A newly-minted Republican congressman has admitted fabricating his education and work experience, yet still faces allegations that he lied about his religion and his sexuality to win his seat.
George Santos, 34, who prised New York’s third congressional district away from the Democrats to help give Republicans a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, had claimed on his resume he worked for two Wall Street banks and attended university. None of that was true.
Despite being accused of other lies about his background and family history, Santos insists that he will take the oath of office to be sworn into Congress next week.
On paper, Santos was the perfect candidate for Republicans to break into the Democrat stronghold of New York. The self-proclaimed “embodiment of the American Dream”, he claimed to be the gay son of Brazilian immigrants, who had pulled himself through New York city’s Baruch College, a public-funded college, to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio that boasts 13 properties.
Santos also claimed that he was Jewish and that his grandparents had “survived the Holocaust.” If his glittering business career and emotive family history were not enough to clinch it for voters in the Democratic-leaning area of upmarket Long Island, Santos spent his spare time, he claimed, running an animal rescue charity he established, that had saved 2,500 cats and dogs.
Advertisement
However, his story unravelled under media scrutiny, forcing Santos to break his silence in an interview with the New York Post, admitting that he “never worked directly” for the Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and claiming that the fabrication was down to a “poor choice of words.”
Santos also confessed that he did not attend Baruch or any other university. “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé,” he said. “I own up to that…We do stupid things in life.”
If that was not enough, Santos’ claim that his grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis is now collapsing. Genealogists contacted by The Forward, an independent Jewish news site, show that there are no records of Santos’s grandparents at the Holocaust Museum or the International Center on Nazi Persecution.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos backtracked to the Post. “I am Catholic. Because I learnt my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish’ .”
Perhaps worst of all, Pets United also appears to be a figment of his imagination too. The IRS has no record of a registered charity in that name.
Advertisement
Santos is now facing allegations that he lied about his sexuality too, after the Daily Beast reported last week that he was previously married to a woman, who he divorced in 2019, two weeks before he launched his first, unsuccessful campaign for Congress. He now claims to be a happily-married gay man.
“I dated women in the past. I married a woman. It’s personal stuff,” he told the Post, adding that he was “okay with my sexuality. People change.”
“I am not a criminal,” Santos insisted, claiming that the controversy should not prevent him from entering Congress. “This will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good…My sins here are embellishing my résumé. I’m sorry.”
Furious Democrats have demanded that Santos be barred from taking his seat in the House and face an investigation. The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), whose event Santos attended alongside Donald Trump and other GOP leaders in Las Vegas last month, condemned the congressman-elect in a statement yesterday.
“We are very disappointed in Congressman-elect Santos. He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. In public comments and to us personally he previously claimed to be Jewish,” the RJC said. “He has begun his tenure in Congress on a very wrong note.”
Advertisement
Further questions remain about Santos’s personal wealth. Despite his fabricated CV and non-existent property portfolio, Santos loaned his 2022 successful election campaign more than $700,000. He reported a $750,000 salary and the receipt of more than $1 million from other business interests, largely from a company called the Devolder Organization.
It is all too much for some Democrats in New York state. Richie Torres, the Democratic congressman for the Bronx, said yesterday that Santos’s “pitiful confession should not distract us from concerns about possible criminality and corruption.”
“The Ethics Committee MUST investigate how he made his money. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Torres tweeted.
Daniel Goldman, another congressman-elect waiting to take his seat next month, called on the eastern district of New York to investigate Santos.
“There are at least two federal crimes worth investigating,” says Goldman, who accuses Santos of “defrauding the United States” through his mis-statements and by “filing false statements to the federal election commission”.
Advertisement
Santos had vehemently denied the allegations that he lied about his background when they were first raised by the New York Times last week. He issued a statement quoting Churchill — “You have enemies? Good it means you stood up for something, sometime in your life,” he tweeted.
He added that he “represents the kind of progress the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, first generation American and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion…”
