Republican Congressman George Santos still represents New York’s third congressional district despite his history of alleged lies. Not only has he reportedly lied about his resume and religion, but a resurfaced 2020 tweet showed he lied about his race, claiming he’s bi-racial, half white and black.
In the tweet, Santos claimed that the Black National Anthem causes segregation, stating that “as a biracial person,” he viewed it as “the most divisive thing [he’s] ever seen.”
#MLK did not die for us to go back to segregation. As a biracial person I stand tall against segregation of any kind. This so called “black anthem” is the most divisive thing I’ve ever seen. We are all #Americans under one flag and our anthem is the #StarSpangledBanner! #USA 🇺🇸
— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) July 3, 2020
A user then responded, asking how he was biracial, and he answered, “Caucasian and black.”
Caucasian and black
— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) July 6, 2020
This isn’t the first time the Congressman has allegedly told untruths.
According to Gothamist’s organized list of Santos’ lies, he first lied about his religion, stating that his grandparents escaped “Jewish” persecution” during the Holocaust and said he was a “proud American Jew.” However, in an Interview with the New York Post, Santos backtracked on his claims, clarifying that he “never claimed to be Jewish.”
“I am Catholic,” he said. “Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”
He apologized to the outlet for “embellishing” his resume,” admitting that he had never graduated from a prestigious college despite saying he graduated from CUNY’s Baruch College with a degree in economics and finance.
He said he used a “poor choice of words” when he claimed to have worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, confessing that was a fib. The New York Times investigated his employment history, discovering Santos worked as a customer service agent in Queens for Dish Network’s call center.
Santos utilized the Pulse nightclub shooting tragedy, where 49 people died, and dozens were injured, for attention, claiming four of his employees lost their lives. But the New York Times disproved his claims, revealing none of the victims worked at the firms he claimed to have worked at.
Another heartless fictionalized story he told was that his mother, Fatima Devolder, was a victim of the 9/11 attacks, dying in the south tower of the World Trade Center. But Dignity Memorial said she died at Elmhurst Hospital Hospice on Dec. 23, 2016.
According to a CNN report, Santos was being investigated by law enforcement in Brazil for fraud charges, which he faced in 2011. Despite telling the Post he wasn’t a criminal and wasn’t being investigated, prosecutors told CNN that they were looking to reopen the investigation since officials couldn’t locate Santos for quite some time, impacting the case.
