By Sam Chapman, News Reporter
More questions and growing outrage have emerged surrounding New York State Representative George Santos as a new report involving the first-year lawmaker surfaces.
Santos has been named in an alleged theft of $3,000 from a Navy veteran, Richard Osthoff, attempting to raise money for his dog that had fallen ill.
According to ABC News, “Santos, using the name Anthony Devolder, ran a GoFundMe account in 2016 under the auspices of a charity, Friends of Pets United, and raised some $3,000 to ostensibly help Osthoff pay for surgery to remove a tumor from his dog.” However, Santos allegedly did not give that money to Osthoff. Following the raising of that three thousand dollars, the New York Representative “ignored text messages” about actually sending the donated money to the distressed dog owner.
Osthoff’s beloved pet, Sapphire, subsequently died from the condition that the money was raised to treat.
In the wake of this story, according to CNN, “Santos did not respond to questions about the matter when asked by reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York declined to comment.”
This comes as Santos has been under fire the past few months for “embellishing” his résumé, including falsehoods about education and work history on his Curriculum Vitae and even false claims about his mother’s place of birth. He additionally stated consistently that his mother was killed in the 9/11 attacks, which has since been proven as simply untrue. Along with all that, Santos has been accused of living an entire double life in Brazil, facing potential fraud charges from the Brazilian government.
The debunking of these claims has caused an uproar from misled and outraged voters in his district who are now calling for his resignation and for investigations of both his campaign and personal finances.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has since confirmed that Santos would recuse himself from committee assignments in response to the investigations.