George Santos says he will revive his drag queen persona on Cameo
Former Rep. George Santos announced Monday that he will revive his drag queen persona in customized videos for sale on Cameo.
Santos, the first-term Republican who was ousted from Congress in December, said on X that he would create the Cameo account for his drag alter ego, Kitara Rivache, for a limited time.
“Y’all weren’t ready for this drop?” Santos, 35, said. “I’ve decided to bring Kitara out of the closet after 18 years!”
The personalized videos that he creates on Cameo — a digital platform that lets fans pay celebrities to record short, customized videos — will cost $350 each, according to the new account’s page. Santos started using Cameo just days after he was ousted from Congress; in December, he told Semafor that the money he made on the platform in just 48 hours exceeded the $170,000 he would have made serving in Congress for the entire year.
The disgraced former congressman from New York said 20% of the proceeds from his Kitara videos will go to two nonprofits: International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which aims to build support for Israel by fostering connections between Jews and Christians; and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which supports first responders, military service members, veterans and, according to its website, helps “America to Never Forget September 11, 2001.”
Tunnel to Towers told NBC News in an email that it had not engaged with Santos or his team and that it only learned about potential donations when Santos tweeted it on Monday.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Santos’ announcement.
In 2022, Santos was accused of falsely claiming that he is Jewish and that his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Santos told the New York Post in an interview later that year that he never claimed to be Jewish, but instead said he was “Jew-ish.” And records obtained by NBC News in January 2023 showed that Santos’ mother was living in Brazil during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Santos was also accused of refusing to hand over thousands of dollars he allegedly raised for a disabled veteran, whose dog needed life-saving surgery in 2016. Santos denied the allegations in an interview with Semafor in 2023.
In January 2023, a Brazilian drag queen, Eula Rochard, shared a photo on social media of herself and a drag performer, whom she referred to by the stage name Kitara Rivache, and said the performer was in fact Santos. NBC News did not independently verify the photo, which Rochard told NBC News at the time had originally appeared in a Brazilian newspaper in 2008.
At the time, Santos, who has lived in Brazil throughout parts of his life, denied performing in drag and called the allegations that he was a former drag queen “categorically false.” In the following days, he seemed to imply that he had performed in drag in the past, telling reporters: “I was young and I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life.”
The drag photos that allegedly showed Santos surfaced shortly after a bombshell New York Times investigation questioned whether Santos had fabricated key aspects of his education, work history, finances and personal life, including that he had worked at Goldman Sachs and that four of his employees died in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
Shortly before he was expelled from Congress, Santos was slapped with 23 federal charges in October. Santos has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, which include money laundering, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and theft of public funds.
An attorney for Santos, Andrew Mancilla, said in an email Monday that his client is not guilty, “and his defense team will be filing motions to dismiss those charges later this week.”
Mancilla did not respond to a request for comment regarding Santos’ revived drag persona.
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