“George Santos Claims He Won Gold at the ’76 Olympics.” “George Santos Says He Discovered the Cure for Polio.” “George Santos Told Voter He Fought in the Revolutionary War.” If you opened up the internet today and saw any of these headlines, at The New York Times, or BuzzFeed, or anywhere else, you probably wouldn‘t be surprised. Because that’s where we are in the George Santos story arc. First, it was revealed the newly elected congressman had lied about where he went to school and the companies he worked for; now, on a near-daily basis, it comes out that Santos—who has defiantly refused to resign—has not only apparently lied about his biography and résumé but engaged in deeply sinister, possibly criminal behavior. And in response, Republicans in Washington have rewarded him with actual positions of power.
Anyway, as it’s clear the next two years will be spent regularly learning that the representative from New York has basically never told the truth about anything, and ripped off a whole bunch of people in the process, it seems important to keep a running tally of his most ridiculous lies and deceptions. As Santos is clearly one of the shadiest people to ever be elected to Congress—which, given the people who have been elected to Congress, is saying something—it will undoubtedly be updated, potentially by the hour.
Grandparents fled the Holocaust
Is there anything more vile, f–ked up, and shameless than claiming you had family members who were hunted by Hitler as he systemically murdered 6 million people? Don’t ask Santos that, because he would clearly view the question as a challenge. In 2021, the then candidate said in a campaign video that his “grandparents survived the Holocaust.” Several months later, speaking with the Jewish News Syndicate, he said, “I’m very proud of my grandparents’ story,” which he claimed included “fleeing Hitler.” Speaking to Fox News Digital, Santos, perhaps girding himself for getting caught in a lie, declared: “For a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refugees or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names and paperwork were changed in name of survival.” However, that does not, in fact, appear to be the case for Santos’s family. According to genealogist Megan Smolenyak, who spoke to CNN, “There’s no sign of Jewish and/or Ukrainian heritage and no indication of name changes along the way.” Meanwhile, according to CNN, multiple genealogy records indicate that his grandparents were born in Brazil.
His mother died as a result of 9/11
Santos’s campaign website claimed that his mother “was in her office in the South Tower on September 11,” adding that she “passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.” On July 12, 2021, he wrote on Twitter: “9/11 claimed my mothers life.” While there have obviously been many people who have died as a result of the toxic debris they inhaled on 9/11, NBC News notes that although Santos has claimed his mother was a financial executive, “public employment records show only one employer for Santos’ mother: Imports by Rose, a company based in Queens that shuttered in 1994.” There’s also the awkward matter of documents indicating she was in Brazil on the day of the attacks.
Volleyball star
One of the first lies Santos got caught in was claiming he had graduated from Baruch College with degrees in economics and finance in 2010, a college he did not even attend. Objectively even funnier? The fact that Santos reportedly told multiple people that he was the “star” of the Baruch volleyball team.
Incredibly, Santos went into even greater detail than that, saying in a 2020 radio interview that he:
- Attended Baruch on a volleyball scholarship
- Was part of the team that “slayed” Yale and Harvard
- Could have played basketball but went with volleyball because “it was easier”
- “Sacrificed both…knees” and “got very nice knee replacements…from playing volleyball” because “that’s how serious I took the game”
During the same interview, he also told the host: “We were champions across the entire Northeast Corridor. Every school that came up against us, they were shaking at the time. And it’s funny. I was the smallest guy and I’m 6 [feet] 2.” Naturally, according to the New York Post, the Baruch men’s volleyball team “never played Yale during the period Santos claimed to have attended school there.”
