Out Rep. George Santos (R-NY) lied to a New York Times reporter about his five-year-old niece being kidnapped, according to the NYPD.

On Sunday, Times reporter Grace Ashford published a story based on several telephone conversations she’d had with the out congressman since early September. Ashford, along with fellow Times reporter Michael Gold, first began investigating Santos last November after he was elected. While their reporting, first published in December of last year, brought the then-incoming congressman’s history of lies and misdeeds to national attention, Long Island paper The North Shore Leader had been reporting on Santos’s lies on the campaign trail since before the November 2022 election.