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Democratic lawmakers are calling for Rep.-elect George Santos to give up the House seat he won in November after the Long Island Republican admitted he is “resuming beautification,” increasing pressure on GOP leadership to respond .
“GOP Congressman-elect George Santos, who has now admitted his massive lies, should resign,” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), urging House GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to call a vote to expel Santos if he does not. to go out.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said if Santos takes his new seat, he would set a precedent by encouraging others to seek public office by falsifying their credentials, while Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) accused Santos of of “swindling Long Island voters about his ENTIRE resume.”
So far, McCarthy (R-Calif.) has not responded to allegations that Santos misled voters about key details in his biography, which were first reported in a New York Times story last week.
Now that Santos has apologized “if I disappointed anyone with the resume embellishment” and publicly acknowledged on Monday that he did not. graduate from college or work at certain companies that were listed on your bio – Questions remain about what action, if any, the majority leader will take upon entering the House. Santos’ victory helped Republicans secure a narrow majority in the next term.
Rep.-elect George Santos acknowledges the “embellishment of the resume” but says little about finances
Democrats have called for a House ethics investigation since the Times report, and the New York attorney general’s office said it was “looking into a number of issues” surrounding Santos.
The representative-elect has remained defiant about his future: In an interview with New York’s WABC radio, he said, “I took an oath. I’m going to take office.”
In his admissions Monday night, Santos tried to explain his claims by saying that “a lot of people exaggerate on their resumes,” and downplayed the impact of his actions. He briefly addressed how his wealth has skyrocketed in recent years, allowing him to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
Santos told City and State NY that after various jobs, he opened his own company and “it worked because I had the relationships and I started making a lot of money. And I basically started building wealth.”
“I decided that I would invest in my race for Congress,” he added. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Santos also suggested that his future colleagues in Congress might not be able to withstand scrutiny, saying that if members of the media “dive into” the “deepest secrets” of other lawmakers, “we wouldn’t have a single congressman in the House”. and I bet you we wouldn’t have a single senator in the Senate.”
The Times report raised questions about whether Santos had fabricated much of his biography and noted that Santos claimed to have worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Spokespeople for both companies confirmed to The Washington Post that they had no record of their employment. Santos said in the radio interview Monday that the language on his resume said he had “worked ‘for’, not ‘on’, ‘on’ or ‘on'”.
He said he learned a lesson, but that doesn’t mean “I’m a fictional character.”
Democrats are calling for an investigation into the GOP congressman-elect’s biography
Santos also said in an interview with the New York Post that, contrary to his biography that claimed he was a graduate of Baruch College, he had not graduated “from any institution of higher learning.”
“We’ve seen people screw up their resumes, but this is a total fabrication,” Castro tweeted, arguing that the congressman-elect should be “investigated by the authorities.”
Michael Kranish, Azi Paybarah and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.