Speaking to a New York Times reporter recently, embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed that his 5-year-old niece was kidnapped from a Queens, New York, playground, but a “high-ranking” police officials says he likely made the story up.
From Insider:
According to a recent New York Times piece, Santos dialed up reporter Grace Ashford (who penned the initial Santos exposé) for the first time in September 2023. Several other one-on-one calls reportedly occurred between the two in the weeks after, where at one point, Santos said that he and his husband have “had to defend ourselves” after they began receiving threats post-publication.
Along with mentioning one previously reported incident where someone phoned him to say they were going to bash his head in with a bat, he alleged he’s also received a different kind of threat: he said his niece was at a playground before suddenly disappearing, only to be found 40 minutes later via security footage alongside two Chinese men.
Ashford added that he heavily implied that the alleged kidnapping was due to his own prior public statements about the Chinese Communist Party but didn’t have any proof to back up his claims.
Ashford subsequently said that she spoke with a “high-ranking” NYPD official, who said an investigation “found nothing at all to suggest it’s true.”
Read more at Insider.
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