Embattled Republican Representative George Santos faced mockery as he denied claims that he ripped off a veteran who needed health care for his dying service dog, after the New York congressman mistakenly tweeted he “reduced” the number of dogs.
Mr Santos responded to a story in Patch.com wherein military veteran Richard Osthoff accused Mr Santos of taking money from a GoFundMe to pay for Mr Osthoff’s dog Sapphire’s tumor and using it “for other dogs.” Sapphire ultimately died in 2017 and Mr Osthoff could not afford her euthanasia or cremation.
But Mr Santos vehemently denied any such accusation.
“The reports that I would let a dog die is shocking & insane,” he said. “My work in animal advocacy was the labor of love & hard work.”
But Mr Santos tweeted a typo that eventually made the rounds when he said, “Over the the past 24hr I have received pictures of dogs I helped reduce throughout the years along with supportive messages.” Mr Santos likely meant “rescued.”
“I asked my mom, who worked and managed a humane society for years, what Santos means by "reduce" here. She has no freaking idea lol,” Stephen Neukam of The Hill tweeted.
“Sometimes you just openly admit to killing dogs. How else to explain his efforts to “reduce” them. George Santos is a sick man,” Shannon Bell tweeted.
“You helped ‘reduce’ a dog to death while grifting $3K from its dying vet owner, George Anthony Devolder Jingleheimer Schmidt Santos,” Tara Dublin tweeted.
Mr Santos had previously said he had run a charity called “Friends of Pets,” which he claimed was a tax-empt non-profit. But The New York Times reported that the IRS had no record of such a non-profit existing.
The story is just the latest in a torrent of headlines that have revealed that Mr Santos, a freshman Republican who won a seat on Long Island, likely fabricated major parts of his biography.
