Disgraced congressman-elect claimed mother had died twice

Disgraced Republican congressman-elect George Santos faces new allegations of dishonesty after it emerged he had claimed his mother had died on two different dates.

George Santos. Picture: Wade Vandervort/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/WSJ

The Republican congressman-elect George Santos faces new allegations of dishonesty after it emerged that he had claimed that his mother had died twice.

Prosecutors are investigating his finances and other false claims made on the campaign trail about his background and family history.

Santos, 34, who won New York’s third congressional district at last month’s midterm elections running as an openly gay, Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors and successful Wall Street banker, stands accused of a torrent of lies as he prepares to take the oath of office next week.

He has confessed that he lied on his CV about his education and working for two Wall Street banks and admitted that he was not in fact Jewish.

Santos wrote in a tweet in July last year that the 9/11 attacks had “claimed my mothers life” but last December he tweeted that she had died in 2016. Santos’s campaign website says that his mother was working in the South Tower on 9/11 but survived and later died of cancer.

He faces investigations into his lies. In Nassau County, part of the congressional district that Santos won, Anne Donnelly, the district attorney, said she had opened an investigation into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies” surrounding the incoming congressman. She said Santos’s fabrications were “nothing short of stunning” and added: “No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county we will prosecute it.”

A federal investigation is also under way into Santos’s finances. Although his claims of a glittering career at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been revealed as false Santos was able to lend more than dollars 700,000 to his election campaign. He has also reported a dollars 750,000 salary and the receipt of more than dollars 1 million from other business interests, largely from a company called Devolder Organization, but has provided few details about the business.

When Santos first ran for Congress in 2020 he claimed to have no financial assets. Two years later his campaign filings claimed a savings account of dollars 5 million. In an interview with the New York Post this week he admitted having fabricated his CV, putting it down to a “poor choice of words”, but claimed: “I am not a criminal.”

Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman, however, asked him on Fox News this week: “If I were one of those [voters] in New York’s third district right now, now that the election is over, and I’m finding out all of these lies that you’ve told, not just one little lie or one little embellishment - these are blatant lies - my question is, do you have no shame?”

Gabbard said.

The Times