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In the United States, pressure is mounting on an elected Republican representative not to take his seat in Congress. George Santos, 34, won a seat in the New York state electoral college in November, but in recent weeks it has become clear that he has significantly improved his resume.
Santos lied about his origins, his upbringing and his mother’s death, among other things. And he’s wanted in Brazil for theft. Tomorrow he will take the oath.
Democrats and some Republicans have already asked him to give up the seat. The Republican party leadership is still quiet, but top Republican congressman Kevin Brady says Santos needs to take “significant steps” to regain the people’s trust.
“It’s all very disturbing. What is certain is that he has lied repeatedly. He has to wonder if he should leave,” she told Fox News. She thinks Santos deserves a second chance. “We are a country of second chances. When you come clean, you do whatever it takes to regain respect and trust. So I hope you do the right thing.”
In the Nov. 8 election, Santos defeated his Democratic opponent by a large majority. The battle was notable because it was the first time two openly gay congressional candidates faced each other. Thanks also to Santos, from tomorrow the Republicans will have a small majority in the House of Representatives.
With the publication The New York Times of December 19, a flood of revelations emerged about the falsehoods that the 34-year-old Santos had spread about himself in the run-up to and during the election campaign. The list is so long and the revelations are so quick that the US media can handle it lists Keep up.
For example, Santos said he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citygroup. He has since admitted that he was never an employee of these banks, but did business with them as a vice president of the LinkBridge investment fund. “An ‘unfortunate choice of words,'” was his excuse.
What was also wrong is that he attended a prestigious high school in the Bronx and was a high school student at Baruch College in New York. Incidentally, not even at any other university or college, he admits now.
Jew
Santos also said her maternal grandparents were Jews who escaped persecution in Ukraine by fleeing to Belgium. When the Germans invaded there in 1940, they had gone to Brazil. There they would become Catholics. Yet he called himself a “proud Jew” during the election campaign.
This text was subsequently modified. A Jewish magazine showed that Santos’ grandparents were born in Brazil. Jewish or Ukrainian roots they hadn’t. In response, Santos said that he never “Jewhe had said: “I am a Catholic. Because I’ve heard from my family that I have Jewish roots, I said Jew to be.” Not a Jew, but a Jew.
About his mother
The New York Times also revealed that Santos was nearly evicted from his New York City apartment in 2017 due to rent arrears. He also escaped eviction twice in 2014. Yet he managed to borrow $705,000 to finance his campaign.
“Where does this money come from?” now asks a Democratic member of the House of Representatives. He insists on an investigation.
Santos’ response was that his family was deeply in debt in 2017 because his mother had cancer and had to pay hospital bills. He had previously said of her that she died of 9/11 because she worked at the World Trade Center: “She survived the horrors of that day, but she died a few years later.”
Santos/Twitter
Santos’ homosexuality is also now being questioned. He was married to a woman from 2012 to 2017. He kept it a secret until recently. “People change,” he says now. “I’m one of those people who change.”
And then he is also wanted by the Brazilian police. As of 2008, Santos and his mother still lived near Rio de Janeiro. The New York Times revealed that in Brazil in 2008, aged 19, Santos had bought clothes for hundreds of euros under a false name and with stolen checks. The case would not go to court until 2013, but by then Santos had already moved to the United States. Santos claimed to have committed no crimes either in the United States or abroad.
