Coverage of the many apparent fictions spun by GOP congressman-elect George Santos reached Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when incoming Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted his fellow New Yorker as a fraud at a press conference.
Now, the embattled Mr Santos is promising to address the many issues surrounding statements he has made about his background, including his work history and education.
“To the people of #NY03 I have my story to tell and it will be told next week. I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more,” he tweeted Thursday afternoon, adding: “Happy Holidays to all!”
The Republican congressman-to-be is now at the centre of an apparent web of falsehoods and scandal after a series of reports about his background led to a spokesperson for Citigroup disputing Mr Santos’s claim to have worked there, while another official with Baruch College in New York City said it could find no record of him ever obtaining the diploma he claimed to have from the school.
And that’s not all. Mr Santos was revealed to have faced a criminal fraud investigation in Brazil, where he once lived — it remains unresolved, according to Brazilian authorities. In addition, his claims to have maternal grandparents who escaped the Holocaust is also under question after The Forward dug into that area of his history.
“[T]he website myheritage.com lists Santos’ maternal grandparents as having both been born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power — his grandfather, Paulo Horta Devolder, in 1918, and his grandmother, Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder, in Rio, in 1927. An online obituary for Mr Santos’ mother, Fatima Aziza Caruso Horta Devolder, who died in 2016, says she was born in Niterói, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, on Dec. 22, 1962, to Paul and Rosalina Devolder,” the magazine reported.
The scandals were a top target for Mr Jeffries as he gave a press conference on Wednesday.
“George Santos appears to be starring in a sequel to Catch Me If You Can,” the congressman quipped, referring to the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie about real-life serial fraudster Frank Abagnale.
Mr Santos’s attorney previously called some of the reporting from The New York Times and other news outlets “defamatory” in an irate statement to reporters following the first wave of stories; it was never made clear which parts of the stories were supposedly incorrect and whether Mr Santos took issue with the statements from Baruch College and Citigroup.
