Stephan: You have probably heard something about George Santos, a newly elected MAGAt Republican Congressman from New York. How he is an utter and complete liar and fraud, who made up his educational credits, his employment history and... well everything about his background and who he is. And I mean everything as this report spells out. What stands out for me, once again, about this sorry little saga is the utter silence of the Republican Party, and the members of Congress. The Republicans are perfectly comfortable with a man who is a liar and fraud in every particular serving in the House as a representative. The Republicans in Congress now seem to me to be mostly a cast of cartoon characters, notable for their incompetence and lack of integrity. What also stands out for me is why the Democratic Party did not do a background check on this creep who so obviously made up everything about his background.
A photo of Leonard Antoine Horta Devolder and his family in Brazil. Credit: Gea Sierdsma
Congressman-elect George Santos’ emotional narrative of having Jewish grandparents who fled Europe during World War II appears to be untrue, like much of the rest of his campaign biography, according to genealogy websites reviewed by the Forward.
Santos, a Long Island Republican, has said that his father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish, and that both faiths “are mine.” The very first line of the “About George” page on his campaign website states: “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.”
But the website myheritage.com lists Santos’ maternal grandparents as having both been born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power — his grandfather, Paulo Horta Devolder, in 1918, and his grandmother, Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder, in Rio, in 1927. An online obituary for Santos’ mother, Fatima Aziza Caruso Horta Devolder, who died in 2016, says she was born in Niterói, a suburb of […]
