A new report has revealed new alleged past transgressions on the part of the embattled congressman-elect George Santos, this time involving allegations from an ex-boyfriend.
Santos, a Republican, was elected New York’s 3rd Congressional District in the recent midterm election, beating out Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman after incumbent Democrat Thomas Suozzi pursued an unsuccessful campaign for governor. Several weeks after his election, numerous reports emerged claiming that Santos had fabricated numerous aspects of the backstory that he campaigned on, including his work history, education, religious background and charitable work.
On Sunday, a new report from the New York Times uncovered yet more details from the congressman-elect’s past, including more allegations of serial dishonesty. The report cited allegations from Pedro Vilarva, who claimed to have started dating him in 2014, when he was 18 and Santos was 26. As Vilarva told the outlet, their relationship began to falter in 2015 due to a variety of situations, including one in which he accused Santos of surprising him with tickets to Hawaii that did not actually exist, and another in which he believes Santos stole his phone and pawned it.
Vilarva also accused him of lying about his jobs at the time, with Santos allegedly claiming at one point to work as an investor with CitiGroup, despite “never ever actually” going to work. As a result, Vilarva claimed that he often ended paying the bills.
“He used to say he would get money from CitiGroup, he was an investor,” Vilarva explained. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work… I would be scared to have someone like that in charge — having so much power in his hands.”
Newsweek reached out to Santos’s representatives for comment.
In the fallout of the many reports emerging about his claims, Santos admitted in late December to fabricating or exaggerating numerous aspects of his backstory, though he still remained committed to serving in the House of Representatives. Santos had previously claimed to be a “Jewish American” whose maternal grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled the Holocaust to Brazil. Reports later found that said grandparents were actually born in Brazil, and that his mother had neither Jewish nor Ukrainian ancestry. Santos walked back the claims, stating that “I never claimed to be Jewish … I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”
Santos is now under multiple investigations at the federal, state, and county levels. Numerous House Democrats, including Joaquin Castro and Ted Lieu, have called for his expulsion. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, has also put forward the Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker (SANTOS) Act, which would require candidates to disclose certain elements of their background under oath, so that they can be punished for lying.
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