Of the roughly one zillion lies which have come out of Consultant George Santos’s mouth, one of many greatest and most offensive is the lie about his maternal grandparents being Ukrainian Jews who had been compelled to flee Europe in the course of the Holocaust. In 2021, the then congressional candidate claimed in a campaign video that his “grandparents survived the Holocaust.” A number of months later, he advised the Jewish Information Syndicate: “I’m very pleased with my grandparents’ story,” which he claimed concerned “fleeing Hitler.” In seeming anticipation of getting referred to as out for this particular lie, he told Fox Information Digital final February: “For lots of people who’re descendants of World Warfare II refugees or survivors of the Holocaust, quite a lot of names and paperwork had been modified in identify of survival.”
However, in fact, like so many lies he was later caught telling—from being a star volleyball participant, to having workers who died within the Pulse nightclub taking pictures, to his mom being within the South Tower on 9/11—these claims about his grandparents and the Holocaust don’t truly seem like true. A number of family tree information point out his grandparents had been born in Brazil and, in response to one genealogist who spoke to CNN, “There’s no signal of Jewish and/or Ukrainian heritage and no indication of identify adjustments alongside the best way.”
Requested about what many would take into account an appalling lie throughout an interview with CNN that aired on Sunday, the congressman from New York not solely doubled down on it, however insisted that he’s near acquiring proof—which he’d have already if not for that pesky warfare in Ukraine. “That’s what I spent the final 10 months doing, placing collectively,” Santos advised reporter Manu Raju of the alleged proof exhibiting his grandparents actually did flee the Holocaust. “However sadly, Ukraine is in the course of a freaking warfare, and my grandfather comes from Ukraine. So that is the largest elevate that I’ve to do my whole life. However that’s one thing I’m going to show earlier than I die.”
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Elsewhere within the interview, Santos claimed that he has “at all times made very clear” that he comes “from a Jewish” household however is personally Catholic, which—it could or might not shock you to listen to—can also be not true. On the marketing campaign path he described himself as a “proud American Jew.” (After which later advised the New York Submit he solely stated he was “Jew-ish.”)
Final month, Santos pleaded not responsible to 23 legal counts, together with conspiracy, id theft, and bank card fraud. A number of weeks earlier than that, he claimed to New York Instances reporter Grace Ashford that his niece had been kidnapped, probably in retaliation for his public feedback concerning the Chinese language Communist Celebration. A high-ranking member of legislation enforcement subsequently advised Ashford that the matter had been seemed into—and that there was no proof of any kidnapping, interval, or, actually, any connection to the Chinese language Communist Celebration. “We discovered nothing in any respect to counsel it’s true,” the official stated. “I’d lean into, ‘he made it up.’”
