David Becker for the Washington Submit/Getty
George Santos, the Republican Congressman-elect from Lengthy Island caught in an online of fabrications and self-described “resume elaborations,” spoke for the primary time since a New York Occasions investigation introduced a lot of his purported candidate backstory into query.
The Every day Beast first reported on Santos and his enterprise file in April, discovering that his most up-to-date employer was accused by federal prosecutors of being a Ponzi scheme.
The 34-year-old referred to as into a chat radio present for an interview with WABC to deal with the Occasions investigation.
“Properly, the file is, I don’t know what my choices are,” Santos stated when requested if he would sue the publication.
The Lengthy Island Republican stated he was going to be “quiet anyway” for the previous week due to the sixth anniversary of his mom’s dying, however vowed to take his seat and be sworn in on January 3, when the brand new Congress will convene for the primary time.
“I’m gonna look by means of and see all the pieces, and identical to they nitpicked at me, now it’s gonna be my time to nitpick at each journalists who made it their mission to slander me throughout this nation and internationally, and let’s see what occurs on the finish,” Santos stated. “However the one factor is, I will probably be sworn in, I'll take workplace, I will be an efficient member of the legislator [sic.] within the soon-to-be 118th Congress…”
He then went right into a reworked model of his stump speech earlier than one of many hosts requested if he gave his personal cash to his marketing campaign,
“That's the cash of, that I paid myself by means of my firm, the Devolder Group,” Santos stated.
The hosts didn't push again any additional, and Santos thanked New Yorkers for his or her “super quantity of help.”
Santos additionally gave a imprecise apology “if I dissatisfied anybody by resume embellishment,” however didn't elaborate past that.
Additionally on Monday, the congressman-elect admitted to The New York Submit that he hadn’t been truthful about his work and training background—copping to not having ever labored “straight” for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, or graduated from Baruch Faculty, as he had beforehand claimed.
Nonetheless, Santos insisted, “we do silly issues in life ... I’m not a prison.”