Fact check: George Santos tells new lies in interview about his old lies
By Daniel Dale and Andrew Kaczynski, CNN
Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who fabricated a large portion of his biography, sat down for an extended interview with Piers Morgan — and lied about his lies.
Morgan got Santos to explicitly concede that he has “been a terrible liar” on certain “subjects.” But while Santos quickly admitted to some of his false claims, like his “very stupid” fiction about having graduated from college, he was deceptive and evasive when Morgan confronted him on other false claims.
Here is a fact check of some of the things Santos said in the interview, which was posted online on Monday. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list; Santos made various statements to Morgan that cannot be immediately proven or disproven.
His claim to be Jewish
Morgan told Santos, “You claimed to be Jewish, but you’re not Jewish.” Santos responded, “I never claimed to be Jewish.” He insisted that, rather, he had “always made a party favor joke” that he was “Jew-ish.”
Facts First: Santos’ assertion that he “never claimed to be Jewish” is false. Santos repeatedly claimed to be Jewish, as Morgan quickly reminded him.
Here are four examples of Santos claiming to be Jewish.
Santos said in a radio interview during the 2022 campaign: “I’m a Latino Jew.” Appearing on the same show later in the year, Santos said while criticizing Democrats: “I’m a Latino Jew. Which makes them shake in their pants. Because the reality is: I got it all, baby.”
In a position paper the Santos campaign produced during the 2022 campaign, which the Jewish publication The Forward reported was distributed by his campaign to Jewish groups, Santos wrote, “As a proud American Jew, I have been to Israel numerous times from educational, business, and leisurely trips.” And in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in November, after he was elected to serve New York’s 3rd District, Santos asserted that he would be the third Jewish Republican currently serving in Congress, saying, “So now we’re going to be three. We’ve tripled it — we’ve almost tripled it there.”
Santos also publicly claimed last year to have maternal Jewish grandparents who survived the Holocaust by fleeing Europe for Brazil. Multiple genealogists have told CNN that there is no proof for any of this story, and records list those grandparents as having been born in Brazil. (Santos told Morgan that he stands by his claims, that his grandparents “falsified a lot of their documents” while in Brazil to make it look like they were born there, and that he has ordered “DNA test kits, and I’ve done four of them so far, and I’m just waiting for their return.”)
Santos’ narrative about his identity has sometimes varied. The Forward found one 2022 interview where he called himself “a good old Catholic, right, but with a Jewish mother” and said he was “half Jewish, half Catholic.” In a 2020 interview, he spoke of his supposed Jewish ancestry but said “I’m Catholic” and that he was “not trying to claim Jewish heritage or anything” — yet also said, “I believe we’re all Jewish at the end, because Jesus Christ was Jewish.”
Regardless, his claim that he “never claimed to be Jewish” is just not true. He has made the claim publicly and unequivocally.
What happened at the Republican Jewish Coalition event
Santos insisted that “everybody’s always laughed” at his supposed “joke” about how, having been raised Catholic but having Jewish grandparents, he is “Jew-ish.” He cited his November speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“People were hysterically laughing,” he said. “It was funny to them. They loved it.” When Morgan said he doesn’t think Jewish people find this funny, Santos protested: “They were Jewish!”
Facts First: This story is fictional. Santos did not make a joke about being “Jew-ish” in his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition; rather, he simply claimed to be Jewish. While Santos chuckled during his remark about his election victory having “almost tripled” the number of Jewish Republicans in Congress, and while it sounded like some audience members laughed here too, there was no sign that he was joking about his identity itself. The Republican Jewish Coalition has disavowed him.
On Monday, after a CNBC reporter tweeted a debunking of Santos’ claim to Morgan — telling Santos that he had not called himself “Jew-ish” in the speech and had actually “suggested to the crowd you were an incoming Jewish lawmaker” — coalition chief executive officer Matt Brooks tweeted in support of the debunking: “Fact check: TRUE!” Brooks said in a statement in December: “We are very disappointed in Congressman-elect Santos. He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. In public comments and to us personally he previously claimed to be Jewish.”
His claim to have attended an elite prep school
Morgan reminded Santos that he had claimed he attended Horace Mann, an elite private preparatory school in New York City, before having to leave in his senior year because his family faced financial difficulties — but that Horace Mann told CNN that it has no record of him attending.
