The congressman elected from New York, George Santos, the son of a Brazilian, gave two interviews last Monday (26) and admitted that he lied about parts of his resume, but claimed that he committed no crime and intends to serve in Congress.
In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post – the first times Santos spoke publicly about the controversy he is involved in – he acknowledged that he fabricated some facts.
“I am not a criminal. Neither here, nor abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I committed any crime,” Santos said in an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis of WABC.
“To get straight to the point, I am not a fraud. I am not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and invented this fictional character to run for Congress. I have been around for a long time. I mean, many people know me. They know who I am. They have done business with me,” he added.
“I won’t make excuses for that, but a lot of people exaggerate their resumes, or distort a bit. … I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that,” he said.
Santos also admitted that he never worked directly for the financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as he had written in his resume, but claimed that he worked for them through his company. He told the New York Post that it was a “poor choice of words” to say that he worked for them.
He also told the Post that he did not graduate from any college or university, despite claiming in his resume that he graduated from Baruch College.
“I did not graduate from any institution of higher education. I am ashamed and regretful for having embellished my resume,” he told the Post, adding that he recognizes this and that “we do stupid things in life.”
He told WABC: “I want to make sure that if I disappointed anyone, I am very sorry.”
The New York Times first revealed last week that Santos’s biography appeared to be partially fictional.
CNN also reported last week that Santos’s claims that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” as Ukrainian Jewish refugees in Belgium and that they had changed their surname are contradicted by different sources.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos told the Post. “I am Catholic. When I discovered that my maternal family had Jewish roots, I said I was ‘Jewish.’”
Santos said he was “very proud” of his “Jewish heritage” in an appearance in late November 2022 on the Jewish News Syndicate.
Santos, a Republican, ran for a seat in the House of Representatives from New York State against Democrat Robert Zimmerman. He is one of the lawmakers who “took” Democratic seats and gave the Republican Party a narrow majority in the House.