On Monday, a lawyer for New York Republican Rep.-elect George Santos blasted The New York Times for reporting that he had misrepresented some of his credentials in a successful bid to flip a blue House seat red last month.
Santos, 34, was elected to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District last month, defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman.
The Times questioned some of Santos’ claims about his biography on the campaign trail, saying it had reviewed public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil and was unable to substantiate some of his professed qualifications.
According to the Times story, the unsubstantiated accolades include claims that Santos worked at top Wall Street firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, which, while previously listed on Santos’ campaign website, could not be supported by company records. The report also questioned Santos’ educational background, stating that officials at Baruch College were unable to locate a record that corresponded with his name and date of birth for 2010, the year he claimed to have graduated.
Santos’ lawyer, Joseph Murray, dismissed the story in a statement Monday, insisting that Santos was being smeared by “enemies” at the paper and implying that Santos posed a threat to Democrats.
“After four years in the public eye, and on the verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican-led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches this shotgun blast of attacks,” said Murray. “It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations. As Winston Churchill famously stated, ‘You have enemies? Good. It means that you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.'”
According to the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact, the quote is frequently misattributed to Churchill and appears in an 1845 essay titled “Villemain” by Victor Hugo, which predates the British leader.
Santos, 34, became the first openly LGBTQ non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress in November, defeating Democrats in a district that includes parts of Long Island and Queens.
Santos will succeed Democrat Tom Suozzi, who lost his primary for governor this year. Santos ran against Suozzi in the 2020 general election but lost.
