‘He made it up’: Police say George Santos lied about Chinese communists kidnapping

During a series of phone calls with a New York Times journalist, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed that his extended family was victimized by the Chinese Communist government which was behind the brief kidnapping of his niece.

According to a police official: it never happened.

In an extensive piece for the Times, journalist Grace Ashford detailed a history of receiving calls from the embattled lawmaker at all hours, where he alternately defended himself and complained about the turn his life has taken since entering Congress, one time claiming, "I literally threw my entire life into the toilet and flushed it to get elected.”

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In the midst of those calls, he claimed his niece had been abducted in Queens and hinted the Chinese Communist government was possibly behind it.

According to Ashford, Santos was complaining about the threats he has faced when he confessed to her, "I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one story that nobody talks about,” she wrote before adding that he related, "... how his 5-year-old niece disappeared from a playground in Queens, only to be located 40 minutes later on a surveillance camera with two Chinese men. He said the incident was the subject of an active police investigation, implying heavily that it might have been in retaliation for his vocal stance against the Chinese Communist Party."

“So you think it was China?” the journalist asked, with Santos reportedly replying, "Look, I don’t want to go into like, conspiracy theory. But you know, if the shoe fits, right?”

Curious about the wild accusation Ashford wrote, "There was one other question that was bothering me as well: his story about the Chinese Communist Party kidnapping. I reached out to a colleague with connections to law enforcement officials to learn more about the investigation."

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"A high-ranking police official confirmed that officers had been called and had looked into the incident. But they found no evidence of Chinese Communist Party involvement, or of any kidnapping at all," she wrote.

"We found nothing at all to suggest it’s true," the official told her before adding, "I’d lean into, ‘he made it up.”

You can read more here.