United States Congressman-elect George Santos (R-New York), who is already under investigation for ostensibly lying to voters about vast chunks of his personal and professional background, is now facing additional scrutiny for making incompatible statements about the effects that the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks had on his family.
On Wednesday night it was discovered that Santos twice tweeted conflicting recollections of his mother Fatima Devolder's death.
"9/11 claimed my mother's life... so I'm blocking so I don't ever have to read this again," Santos posted on July 12th, 2021. Five months later, Santos wrote that "December 23rd this year marks 5 years I lost my best friend and mentor. Mom you will live forever in my heart."
The Washington Post confirmed on Thursday that Devolder died on December 23rd, 2016, further noting that "while many first responders and people around Ground Zero later developed health problems, including cancer, because of exposure to the contaminated air, critics were quick to draw attention to the latest inconsistency in Santos's personal story, as well as point out that 15 years was more than 'a few years later.'"
The paper also explained that "as of 2021, at least 4,627 responders and survivors who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had died. While not all of the deaths can be attributed to illnesses linked to Ground Zero exposures, researchers have identified more than 60 types of cancer as well as roughly two dozen other ailments linked to Ground Zero exposures, according to Scientific American."
But the issue became even murkier on Thursday afternoon when a segment of an interview that Santos gave to BizTV while on the 2022 campaign trail appeared on Twitter. In it, Santos proffered yet another version of that fateful day's events and declared himself a victim of a sinister liberal agenda:
I can't believe that that's the reality that we're living in, that I have to hear somebody actually say that the 9/11 Memorial is canceled – the same memorial where many New Yorkers, Long Islanders, even New Jersey and Connecticut residents perished, first responders, law enforcement, everybody, you know, people working in the towers and media people – everybody just perished. And to – I get emotional.
My parents were both down there on the day of the attacks and fortunately, none of them had passed.
But to say that the families of those who lost their loved ones will be recused from having a ceremony – which like you said is part of their support group, taken away from them – just strikes to me as a very foolish attempt of [former Democratic New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo and the left trying to erase that history, that very recent history that a lot of us saw. All of us alive, most of us alive today saw it, Millennials included. I was fourteen at the time.
Watch below:
New: George Santos claimed *both* of his parents were at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and survived, and accused “the left” of “trying to erase that history.”
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 29, 2022
Santos: “I get emotional. My parents were both down there the day of the attacks and fortunately none of them passed.” pic.twitter.com/LtGA7AE6Tq
