Dr. Mehmet Oz was busted again. Not for trying to hawk diet supplements, but this time for forgetting to mention that he owns a condo in New Jersey. Oz and his wife also own a mansion overlooking the Hudson River. The issue? Oz failed to disclose the condo in his April senatorial candidacy paperwork from Pennsylvania, The Daily Beast reports.
Additionally, Oz’s tenants in the condo, according to The Daily Beast, are friends of the former daytime TV talk show host. That’s all well and good, except for this bit: The tenants are “a pair of apparent longtime friends deeply involved in Turkish nationalist activism and connected to groups that have fought to prevent the United States from recognizing the extermination of Armenians on Turkish territory during World War I—which Oz himself has refused to describe as a genocide, despite a consensus among respected historians.”
Whew.
Oz’s parents were both born in Turkey. According to ABC News, Oz, a dual citizen, voted in the 2018 presidential election in Turkey. MSNBC reports that Oz lied in an interview with The Washington Post about his ties to Turkey, saying he’d “never been politically involved in Turkey in any capacity.”
RELATED STORY ‘He’s shown us who he is,’ Armenian publisher says of Oz’s refusal to recognize Armenian genocide
Meanwhile, Oz’s New Jersey roots are what folks have been dragging him for—everyone from his Senate race challenger, Democratic candidate Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, to Sopranos actor and musician Steven Van Zandt, and even Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
Oz, who was a New Jersey resident for two decades, finally registered to vote in Pennsylvania in 2020, Insider reports.
The tweet from Van Zandt Wednesday was posted promptly on Fetterman’s feed. Hysterical.
Fetterman himself also took swipes at the Trump-endorsed Oz by announcing “New Jersey Day” on Thursday—in honor of the Republican candidate.
Fetterman has made a habit of ridiculing Oz about being from New Jersey, including frequently referring to Oz as “the Jersey boy,” and even posting a tweet with Jersey Shore reality TV star Snooki, a.k.a. Nicole Polizzi, who urged Oz to “come home.”
Sen. Casey got in on the fun, too. As Daily News reports, Casey posted a photoshopped image of a highway exit sign with arrows pointing in two directions. One read “Going Home to New Jersey,” and the other direction read “Running for Senate in Pennsylvania.”
As for Oz’s undisclosed condo in the Garden State, Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast, “The voters have the right to know the financial interests of the people they are going to entrust with power. … When candidates and public civil servants withhold that information, it does a lot of harm to the public trust.”
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