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New York Republican Rep. George Santos told reporters Tuesday that he will not attend President Joe Biden’s White House reception for new members of Congress tonight.
He quickly walked away from a crowd of reporters waiting outside his office, where he left Dunkin Donuts after promising a “surprise” for journalists who have been covering his time on Capitol Hill.
The rookie lawmaker has come under increasing scrutiny as details of his backstory continue to unravel and questions are raised about the source of his recent wealth.
Asked if he had been considering re-election, Santos told reporters it was too early to tell.
He responded to a DailyMail.com query about whether he will go to the White House tonight: ‘How many times do I have to answer the same question? Yes, I’m not going.
Santos did not give a reason why he would not attend, but he joins at least two other rookie Republicans who declined the invitation.
Since arriving in Washington earlier this month, the New York congressman’s office in the Longworth Building on Capitol Hill has been surrounded by reporters and television cameras hoping to catch a word about the steady trickle of new revelations suggesting that the congressman has not told the truth.
On Tuesday morning, those reporters came across a box of a dozen donuts in a Dunkin box, a box of Dunkin brand coffee, and the requisite plastic cups and cups, left behind earlier by Santos himself.
Just after 10am it looked like most of the donuts had been taken.
Santos posted a video of himself bringing the donuts later Tuesday morning and wrote on Twitter, “Surprise hope everyone enjoyed the Dunks!”
Rep. George Santos left a box of Dunkin Donuts outside his office Tuesday morning.
A significant number had been taken just before 9am on Tuesday, when DailyMail.com first observed the area outside Santos’s office.
DailyMail.com noted Capitol staff curiously sampling the breakfast snacks, which seemed untouched to most reporters except for a couple of hungry exceptions.
“Enjoying the donuts, I see,” a Santos staffer joked to reporters upon seeing the half-empty box.
It comes a day after a new poll showed that the majority of New Yorkers want Santos to resign, after he admitted to lying about his college education, career, family heritage and a host of other details.
Fifty-nine percent of those polled said they want Santos to resign, compared with just 17 percent who said they want him to stay on Capitol Hill.
Just under a quarter said they had no opinion about his political career.
His overall favorability rating is also low, at just 16 percent.
Even among his fellow Republicans, a 49 percent plurality wants him out of Congress.
The freshman New York Republican has come under intense scrutiny for questions about his backstory and misleading claims.
He has remained defiant in the face of calls to resign, promising a “shock” for the reporters who have been invading his office since he arrived on Capitol Hill.
A staggering 71 percent of New York suburbanites surveyed want him to step down, as do 58 percent of those who call the Big Apple home.
But so far he has dismissed all calls to step aside, insisting he is focused on serving the people of New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
The poll emerged hours before MSNBC resurfaced a clip of Santos telling a Brazilian outlet that he had survived an assassination attempt.
“We’ve already had an attempt on my life, an assassination attempt, a threatening letter, having to have the police, a police escort stop in front of our house,” he said in the interview, according to the MSNBC translation.
He did not elaborate on the alleged incident in the clip shown.
But Santos also reportedly claimed in the clip to have been mugged “in the middle of Fifth Avenue” in New York City, in broad daylight sometime during 2021.
And that was not the worst. Nobody did anything, nobody did anything. The fear is real. What we live here is surreal,’ said the congressman, according to the translation.