A now-deleted bio on his marketing campaign web site additionally confirmed that Santos acknowledged that his mom was Jewish and that his Jewish maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust by shifting to Brazil.
“I by no means claimed to be Jewish,” Santos instructed the New York Submit. “I’m Catholic. As a result of I discovered my maternal household had a Jewish background I stated I used to be ‘Jew-ish.'”
“My sins listed here are embellishing my resume. I am sorry,” he defined to the publication, including that he’s “not a legal” and will not let the scandal deter him from serving his two-year time period.
“This [controversy] is not going to deter me from having good legislative success. I might be efficient,” Santos doubled down. “I might be good.”