’t reach us,” Lumumba told WJTV. “We won’t be able to drop a ‘mission accomplished’ banner. Just with those projects, we still need to weatherize our chemical room.”

Lumumba hopes the latest boil-water notice, issued Dec. 25, will be lifted by Saturday.

Despite the efforts by city and state officials, Bennett said enough isn’t being done.

“‘Invisible’ and ‘mystery’ is no good,” Bennett said of the city’s explanation of struggling to locate leaks. “I’m tired of hearing that.”

During a news conference Tuesday, Lumumba called the situation with the current water system a “worst case scenario,” WJTV reported. He warned the city will remain vulnerable until a long-term solution is found for water infrastructure throughout the city.

The water leaks are causing problems for businesses, too. A local bakery has been closed since Tuesday and is losing $7,000 a day, WJTV reported.

“We live and breathe by being able to serve healthy food in a clean environment. We need water to wash our hands. We need water to be able to clean things. We need water to be able to cook. The health department is very clear on their rules. If you do not have the ability to wash your hands, to flush the toilet and to run your dish machine, you shouldn’t open,” said Jeff Good with Magina Bene Restaurant Management Group.

“The real sad part is the loss of opportunity for those that work for us. The majority of our staff, 80 to 90% of our staff are hourly employees. They make money by coming to work and being on the clock.”

When the national political media belatedly did its job and finally exposed last week that most of House Republican candidate George Santos’ life was a lie, it raised a number of questions. One of the big questions for us was whether this would turn out to be a criminal matter. Now we may be about to get that answer.

Lying is only a crime in specific situations, such as lying under oath or lying to obtain a financial gain. But what about lying in order to win an election? The Nassau County District Attorney, a Republican, has announced that she’s investigating to determine whether there was a criminal element to Santos’ lies. It’s also being reported that the EDNY, a division of the DOJ, has launched a federal investigation into Santos.

This means the DA and the DOJ will each be looking under every rock in Santos’ life story, including potentially interviewing everyone in his life. In other words, if Santos has more ugly secrets up his sleeve that the media couldn’t find, they’re about to get dug up by prosecutors and grand juries.

At this point it would be wise for George Santos to resign, beg for mercy, and disappear from public view. But thus far nothing about Santos’ handling of this scandal suggests that he’s wise on any level. For now at least, he seems intent upon taking office and trying to weather the storm, no matter how ugly it might get for him or his Republican Party. And because the current House Republican leadership is nonexistent, there’s no one to shove him out the back door.

This will place enormous pressure on the House Ethics Committee, which will be in Republican hands as of next month, to carry out an investigation into George Santos’ house of cards. Of course the Republicans won’t want to investigate one of their own. But if the media keeps up the pressure on them, they’ll have to. That’s part of why Democratic House leaders are making such a priority of pushing Santos to the front and making sure the media sticks with the story going forward.

The post George Santos is now under criminal investigation – and it changes the game entirely appeared first on Palmer Report.

The U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale of Volcano anti-tank mine-laying systems to Taiwan for an estimated $180 million, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Northrop Grumman and Oshkosh Corporation are the prime contractors for the potential sale.

U.S. law requires the executive branch to notify Congress of potential arms sales that are over a certain amount. But these notifications are usually not made unless lawmakers have given the State Department and Pentagon informal approval to move ahead.

The potential deal comes as China ramps up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan to assert its sovereignty claims, including almost daily Chinese air force missions near the island during the past three years.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said in a statement that the sale would take effect in about a month and that the system would help boost the island’s “asymmetric warfare” capacity to make its forces more agile.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s frequent military activities near Taiwan have posted severe military threats to us,” the ministry said, adding that continuous U.S. military sales are the “cornerstone of maintaining regional stability and peace.”

The United States is Taiwan’s strongest international backer and main source of arms, which angers China.

China claims self-governed Taiwan as its own territory and vows to take the island by force, if necessary. Taiwan strongly rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claim and says it will defend itself if attacked.

Prominent Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho was arrested on Wednesday, exacerbating tensions between the government in La Paz and opposition centered around the affluent farming hub of Santa Cruz.

What do we know about Camacho’s background?

The 43-year-old governor of Santa Cruz is a lawyer and former civic leader who ran for the presidency in 2020 during the first elections held after the ousting of President Evo Morales but he failed to drum up enough support and ended up in third place.

The right-wing governor, often seen in protests with a bible in his hand and a rosary around his neck, led some of the demonstrations demanding that Morales leave power in 2019, gaining popularity with some parts of the electorate.

