After months of intense scrutiny of seemingly every aspect of his biography - from his education and work history to his heritage and religious background - Rep. George Santos has admitted he has been “a terrible liar.”
In an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” broadcast Monday on Britain’s TalkTV channel, the embattled New York Republican was quick to admit dishonesty on certain aspects of his record — even as he doubled down on others and sought to blame previous lies on societal expectations.
Santos, 34, was elected in New York’s 3rd Congressional District in November, but the biography he had pitched to voters soon started to unravel. Reporters uncovered inconsistencies or apparent falsehoods in his accounts of his work and educational achievements, as well as his claims to Jewish identity and his story that his mother was in one of the World Trade Center towers when they were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
The hour-long interview went through several of Santos’s false or disputed claims, with Santos agreeing, after being pressed by Morgan, that he has “been a terrible liar.”
“Well, I’ve been a terrible liar on those subjects, and what I tried to convey to the American people is, I made mistakes,” Santos said.
Santos described lies about his higher education as “one of my biggest regrets in life.” He blamed his false claims of having graduated from Baruch College with a 3.89 GPA - despite never attending the institution - on the “expectation [of] society, the pressure,” and not being able to afford to go to college.
While describing the decision as “stupid,” he claimed it stemmed from “the political apparatus and the political culture of New York State.”
Asked why he didn’t think his lies would be uncovered, Santos responded: “I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress, and I got away with it then.”
Santos was also grilled about other aspects of his campaign biography, including his claims that he attended a prestigious private prep school - which said it had no record of him - and his pretensions that he worked for Wall Street firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.
As for two of his most controversial claims - regarding his mother’s whereabouts on Sept. 11, 2001, and on his purported Jewish heritage, he clung to his previous assertions.
When asked about his claims that his mother was present at the World Trade Center during the 2001 terrorist attacks, Santos said he remains “convinced that’s the truth.” Immigration records show that Santos’s mother was not in the United States at the time of the attacks.
“I won’t debate my mother’s life, as she’s passed,” he continued. Santos previously said his mother survived the attack on the World Trade Center and “passed away a few years later.” She died in December 2016.
Santos also maintained that he would “battle to my grave” for his claims to Jewish heritage. He said he has ordered DNA tests and is awaiting the results.
Santos’s campaign website previously said his grandparents “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine” and “fled persecution during WWII” — wording that changed after the New York Times and Jewish Insider published stories casting doubt on this biography. He later told the New York Post: “I never claimed to be Jewish. I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
In the interview, Santos also reiterated his claim that he briefly attended the prestigious Horace Mann School in New York City “for six months of ninth grade” in 2004, but he said he was unsure what name he used at the time. “It was either George Devolder or Anthony Devolder,” the congressman said. “I wouldn’t know. I was a minor.”
Ed Adler, a spokesman for the school, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that was not true, writing in an email: “There is no record of him attending HM under any name.”
In Monday’s interview, Santos also repeated his assertion that he had never claimed to be Jewish. “I would always say I was raised Catholic but I come from a Jewish family, so that makes me Jew-ish,” he said. “It’s always been a party favorite, everybody’s always laughed, and now that everybody’s canceling me, everyone’s pounding down for a pound of flesh.”
His host appeared exasperated, retorting: “Because you’re not Jewish!”
Santos faces multiple investigations into his campaign finances, and, in late January, he temporarily stepped down from his assignments on two House Committees. But despite calls for his resignation from both Republicans and Democrats - as well as a poll suggesting that the overwhelming majority of voters in his district want him to step down - Santos has given no indication that he intends to do so.
At times, the interview - an interrogation of a politician who has lied extensively - felt surreal.
“The problem you have, Congressman, it seems to me, is that you admit to certain big lies and then you deny other big lies,” Morgan said. “And the problem people have is they don’t know when you’re lying and when you’re telling the truth. . . . I’m not even sure now, because how can I be?”
Toward the end of the interview, Santos claimed he wanted “to be the most transparent member of Congress,” and he asserted that his lying “stopped a long time ago.”
Morgan described it as an “extraordinary interview” but added: “Who knows how much of that was true or otherwise?”
One Santos claim sounded very believable, however. He revealed that he would “absolutely not” have run for office if he had known the amount of attention he would face.
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The Washington Post’s Azi Paybarah in New York contributed to this report.