a genealogy previously told cnn, there s no sign of jewish and or ukrainian heritage, and no indication of name changes along the way. but santos appeared to use the alias, for fund raising for a pet charity. santos insisting despite the controversy, that he intends to serve in congress. now it can be incumbent upon me to deliver on those results. i look forward to serve. you re exactly right. i look forward to serving my district. house gop leader, kevin mccarthy, remaining silent on the matter. even as fellow incoming gop house members from new york issued statements criticizing santos, lack of transparency. one of those lawmakers could be, congressman-elect nicole ot, calling for an ethics santos also under scrutiny for how he made his money and how
claiming he attended an elite prep school. a good prep school which was harrisman prep in the bronx. and my senior year of prep school unfortunately my parents fell on hard times. i left school four months till graduation. reporter: but a spokesperson for horace mann telling cnn there is no evidence santos ever attended the school. and further fabrications about his family heritage. we don t carry the ukrainian last name for a lot of people who are descendants of world war ii refugees or survivors of the holocaust. a lot of names and paperwork were changed in the name of survival. so i don t carry the family last name. that would have been zabrovsky. reporter: a genealogist previously told cnn there s no sign of jewish and/or ukrainian heritage and no indication of name changes along the way. but santos appeared to use the alias anthony zabrovsky for fund-raising for a pet charity. santos insisting despite the
the charity, the pet charity, the lot cholocaust accusations. the thing about the pulse nightclub, just the guy s a total fraud and the people in his district deserve a lot better than this. can i ask you, you know, one of the if you watch kind of the progression of stories like this, the thing that usually tips things over the edge is when other members start looking around and saying, this could actually blow back onto me. he s a congressman-elect in the republican conference from new york, which was the state almost single handedly responsible for giving republicans the majority in a bunch of seats that in 2024 are going to be very, very much battleground seats. who how does this play out and your understanding of the dynamics? do you feel like this could turn to a tipping point for a lot of those new members from new york? well, i think what you just described is exactly why it is some of those new members from new york who are going to be less electorally stable than someo
lies that unraveling when you look at it. is this like the age that lots of people do? is this the world we re living in now? flat out lying about huge parts of his resume saying, oh, i just embellish. everyone overstates, i m embarrassed, but he flat-out lied and silent for a week on this and now is speaking out? i don t think he s finished, by the way. more questioning come up. like the pet charity and so forth and so on. the whole question of him saying, because he s on the record saying that he s never had a problem with sexuality and so forth, that he s a gay man and turns out he was married until just a few years ago and then says this is quiet. you can t put it on your website, talk about it in public speeches and run for public office are and when asked about it, hey, straighten out the timeline if nothing else and run behind a cloak of privacy. he s been invited and remains invited to come on cnn.
my colleague michael gold and i were assigned to write what we thought would be a quick piece on this new congressman from long island who is drawing a lot of attention. he flipped what had been a blue district red but he was also sort of this new model of perhaps what the gop could be in the future. he s only 34 years old, he s latino and he s gay. which was all very, very interesting. and so as we started to look into him, he looked at his bio and we looked at all sorts of dink things. the pet charity that you menged is one of the things that caught me eye because i ve didn t some reporting into some nonprofits in the past and so one of fis things i did was look for some of the filings because he was very specific about being ty 501-c 3 and we weren t able to find that with the irs. we had some bigger questions. and i want to read and i know you ve seen this statement, but i do want to read what an attorney for santos has told cnn in a statement.