More of Congressman-elect George Santos' claims come under scrutiny
NEW YORK -- As new calls have come for George Santos to step down, there are new questions about other aspects of his life story.
This comes as a third prosecutor has announced she's also looking into whether the Long Island Republican could face criminal charges.
The chants against Santos grew louder during a rally on Thursday in Mineola, just as the legal investigations into his claims about his life appear to be going deeper.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Thursday, "While as a matter of course we do not comment on open investigations, we are reviewing whether Queens County has jurisdiction over any potential criminal offenses."
READ MORE: Congressman-elect George Santos faces federal investigation after admitting to lying on resume
Katz spoke out one day after Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly said she was looking into the matter, and CBS News sources said prosecutors within the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York were looking at his finances, including financial disclosure filings.
It's something the weekly Long Island paper The North Shore Leader reported on last summer, months before the New York Times did a deeper dive into Santos' fabrications.
"We saw in his financial filings that there were hundreds of thousands of dollars of very dubious items listed. It smelled of fraud," said Grant Lally, co-publisher of The North Shore Leader. "The big one is the $700,000 loan that he claims he made to his campaign. Now, this is somebody who wasn't worth $5,000, and suddenly 12 months later, he is loaning his campaign $700,000 in cash."
On Wednesday, more of Santos' claims were questioned, including one about him saying he attended the elite private school Horace Mann in the Bronx, but dropped out due to family financial hardships. A spokesperson for the school said there are no records of him ever attending.
Santos also previously said his mother was in the south tower on 9/11 and that her death was related to the tragedy, but reports say there is no evidence she was near ground zero.
"As a constituent, when I come to his office, how do I know he's not just BS-ing me?" said Angel Reyes, of the Nassau County Agency of Hispanic Affairs.
READ MORE: Constituents make it clear at rally they don't want Congressman-elect George Santos seated
Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who Santos said "paved the way" for his win, was not available for an interview, but in a statement said, in part, "I am deeply disappointed. ... I've known George through political organizing in Queens since his prior run for office, and was completely taken by surprise. ... George Santos won his seat by eight points, not because of a blue-chip investment firm on his resume, but because he worked hard to connect with voters. ... I hope he has finally come clean and has the opportunity to repair his trust with the community."
CBS2 reached out to Team Santos for a response, but for the second day in a row did not hear back.
Conservative television host David Zere told CBS2 that when he met Santos in 2020, he gave him the benefit of the doubt.
"He told me he was worth $14 million to $22 million when he was in his 20s. Um, and you know, now it's coming out that he might have been working at the call center for Dish Network," Zere said.
Zere said he and friends donated time and money to the campaign believing the Republican could flip the 3rd District from blue to red.
"Very disappointed and, um, you know, I think he should step down. I really do," Zere said. "It puts a black eye on the events next Tuesday."
Outside the Nassau County Courthouse on Thursday, descendants of Holocaust survivors and relatives of mass shooting victims slammed Santos for lying about his Jewish heritage, and claiming he lost employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting.
"How dare you say that you are Jew-ish. How dare he try to score political points or gain sympathy by lying about losing employees. I lost my son, Scott, in the worst high school massacre in American history," Linda Beigel Schulman said, referring to the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting in 2018.
Santos' former opponent, Democrat Robert Zimmerman, said, "We saw the red flags. We brought it out to the public the best we could," adding The North Shore Leader, which interviewed Santos in 2020, had published reports that even called him "Scam-tos."
"He wouldn't answer questions clearly. He was very evasive," Lally said. "At the time, he told me that his, uh, you know, one side of the family many years ago had come from Belgium to Brazil."
Lally then showed CBS2 what he says is Santos' criminal file from Brazil.
"I mean, it's a pretty thick file. It's ... it contains pictures of him, back from 2008, when he stole a checkbook from an 82-year-old patient of his whom his mother was caring for," Lally said.
Several people have asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate Santos. A rep for the committee told CBS2, "No comment."
