It was only after George Santos was elected to Congress that the news broke: the New York Republican had told lies during his campaign.

But these weren’t just little lies, or white lies. Santos appears to have lied brazenly, with abandon, about almost everything it’s possible to lie about: his career, his education, his faith, his relationships, his finances, 9/11.

Santos, who in his telling is a real estate magnate and animal charity founder who graduated in economics and previously worked for Goldman Sachs – none of this is true – has refused to step down from the House of Representatives, despite calls for him to resign and criticism from his own party.

But in Santos’s congressional district, which covers part of Queens, in New York City, and much of the neighboring Nassau county, in Long Island, the reaction has been more varied. Some people have defended the serial fibber, while others are adamant Santos must quit.

“If you lie about one thing, that is OK,” said Gary Dhindsa, who owns One Stop Cards and Convenience in Farmingdale, Nassau county.

“Anybody can expect that – maybe he misspoke or something. But if you lie about 100% of everything, people cannot expect that.

“Politicians, when they speak they try to embellish their things. But not like this, when everything they tell you is totally bullshit.”

It was the New York Times, in December, which broke the story of Santos’s web of deceit.

Santos claimed that he graduated from Baruch College and New York University, only to later admit he hadn’t. He said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but after both firms said they had no record of his employment, Santos said he had “never worked directly” for either institution. Santos tweeted in February 2021 that he and his family owned 13 properties, before confessing to the New York Post that he does not own any properties.

During his campaign, Santos had referred to himself as a “proud American Jew”, but later said he had “never claimed to be Jewish”, only “Jew-ish”. He said four of his employees were killed during the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Florida, but the New York Times found that “none of the 49 victims appear to have worked at the various firms named in [Santos’s] biography”.

Santos also claimed to have founded a charity called Friends of Pets United, but according to the Times: “The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.”

The Republican had also claimed his mother was “in her office in the South Tower” in New York on the day of the 9/11 attacks, and that she died a few years later: “9/11 claimed my mother’s life,” he wrote on Twitter in July 2021. His mother had actually died in 2016, and the New York Times could find no evidence that she worked at the World Trade Center.

“People are betrayed,” Dhindsa said.

“They are feeling betrayed because he told complete lies. He manipulated everything. Not one or two things. Everything.”

Santos had visited Farmingdale in the run-up to the election, and posted an Instagram photo of him enjoying an ice-cream at Charlotte’s, a couple of doors down from One Stop Cards and Convenience.

On Wednesday, the owner of Charlotte’s remembered Santos as “very nice”, but had some questions.

“On the surface of it, it sounds like he should resign,” Nick DeVito said.

“He made up a bunch of stuff and got his job under false pretenses. That’s what it sounds like. But I would like to just hear him, you know, give us his side of the story, I guess, and after I heard that I would make my determination,” he said.

DeVito said he had offered the ice-cream to Santos for free, but Santos had insisted on paying. DeVito voted for Santos a few days later, but said the newly elected politician needs to fully address the fabrication controversy.

“If they are bold-faced lies, then I think he should resign and somebody else should take the spot. If he’s got some kind of an explanation, even a half-assed explanation. I might let him slide.”

In the meantime, DeVito said: “He’s welcome back here. But I don’t know if I would give him anything for free.”

Further along Farmingdale’s Main Street, florist Emily Ring was more dead-set in her Santos support.

“There’s so many liars with politicians, it’s like: they all do, to a certain degree. But he got caught,” Ring said.

“I don’t think he should resign.”

Ultimately, it might not be Santos’s choice as to whether his political career continues. The Republican, who was due to be sworn in on Tuesday only for the GOP’s bonfire in the House to cause a delay, will take office amid a swarm of investigations.

Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Santos’s finances, while a local investigation in Nassau county began examining Santos in late December. The New York Times reported that “questions remain” about how Santos was able to loan his campaign $700,000.

“I made a mistake, and I think humans are flawed and we all make mistakes,” Santos said in an interview with Fox News on 27 December.

“The reality is that I remain committed to doing everything I set forward in my campaign. I’m not a fraud. I’m not a fake.”

Asked if he feels “no shame” about telling “blatant lies” to the electorate, Santos said:

“I can say the same thing about the Democrats and the party, look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden has been lying to the American people for 40 years, he’s the president of the United States,” he said.

That excuse didn’t carry much weight with Marylou Albertini, a resident of the affluent Port Washington neighborhood in Long Island.

“I think he’s a crumb,” Albertini said.

“It’s really like he’s saying it’s OK to do it. Which is really wrong.”

Albertini said she believed most politicians to be “crooks”, but said Santos’s actions went further than the usual political obfuscations.

“​​I heard him say basically: ‘Why should that matter, because other politicians lie,’” Albertini said.

“Well this isn’t about them. It’s about you, stupid.”