George Santos.Photo: Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM via Getty
In aninterview released Mondayand aired on the Fox News streaming service FOX Nation, 34-year-old Santos was asked about the many portions of his resume and backstory that he has since admitted to"embellishing,“such as working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as he previously asserted.
Santos also revealed to hostPiers Morganthat he had lied about his education while campaigning for his current office, noting that he did not attend Baruch College or New York University, as he earlier claimed.
“To run for Congress of the United States and to just tell blatant lies about even your academic record — I’m just struck, not necessarily that a politician would lie, but that you would think no one would find out,” Morgan said to Santos on his show,Piers Morgan Uncensored.
“Well, I’ll humor you this: I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then,” Santos, who lost his 2020 bid for Congress but won after his second bid in 2022, replied.
“So you thought, actually, that they’re not gonna find out?” Morgan asked.
“No, I didn’t think so,” Santos answered. “But to that effect, it’s embarrassing, it’s humbling to have to admit your faults as a human being.”
Even still, Santos has not fully come clean about his personal history. While Santos has previously said that hisgrandparents were Jewish immigrantswho fled persecution duringWorld War II, a report from Jewish newspaperForwardclaimed that both of the New York representative’s maternal grandparents were born in Brazil before the war.
Speaking to Morgan, Santos stopped short of saying the claims about his Jewish heritage were a lie.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” he said. “I’ve always made a party-favor joke. I’ve done it on stages across the country.”
“Because you’re not Jewish,” Morgan said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Morgan asked Santos about previous claims that his mother was inside the World Trade Centerduring the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Noting that “There’s no record that [his mother was in the building] at all that day,” Morgan asked Santos if he could be mistaken.
“Are you telling me that I got wrong what my mother told me? She wasn’t one to mislead me,” Santos said, adding: “I stay convinced that that’s the truth.”
Santos recently told colleagues he wouldtemporarily resignfrom his assignments on the Small Business and Science Committees while various investigations into his past play out.
Most of the investigations reportedly center on the source of Santos' campaign funding.
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Federal investigators are also reportedly looking into claims that Santos oncescammed a Navy veteran out of $3,000meant for his ailing service dog, CNN andPoliticoreported earlier this month.
source: people.com
