Mr. Santos has faced numerous calls to address The Times’s reporting. In his statement on Twitter, he said, “I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more. Happy Holidays to all!”
Mr. Santos’s brief statement on Twitter came a day after the incoming House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, suggested that Mr. Santos appeared “to be in the witness protection program” after he spent the week avoiding the press.
“No one can find him,” Mr. Jeffries, a Democrat, said at a news conference. “He’s hiding out from legitimate questions that his constituents are asking about his education, about his so-called charity, about his work experience, about his criminal entanglement in Brazil, about every aspect, it appears, of his life.”
On Wednesday, The Forward, a Jewish publication, reported that Mr. Santos may have misled voters about his account of his Jewish ancestryincluding that his maternal grandparents fled persecution around World War II.
The House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, did not answer questions about Mr. Santos on Thursday afternoon before walking onto the House floor, according to several accounts on Twitter from Washington reporters.