George Santos sat for a long-form interview with Manu Raju, the CNN reporter who has dogged him for months about his many well-documented fibs – and the New York congressman reiterated his unproven claims that his grandparents fled the Holocaust.
“It’s true,” Santos said of his previous claims of coming from a historically Jewish family.
“It’s true?” Raju questioned.
“Oh it’s true,” Santos replied. “I spent the last 10 months [researching] DNA, hiring genealogists.”
“Is there documentation of this?” the CNN chief congressional correspondent pressed.
“That’s what I spent the last 10 months doing, putting together,” Santos claimed.
However, the representative said since “Ukraine is in the middle of a freaking war and my grandfather comes from Ukraine,” he has not been able to get ahold of the full documentation of his family tree.
“This is the biggest lift that I’ve had to do my entire life,” Santos told Raju. “But that’s something I’m going to prove before I die.”
Santos continued to argue “The reality is, I never said I was Jewish. I would always joke for years, I would say I’m Jew-ish. I was raised Roman Catholic.”
“This is something I’ve always made very clear. I’m Catholic, who comes from a Jewish family. Here’s my Jewish family’s history. Why is this now a problem?” Santos asked.
“Just to be clear, you have documented proof that your grandparents fled the Holocaust,” Raju pressed again.
Santos claimed he is still working on putting together the final pieces of his family history, “Specifically the piece in Brazil, where they go to Brazil and then have documents forged so that they can blend in.”
“Once I have everything ready, I will allow the same company I hired to submit the report to the press, with glee, because that is going to be the one thing that I will be able to say I never intended to hurt anybody,” Santos continued.
“I never wanted anybody to feel like I misrepresented myself or my family’s heritage,” the Congressman said. “I will not stop working until I have every single part of that put together.”
Watch the entire interview in the video above.
