Lying Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was hounded by the media during his first day in Congress.
Video posted to Twitter showed Santos ignoring reporters while walking around the halls of the congressional building. The reporter asks him how his constituents can trust him despite his lying about extensive parts of his past and what he thinks about calls for him to be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.
He only responded that he would support Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his bid to become the House Speaker.
In December, Santos admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and owning 13 properties.
However, it now seems that he also lied about being Jewish, his grandparents fleeing Nazi persecution in Ukraine (they were both born in Brazil), his mother becoming ‘the first female executive at a major financial institution’” (she worked as a cook and house cleaner), attending the Horace Mann preparatory school in the Bronx, having four previous employees who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, and his mother having died in connection to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
He has provided no evidence to back up any of the above claims. More seriously, investigators are curious how he was able to donate $700,000 to his own campaign despite earlier financial disclosures showing that he had earned far less.
Santos is currently under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly (R), Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz (D) and the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York.
McCarthy hasn’t made any public comments condemning Santos. Observers theorize this is because McCarthy needs Santos’ vote to become House Speaker. Right now, Republicans lead the House with only a four seat majority (giving them a total of 222 seats). He needs a majority of representative (218) in order to become Speaker, and some far-right members have said they won’t support him, making his the first presumptive speaker to potentially have to face multiple votes for the first time in about a century.