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b'George Santos is hardly the first scammer elected to office\\u2014but his lies, David Remnick says, are \\u201cextra.\\u201d Most Americans learned of Santos\\u2019s extraordinary fabrications from a New York Times report published after the midterm election, but a local newspaper called the North Shore Leader was sounding the alarm months before. The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone took a trip to Long Island to speak with the Leader\\u2019s publisher, Grant Lally, and its managing editor, Maureen Daly, to find out how the story began. \\u201cWe heard story after story after story about him doing bizarre things,\\u201d Lally told her. \\u201cHe was so well known, at least in the more active political circles, to be a liar, that by early summer he was already being called George Scamtos.\\u201d Lally explains how redistricting drama in New York State turned Santos from a \\u201csacrificial\\u201d candidate\\u2014to whom no one was paying attention\\u2014to a front-runner. At the same time, Malone thinks, \\u201cthe oddly permissive structure that the Republican Party has created for candidates on a gamut of issues\\u201d enabled his penchant for fabrication. \\u201c[There\\u2019s] lots of crazy stuff that\\u2019s popped up in politics over the past few years. I think maybe Santos thought, Eh, who\\u2019s gonna check?\\u201d'