In the litany of lies and half-truths told by George Santos in a fanciful journey in which he was first elected to and then expelled from Congress, the one he told about his nascent campaign for a different House seat on Long Island was not exactly a lie.
It just wasn’t true for very long.
Less than seven weeks after announcing he would try to return to the House of Representatives, Mr. Santos, the fabulist ex-congressman from New York who is facing federal charges, said on Tuesday that he would end his latest congressional bid.
In a turn perhaps befitting of Mr. Santos, whose loose association with the truth has been extensively documented, he offered two distinct reasons for his exit from the race.
In a social media post, Mr. Santos said he was worried that he and Representative Nick LaLota, the Republican he was running to unseat, might split conservative votes. “I don’t want to split the ticket and be responsible for handing the House to Dems,” he wrote.
Mr. Santos, who has made questionable claims of Jewish ancestry and invented ties to the Holocaust, said he was particularly concerned given “the rise of antisemitism in our country.”
