George Santos blames war in Ukraine for not being able to prove his background

In a recent interview with CNN, out Rep. George Santos (R-NY) said he plans to run in 2024, even if he’s convicted of the 23 counts of financial fraud he currently faces. He also claimed he spent the last ten months trying to prove that his grandparents are Jewish Ukrainians who fled Nazi persecution, though he said he has no documentation to prove this claim and blamed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Santos told CNN anchor Manu Raju that he thought he could win a Republican primary because he’s “the most conservative New Yorker in the entire [state delegation]” and hasn’t broken any campaign promises. “[My constituents] love it because I represent their voice here,” Santos said. “They liked the fact that I’m a scrappy guy. I come here. I do my job, I’m in the field like one of them.”

Related:

George Santos gloats after surviving House expulsion vote

“If you come for me, you best not miss,” he wrote on an image of himself wearing a golden crown.

A February poll found that two-thirds of New Yorkers want Santos out of office. Many of his constituents are strategizing on how to remove him from office, and Republicans are quietly looking for someone to replace him. Even his New York Republican colleagues recently mounted an unsuccessful effort to expel him from Congress.

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When asked about the 23 federal charges facing him, Santos said he’s focusing on his legal defense. He also said he’s not exploring a plea deal and doesn’t know if he will take one, though he said he’s not ruling it out.

“As of right now, it’s not on the table yet,” Santos said.

Santos also implied that his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, was lying in early October when she told a federal court that Santos illegally “submitted bogus campaign finance reports” to help attract more donors to his campaign.

“I’m a candidate,” he said. “Candidates do not handle money. Candidates do not handle finances. Candidates do not handle filings. I don’t even know what the [Federal Election Commission] filing system looks like.”

When asked about Marks’ claims, Santos replied, “People will say whatever they have to say, cut whatever deal they have to cut in order to save their hide…. I’m not accusing her of [lying]. All I’m saying is she has her story. I’m going to come with my facts and I’m going tell my side.”

He also denied putting campaign funds into his personal bank account and using them for expenditures like designer clothes. But when asked about the $24,000 of unemployment benefits he illegally received from New York State’s Labor Department during the COVID-19 pandemic, he implied that many people lied to receive unemployment benefits during the height of the pandemic, stating, “I’d say that the entire country can get indicted, I’m pretty sure based on how crazy times were.”

“Were there mistakes made on those forms?” Santos rhetorically asked. “Now I know there were. Were they malicious? No. And I’m a new candidate. Sorry that mistakes were made…. I didn’t understand the forms. That’s just plain and simple.”

When Raju commented that, as an elected representative, the responsibility ultimately lies with Santos to ensure that his finances remain legal, Santos admitted, “The buck should stop at the candidate. That’s true.”

Near the end of the interview, Santos said that his constituents don’t really care that he lied about most of his biography, including where he went to school and where he worked.

“Nobody elected me because I played volleyball. Nobody elected me because I graduated college,” Santos said. “No, people elected me because I said I’d come here to fight the swamp. I’d come here to lower inflation, create more jobs, make life more affordable, and the commitment to America. That’s why people voted for anybody.”

When asked why he lied about so much of his personal biography, Santos replied, “I’ve already told you this: It’s insecurity, stupidity, I don’t know. Look, I’m human, we make mistakes. I’ve apologized and I will continue to apologize profusely for this, and with remorse.”

“It would be also important if every single person in this building with a glass house stopped throwing stones at other people and started looking at themselves, right?” he added.

Santos has admitted to fabricating large parts of his personal history during his election campaign. He has provided no substantial proof to back up his claims that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, that he attended the Horace Mann preparatory school, that his mother died in connection to the September 11th terrorist attacks, or that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

He also claimed his Jewish grandparents fled Nazi persecution in Ukraine, but genealogical records showed that his grandparents were born in Brazil — Santos has claimed that his grandparents forged their Brazilian records to hide their home country. Santos has also claimed that he’s never told others that he was Jewish, but rather “Jew-ish.” However, the Republican Jewish Coalition said that Santos “deceived us” during his election campaign by falsely claiming that he was Jewish.

Santos told Raju, “I spent the last ten months, DNA, hiring genealogists.” When Raju asked, “Is there documentation of this?”

Santos replied, “Unfortunately, Ukraine is in the middle of a freakin’ war and my grandfather came from Ukraine…. But that’s something I’m going to prove before I die.”

Since joining Congress, Santos has cosponsored a bill to roll back LGBTQ+ civil rights and one to ban LGBTQ+ books from schools. He has also made public statements against transgender people, the so-called “radical rainbow mafia,” and he said that LGBTQ+ families “create troubled individuals.”

Santos: Oh, it's true. I spent the last ten months DNA, hiring genealogists —
 
Raju: Is there documentation of this?

Santos: Unfortunately, Ukraine is in the middle of a war and my grandfather came from Ukraine pic.twitter.com/Dm9t7l43Uy

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 5, 2023