A Project Veritas video shows a staff member for a Democratic member of Congress saying he thinks his boss has been lying about her background.
Fabricated backgrounds have become a hot issue amid the scandal surrounding Republican Rep. George Santos of New York.
The Twitter video from Project Veritas, a conservative activist group, features Legislative Correspondent Clay Connor Elmore, who works for Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois. In the video, Elmore is asked if Democrats have similar issues to those of Santos.
âAbsolutely. Everybody is a liar. Between you and me, I feel like my member is lying about being a nurse,â Elmore said.
Elmore didnât give specific support for his comment. He went on to say, however, that âeven though she has a degree and she was a nurse, but I think the Republicans kept getting her being, like, âOh whatâs your actual background,â so itâs like messy. But I think itâs so ironic that, like, everybody in my office is like, âOh fâk George Santos,â but at least heâs being honest about his corruption,â Elmore said.
In the 2018 campaign in which he lost his seat to Underwood, Republican Rep. Randy Hultgren said Underwood falsely portrayed herself as working with patients, according to WLS-TV.
In that report, a representative of Underwood said she was on the books as a nurse in Illinois, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Hultgren said: âTo me, posturing as a practicing nurse when in reality thatâs not what you are or what youâve done is a real concern. I think voters have the right to know the truth, to know what someone has really done, and if you look at Underwoodâs own resume, you look through line by line, there is no time in her career it appears she could have worked under the eyes of patients.â
Hultgren said Underwoodâs campaign ads donât match her resume.
âLooking into patientsâ eyes, thatâs what she said. Thereâs nothing on her resume to say that sheâs done that,â Hultgren said. âSheâs been twisting it, with the stethoscope, with the scrubs on, in a dentistâs office.â
âSheâs worked as a bureaucrat. Sheâs worked in Washington, D.C., for the last decade.â
A March 2023 profile of Underwood in The Washington Post said she âspent most of her 20s in Washington, attending leadership training programs while working at the Department of Health and Human Services.â
The profile said that after the Obama administration ended, âshe moved home to work at a Medicaid managed-care provider called NextLevel Health.â The profile said she continued to work for the company until her election to Congress in 2018.
In the Project Veritas video this week, Elmore was asked about the differences between his boss and Santos.
âThe difference between Santos and my member is that Iâm willing to compromise a lot of my values for this woman whoâs there for other black women than George Santos, who doesnât have a lot of black women in his district,â Elmore said.
âHe is there just to flip New York. And I hate him, and I will call him out. But Iâve ⌠very much not called (out) my member, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that my security is there.â
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