Santos continued to insist he had attended Horace Mann. He said, “I challenge to see what name they’re looking under. If you look at my entire history of education, it was not under the name George Santos.” He said he might have been listed under one of two other names he has used, George Devolder or Anthony Devolder. When Morgan said he believed the school had checked those names, too, and had found no sign of him, Santos said, “I was there for six months of ninth grade.”
Facts First: Horace Mann “checked all the records and all the names, and he did not attend,” a spokesperson for the school, Ed Adler, told CNN on Tuesday.
It’s also worth noting that Santos’ claim that “I was there for six months of ninth grade” is a significant discrepancy from a claim he made on a YouTube show during the 2020 campaign, when he said he only left the school “four months to graduation.”
His claim about a test score
Morgan reminded Santos that he had claimed to have earned a master’s degree in business from New York University and to have scored a strong 710 on the GMAT exam that is taken by applicants to graduate business programs. Santos conceded he had made up the claim about the NYU degree but said, “The reality is, I don’t know where that ‘GMAT’ comes from. I never put that out on my website or my bio.”
When Morgan correctly said the claim about the GMAT score was on his resume, Santos said, “Which — the resume was never furnished or supplied by me.” When Morgan asked who supplied it, Santos said, “I have no idea where that came from.” He added, “I didn’t supply it, and nobody associated with me supplied it. That came from the GOP, and I’m still trying to understand where that came from.”
Facts First: Santos “personally presented” this resume to the Nassau County Republican Committee at an in-person meeting while he was seeking the committee’s support in the 2020 election, committee spokesperson Mike Deery told CNN on Tuesday.
New York Times published the resume in January and reported that Santos had provided it to the committee as he pursued his unsuccessful 2020 run. County Republican committee chairman Joseph Cairo said at a January press conference that, while seeking the committee’s endorsement in 2020, Santos “submitted a resume which is totally untruthful.”
After falsely claiming Santos had a master’s in business from NYU, the resume said “GMAT 710.” It went on to say he graduated in the top 1% of his class from Baruch College, a school he did not attend. It also said he had worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, claims he now admits are inaccurate.
His claim about a GoFundMe for a sick dog
Morgan asked Santos about an allegation from a military veteran, Rich Osthoff, that Santos raised money online for Osthoff’s dying dog, while Osthoff was homeless in 2016, but never handed over the cash from the GoFundMe fundraiser. The FBI has interviewed Osthoff about the allegation.
Santos said, “I’ve never met this man.” Asked about the GoFundMe page, Santos said he has set up “numerous” GoFundMe pages over the years for animals in need, but “many of them” were “managed by other people,” just set up under his name because “I was the main account holder on the Facebook page.” He said Osthoff’s dog would have received the surgery if Osthoff had ever met Santos. And he said soon after: “If there’s a GoFundMe page, and if they’re going to present me with one, I’m not gonna deny that. But I’ve never met him, I’ve never took on this case, and I never took the money from his dog.”
Facts First: Santos deceptively minimized his involvement in the fundraiser for Osthoff’s dog. Santos communicated with Osthoff at length about the fundraiser — in numerous text messages that Osthoff has provided to CNN and, according to Santos’ own comments in the text chat, by phone as well. In addition, the GoFundMe page for Osthoff’s dog was created under one of the names Santos has used, Anthony Devolder, and Santos (under the name George Devolder) promoted the GoFundMe page with a post on his own Facebook page.
Osthoff said in a Tuesday message to CNN: “He spoke with me on the phone numerous times, his NAME was in the title of the GoFundMe, and I have provided the press and law enforcement with dozens of text messages between Devolder and myself.” He said Santos “knows what happened.”
GoFundMe said in a January statement to CNN: “When we received a report of an issue with this fundraiser in late 2016, our trust and safety team sought proof of the delivery of funds from the organizer. The organizer failed to respond, which led to the fundraiser being removed and the email associated with that account prohibited from further use on our platform.”
Santos said in a January statement to CNN in response to Osthoff’s claims: “I have no clue what he’s talking about, and the crazy part is that anyone that knows me, knows I’d go to hell and back for a dog and especially a veteran.” He described the story, first reported by Patch.com, as “just more of the pile on effect.”
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CNN’s Gregory Krieg, Em Steck and Celina Tebor contributed to this article.
