In interviews, the Long Island Republican acknowledged that he never graduated from college and didn’t work for Wall Street firms, but he answered few questions about his wealth.
George Santos, a Long Island Republican who won a pivotal U.S. House race in November, acknowledged Monday night that he embellished his biography, seeking to explain his actions by saying in a radio interview that “a lot of people overstate in their résumés.”
While Santos played down the harm done with his claims, first raised in a New York Times story last week, he did not address how his wealth has skyrocketed in the past several years to enable him to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
“If I disappointed anyone by résumé embellishment, I’m sorry,” Santos said on New York’s WABC radio, while vowing that “I will be sworn in. I will take office.”
Santos also gave an interview on Monday to the New York Post, which ran a headline calling him a “liar” and quoted him as saying “I am not a criminal.” He said in that interview that, contrary to his campaign biography, “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”
This past week, after the New York Times report raised a host of questions about whether Santos had fabricated much of his biography, Santos’s lawyer said the congressman-elect had been defamed, but he did not address specifics. The Times noted that Santos claimed that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Spokesmen for both companies confirmed to The Post that they had no record of his employment.
Santos said during the 11-minute radio interview on Monday that “the way it’s stated on the résumé, doing work for — I have worked ‘for,’ not ‘on’ or ‘at’ or ‘in’.” He said that he learned a lesson but that it doesn’t mean “I’m some fictional character.”
When Santos in June 2021 announced his bid for New York’s 3rd District, which largely represents an affluent section of the North Shore of Long Island, he made a promise that few other candidates could match. If elected, he said in a campaign video, “I pledge to never take a salary.”
He furthered the impression that he was independently wealthy by lending his campaign at least $580,000, and his political action committee at least $27,000, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The loans played a key role in his surprising victory and helped give Republicans a narrow majority in the House.
In his first bid for the House, Santos said in a 2020 financial disclosure that he had no assets or earned income, and he only cited a commission worth more than $5,000.
But by the time Santos filed his 2022 financial disclosure, he declared he was worth millions of dollars, with most of the wealth coming from a Florida company in which he was the sole owner: the Devolder Organization.
At one point, Santos said on his campaign website that Devolder was a privately held family firm that had $80 million in assets under management, a claim that has since been removed.
