A criminal investigation has been launched against newly elected Republican US Congressman George Santos for forging his resume. The “lies and inconsistencies” associated with Santos are “simply staggering,” District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement carried yesterday by several major US media outlets.
Nassau County residents “need to have an honest and responsible representative in Congress,” he added. “No one is above the law and if a crime has been committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”
Large fakes admitted
Santos, who won a seat in New York state’s midterm elections in November, admitted in an interview on Monday that he had falsified his résumé. Contrary to claims, he never worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and never earned a college degree. Furthermore, Santos told the New York Post that, contrary to what was claimed during the election campaign, he was not Jewish, but Catholic.
“I am not a criminal”
Santos apologized for what he himself said had “embellished” his resume. However, Santos rejected calls from the Democratic Party to give up his congressional seat. “I’m not a criminal,” he told the New York Post.
Several members of the Democratic Party asked Kevin McCarthy, the current Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, to put Santos’s expulsion to a vote if he did not resign of his own free will.
Republican Santos helped his party secure a narrow majority of 222 to 212 seats in the House of Representatives with his victory over his Democratic challenger Robert Zimmerman in the Democratic stronghold of New York in the midterm elections. In the Senate, the other chamber of Congress, the Democrats maintained their majority.