Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly (R) has announced that she has opened an investigation into Rep.-Elect George Santos (R-NY) after Santos admitted lying about his past educational and work experiences to voters. The investigation comes amid reports that Santos may have made other past false statements about his prior schooling.
“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning,” Donnelly said in a statement on Wednesday. “The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress. No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”
Santos recently admitted he lied when he told voters that he received degrees in finance and economics from Baruch College and New York University. He also admitted that he never worked directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, despite his bio saying that he did so. He also said that he never claimed to be Jewish, but rather “Jew-ish,” though the Republican Jewish Coalition said Santos “deceived” the group by saying that he identified as a Jew.
The right-wing watchdog Twitter account Patriot Takes has found that Santos may have also lied about attending the Horace Mann Prep School, a college preparatory school in the Bronx, New York.
The Twitter account noted that Santos’ biography on the website for his failed 2020 congressional bid listed the school by name. However, he later removed the name of the school from his bio. When asked about the school in an interview, he claimed that he attended the school but had to drop out in 2008, with only four months left until his graduation, because of his family’s financial difficulties.
When asked why the school didn’t offer him financial assistance, Santos said that the school couldn’t because there were “a couple hundred kids going through the same thing.”
Santos has also provided no additional proof to substantiate claims that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets, lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, and that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.