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Days away from being sworn in as a member of Congress, Rep.-elect George Santos’ candidacy has come under increased scrutiny after the Republican admitted to embellishing his resume and fabricating his background.
The 34-year-old, who will represent a sliver of northeast Queens and parts of Long Island’s North Shore in Washington, is now under investigation by local and federal authorities.
His religion
On his campaign websites, Santos noted that his “grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.” His biography on his campaign website has since been changed.
Santos described himself as “a proud American Jew” in documents to pro-Israel groups. But six weeks after he was elected to office, he admitted to misleading voters about his cultural and religious background. Santos told The New York Post during a Dec. 26 interview that he “never claimed to be Jewish,” only “Jew-ish.” He said his grandmother told him she was Jewish but had converted to Catholicism.
The Forward looked into ancestral records, and found evidence that Santos’ maternal grandparents were born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power in Europe.
His education
Santos told the Post during the Dec. 26 interview that he never graduated from college, retracting previous statements claiming that he received a degree in economics and finance from CUNY’s Baruch College in 2010.
When he ran for Congress in 2019, Santos claimed on his campaign website that he graduated from the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx. Ed Alder, a spokesman for the school, said officials there “checked all the records and all the aliases. He (Santos) did not attend Horace Mann.”
His work experience
On the campaign trail, Santos billed himself as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” and claimed he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. But during the Post interview, the soon-to-be-lawmaker clarified that he “never worked directly” with either of the financial institutions.
Around the same time Santos claimed that he was working his way through the financial sector, a Times investigation shows that he was a customer service agent at a Dish Network call center in Queens.
His real estate portfolio
Santos tweeted in February 2021 that he owned 13 rental properties where tenants had not paid rent for a year. “We worked hard to acquire these assets. Now it almost feels like we are being punished,” he wrote. But in the Post interview he admitted he does not own any real estate and lives at his sister Tiffany’s home in Huntington.
Santos’ tweet railing against his fictitious tenants came four years after he was evicted for at least the third time in Queens, according to housing records surfaced by The New York Times.
His mother’s death
As of at least October, Santos’ campaign website stated that his mother, Fatima Devolder, was “in her office in the south tower” of the World Trade Center on the day of the 9/11 attacks. The website stated “she survived the horrific events of that day, but unfortunately passed away a few years later.” An online obituary shows Santos’ mother passed away more than 15 years after 9/11, in December 2016.
Jessica Gould contributed reporting to this story.
This is an ongoing story that will be updated.
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