Bolivia’s state attorney said on Wednesday Camacho’s arrest was connected to the toppling of Morales in 2019.

More recently, he has backed a series of protests in Santa Cruz that started in late October, demanding the national government proceed with a delayed census. A new census would likely give the wealthy farming region more tax revenues and seats in Congress.

The government has said Camacho has the support of elites and economic groups seeking to take control of Santa Cruz.

What is Camacho’s view on the government?

Camacho has long been at odds with the leftist government of President Luis Arce and has sought a federal model of governance for Bolivia in order to avoid “abuses of power by the central government,” he said in a video message published on Tuesday on social media.

“We are going to promote the federal path. We want federalism to unify Bolivia … A federalism so that (the ruling party) MAS respects the way of being of each province,” Camacho said.

Minister of Public Works Edgar Montano accused Camacho of planning more protests and human rights violations that would hurt the people of Santa Cruz.

“The prayers of all the victims of the 2019 coup d’état and the protests of Mr Camacho were heard, and now … we hope that he will answer for the crimes he is accused of,” Montano wrote in a post on Twitter after Camacho’s arrest.

Why is Santa Cruz the center of opposition?

Santa Cruz, one of Bolivia’s most affluent and populous regions, has long butted heads with its political capital of La Paz.

Rising soy and beef exports have given Santa Cruz the status of a top export hub over metal producing areas such as La Paz and Potosi, which has brought calls for in increase in its share of tax revenues.

The protests calling for the census have halted the transport of goods from the region, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Acre’s government has said protesters were led by Santa Cruz’s elite and damaged an economy already hit by the impact of the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale of Volcano anti-tank munition-laying systems to Taiwan for estimated $180 million, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
Northrup Grumman and Oshkosh Corporation are the prime contractors for the potential sale.

Asian share markets fell along with oil prices on Thursday as soaring COVID cases in China unsettled investors who have been expecting the world’s second biggest economy to regather momentum after the relaxation of stringent COVID curbs.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was down 1.06%, and was set for a third straight week of losses.

China shares (.SSEC) opened 0.4% lower, while Hong Kong’s stock market (.HSI) fell 1%. Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) fell more than 1% to a nearly three month low, while Australia’s resource heavy S&P/ASX 200 index (.AXJO) lost 1.18%.

China’s health system has come under heavy stress since Beijing started dismantling its zero-COVID regime at the start of the month.

On Monday, China announced it would end quarantine requirements for inbound travellers on Jan. 8, and several countries, including the United States and Japan, have made COVID tests mandatory for travellers from China.

Nomura analysts said in a note that there could be significant waves of infection across China, spreading from urban to rural areas, during the nationwide travel rush for the Lunar New Year which falls on Jan. 22.

“China may find itself in a difficult situation due to its procrastination on embracing a ‘living with COVID’ approach,” Nomura analysts said, noting that the previous zero-COVID policy could have overprotected people, raising the risk of a surge in infections once the controls were removed.

Concerns that central banks efforts to tame inflation could lead to an economic slowdown and the uncertainty over how China’s economy will fare following the removal of COVID controls have kept markets subdued.

Markets are now pricing in 69% chance of a 25-basis point rate hike when the U.S. Federal Reserve holds a policy review in February, and they are now looking at U.S. rates peaking at 4.94% in the first half of next year.

The Fed raised interest rates by 50 bps earlier in December after delivering four consecutive 75 bps hikes but has said it may need to keep higher interest rates for longer.

U.S. treasury yields have risen as traders attempt to assess the impact of China reopening its economy on the Fed’s rate hike policy.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down 2.2 basis points to 3.864%, not far off six-week high of 3.89% it hit in the previous session.

The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was down 2.1 basis points to 3.956%. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was down 1 basis point at 4.349%.

In the commodities market, U.S. crude fell 0.52% to $78.55 per barrel and Brent was at $82.84, down 0.5% on the day. Surging COVID cases in China has raised doubts over a fast recovery in fuel demand in the world’s second-biggest oil consumer.

Spot gold added 0.2% to $1,807.98 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.17% to $1,805.80 an ounce.

In the currency market, the Japanese yen strengthened 0.56% versus the greenback at 133.70 per dollar, while sterling was last trading at $1.2044, up 0.26% on the day.

The dollar index , which measures the dollar against six major currencies, fell 0.057%, with the euro up 0.19% to $1.0628.