The Nassau County District Attorney announced that she is opening an investigation into Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), whose surprise victory in November was quickly followed by revelations that he lied about his business experience, educational background and family ancestry.
The district attorney, Anne T. Donnelly, said in a statement: “The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated” with Santos “are nothing short of stunning.” The residents in the congressional district “must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress” and “if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.” Donnelly’s spokesman, Brendan Brosh, said in a statement, “We are looking into the matter.”
Days after an explosive New York Times story on Dec. 19 detailed lies Santos told about his background, Santos gave a handful of interviews in which he acknowledged he was untruthful about having worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, graduating college and claims that he is Jewish. Also unclear is the exact source of the $700,000 Santos claimed to have loaned his campaign in 2022, just two years after filing a financial disclosure report during an unsuccessful 2020 congressional run that stated he had no major assets or earned income.
Santos and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
News of the investigation came as another detail in Santos’s biography unraveled Wednesday.
During his 2020 congressional race, he told a dramatic story on a podcast about how the prestigious private school he attended refused to help his financially struggling family just months before his graduation.
In the October 2020 interview, which resurfaced on social media Wednesday, Santos, referring to his parents, said: “They sent me to a good prep school — which was Horace Mann Prep in the Bronx. And in my senior year of prep school, unfortunately, my parents fell on hard times.” Santos went on to say that at the time his family couldn’t “afford a $2,500 tuition,” and “So, anyway, I left school [with] four months till graduation.”
In 2020, George Santos claimed he attended Horace Mann prep school, but Wayback Machine shows he scrubbed the claim from his bio.
Santos also said he “left 4 months till graduation,” implying Horace Mann didn’t help because “a couple hundred kids going through the same thing.” pic.twitter.com/s2uUfrL5B6
— PatriotTakes (@patriottakes) December 28, 2022
But a spokesman for the Horace Mann School told The Post that the school has no record of Santos attending the institution.
After contacting the school and providing them with several variations of Santos’s name which he has used in public, Ed Adler, a spokesman for Horace Mann, wrote in an email, “George Santos or any of the aliases you [cite] never attended HM.”
In November, Santos won an open congressional seat on Long Island held by a Democrat. With that victory, Santos made headlines as the first non-incumbent who is an openly gay Republican to be elected to Congress. He also falsely described himself as Jewish and a fantastically successful businessman.
Amid that newfound attention, Santos’s story unraveled.
Some Democrats have called for Santos not to be seated as a member of Congress next week. House Republican leaders have largely remained silent about the matter, as Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) seeks enough votes to become House Speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber when the new term begins Tuesday.
Rep.-elect Michael Lawler (R), who defeated an incumbent Democrat in a suburb north of New York City, said in a statement Wednesday, “With multiple federal, state and local investigations seemingly underway, Mr. Santos should cooperate fully, if he is to regain the trust of his constituents and colleagues.” It was not immediately clear whether other investigations were underway. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York, whose jurisdiction includes Long Island, declined to comment.
Bruce Blakeman — a Republican Nassau County, N.Y., executive — told CNN on Wednesday that Santos needs to address the “emotional issues” that led to his lying. “A normal person wouldn’t do that,” Blakeman said.
In the video that surfaced Wednesday, Santos unspools a heart-wrenching story about his education that even his interviewers at the time seem to question.
One man in the video, who is identified on-screen as Bill Cannon, says to Santos: “Wait a minute George. Horace Mann wouldn’t hit you up with a scholarship?”
Santos replied, “Unfortunately at the time, I wasn’t the only student going through that same issue.”