More false claims from Congressman George Santos emerge and scandal grows in the US.

Late last year, an investigation by The New York Times revealed that legislator George Santos, who was elected last November, lied about his education, work experience and religion. Now, the flame was rekindled in a new scandal after different media claimed that his mother had never been in one of the World Trade Center towers in the 2001 attack, such as he had stated.

Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants and born in Queens, took the Republican victory in the House of Representatives for the New York district. His lies saw the light after the New York Times put into question different statements about his life that had been emblematic of his electoral campaign. Through this ‘constructed’ history, the politician became the embodiment of “American dream”.

After the verifications, the legislator acknowledged in different interviews that he had drawn important parts of your CV: did not graduate from college, nor had he worked at Goldman Sachs Investment Banking. Despite the commotion, he refused to cede his seat in Congress, which he assumed on January 3.

In accordance with The Forward, a medium that echoed the Washington Post, There are no records indicating that Santos’s mother was in the attack on the Twin Towers. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Alex Calzareth, a certified public accountant with an interest in genealogy and research, and shared with different outlets.

Fatima Devolder, mother of the representative, applied for her visa to enter the States from Brazil, where she was residing at the time, in February 2003. According to the procedure, she declared that she had not been in the country since 1999. In contrast, the campaign page of Santos indicates a forceful description: “She was in the South Tower office on September 11, 2001., when the horrible events occurred that day (…). He survived the tragic events, but passed away a few years later when he lost his battle with cancer. Documents obtained by Calzareth locate Devolder in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, at the time of the attacks of September 11.

According to the report of Washington PostAt the time of the woman’s death, in December 2016, her son asked for donations to pay for the funeral. So far, the congressman’s spokesman did not make any statements.

After Santos’s election, and despite the fact that he admitted that part of his career was the product of deception, there are still doubts about the origin of his fortune, which he used to finance the campaign. Republicans hold a narrow 222-212 majority in the US House of Representatives. Santos won the election against Democrat Robert Zimmerman by a margin of 7.5 percentage points.

At the beginning of 2023, the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office announced the reopening of an old investigation for alleged fraud against Santos, for lying on his resume. The case had been shelved because investigators had been unable to locate the congressman,accused in his parents’ country of using a stolen checkbook to buy $700 of merchandise at a store in 2008, according to local media. “But the defendant has been elected to Congress in the United States, and therefore he has a verified address,” the prosecution said in statements recorded by the agency. AFP.

THE NATION