Lying Long Island Rep. George Santos (R-NY) came to the defense of one of his potential 2024 opponents on Tuesday, accusing Nassau County Republicans of signing off on an antisemitic campaign mailer against the legislator.
The fliers targeted Josh Lafazan, who is running for re-election in the county legislature’s 18th district against Samantha Goetz, a Republican who currently serves as deputy county attorney.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Lafazan denounced the GOP mailers, which depicted him with an enlarged nose, smiling and grabbing fistfuls of cash — and set up poster boards of the image side-by-side with anti-Jewish propaganda printed before the Holocaust.
“The widening of the nose, the yellowing of the teeth, the horns,” he told reporters, “this type of deforming of my face has been used on mailer after mailer, on advertisement after advertisement. This is not a one-off.”
“I am unapologetic when I say to my opponent and to the Nassau Republican Party, shame on you and apologize now and let us know this will never happen again,” Lafazan added.
Santos, in a X post sharing video footage of the press conference, said he was “not one to defend democrats [sic] … But the TRUTH is that the Nassau GOP 100% knows he’s Jewish, the whole Island knows.”
“These images are abhorrent propaganda like images used by the nazis [sic],” the 35-year-old added, before calling out the county’s Republican chairman and his spokesman.
“Shame on Joe Cairo for allowing Mike Deery to put these tasteless ads together,” Santos said. “As a former candidate I know for a fact Joe Cairo personally Approves EVERY SINGLE AD presented to him by Mike Deery during the campaign season.”
“Republican mailers that accurately illustrate the corruption and tax hikes of candidates for public office at the behest of partisan interests while ignoring blatently [sic] anti-Semitic Facebook posts and activities by Democrat candidates, is nothing short of disgraceful,” the Nassau County Republican Committee said in a statement.
They added that the the Town of Oyster Bay Democratic Committee had published “an image of a pig with a swastika on its hind quarters as an emblem of the Republican Party,” which they called “an unmitigated trope of ‘Jew-hatred’ on steroids.”
“The Republican Party has no knowledge of the religion that the candidates in question observe,” they added. “Nor do we associate illustrations of greedy and corrupt politicians holding money with any ethnic group, race or religion. Shame on the Democrat Party if it makes any such association.”
The GOP committee also told ABC 7 that Lafazan had waited until the week before the Nov. 7 election to call out the mailer, even though it had been distributed for months.
Lafazan has already declared his candidacy for New York’s Third Congressional District along with six other Democratic primary challengers after he lost his 2022 primary bid to run against Santos.
Santos made the remarks the day before the US House of Representatives will consider a resolution to expel him for his many alleged misdeeds, including lying about his personal and professional history.
Those lies included claims that he was Jewish and that his grandparents escaped Nazi persecution in Europe.
Federal prosecutors have indicted Santos on 23 counts, including lying to Congress, wire fraud, money laundering and stealing public funds.
The indictment has led to calls by New York and Long Island GOP leadership for Santos to resign — and at least nine Republican candidates have since announced primary challenges.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and four other New York Republican representatives introduced a resolution to remove Santos from Congress last week after prosecutors unveiled a 10-count superseding indictment accusing him of falsifying federal finance disclosure forms.
The resolution will receive a floor vote Wednesday and requires a two-thirds majority of the House to pass, meaning that around 80 GOP lawmakers would have to join with every Democrat to oust Santos.
Only five House members have been expelled in US history, with the last being Ohio Democrat James Traficant after he was convicted on charges of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion in 2002.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in an interview with Fox News last week expressed concern about Republicans’ narrow majority in the lower chamber when asked about the expulsion vote.
Other GOP members have also pointed to an ongoing inquiry by the House Ethics Committee into Santos. On Tuesday, the panel announced its “next course of action” would be taken against the fibber by Nov. 17.