George Santos expelled from Congress in historic House vote

Scandal-plagued George Santos lied his way into Congress and has been indicted for bankrolling his lavish lifestyle with stolen donor cash.

Republican George Santos is surrounded by journalists as he leaves the US Capitol after his fellow members of Congress voted to expel him. Picture: AFP

The House voted Friday to expel embattled Rep. George Santos over allegations the New York Republican stole money from his own campaign and committed other misdeeds, in only the sixth expulsion from the chamber and the first of a member who wasn’t a convicted felon or a member of the Confederacy.

Lawmakers voted 311 to 114 to remove him, above the two-thirds House supermajority required by the Constitution. While almost all Democrats and many Republicans supported the move to expel Santos, more than half of GOP lawmakers — including Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and other members of party leadership — said he shouldn’t be expelled before his criminal case had been resolved as it would set a bad precedent.

Another consideration for GOP lawmakers was that Santos’s expulsion narrows Republicans’ thin majority ahead of contentious votes on issues including Ukraine aid, border policy and the advancement of an impeachment probe of President Biden. At 221-213 now, the party can afford to lose only three votes if all Democrats are opposed, down from four previously.

The vote on Santos marks the culmination of a saga that started shortly after he was elected to office in 2022, when a New York Times report detailed that he had lied about his work history, educational achievements and family background, prompting deeper scrutiny of his campaign funds and financial dealings.

New York federal prosecutors subsequently charged Santos with an array of crimes, including for allegedly scamming political donors, lying to the Federal Election Commission and illegally receiving unemployment-insurance benefits. He pleaded not guilty to a 23-count superseding indictment. He is scheduled to go on trial in September.

Santos, 35 years old, was defiant in the days ahead of the vote, saying he was being treated unfairly and wouldn’t resign, repeatedly daring colleagues to oust him.

Santos leaves the US Capitol. Picture: AFP

As House colleagues trickled into the chamber Friday morning, Santos sat by himself in the last row. At one point, he leaned back and stared at the ceiling, only sitting upright again when House chaplain Margaret Kibben approached him to talk. Few lawmakers acknowledged his presence. He voted quickly and left the chamber as the votes piled up — with the tally at first suggesting a nail-biter, only for the yea column to slowly extend its needed margin.

Johnson presided over the session, dropping the gavel when voting was completed and intoning that the clerk will “notify the governor of the state of New York of the action of the House.” Santos left the Capitol to a waiting car. “They just set new dangerous precedent for themselves,” he said of his former colleagues. “The hell with this place.”

The effort to oust Santos gathered steam after a report from the House Ethics Committee, released before Thanksgiving, found there was substantial evidence that Santos stole money from donors and filed false disclosures with election officials.

Other alleged misdeeds included spending campaign money on personal credit-card balances and buying goods and services at Hermès, Sephora and OnlyFans. Santos “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the report said.

The committee said Santos’s conduct “warrants public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House,” but it didn’t issue a formal recommendation that he be removed from office. Ethics Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Guest (R., Miss.) then proposed a resolution to expel him.

Following the report’s release, Santos said he wouldn’t run for re-election, but dismissed the document as a “disgusting politicised smear.”

What to do about Santos has divided Congress for most of this year. An earlier vote to expel him, led by a band of New York Republicans in competitive districts, fell well short of the two-thirds required, with 179 in favour of expulsion and 213 against. But after the report, many lawmakers who had voted to keep Santos in office said they had changed their minds as they believed he had now received sufficient due process.

Republicans remained divided, with some saying that a court first should weigh in on Santos’s guilt or innocence, while others thought Santos had committed crimes against the House and should be expelled immediately. Johnson didn’t pressure members to vote either way, but said he had “real reservations” about voting to expel Santos out of concern for the precedent it could set.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) voted against expulsion. “George Santos is an ass, but who, like every American, deserves the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law,” she said.

But other Republicans joined Democrats in saying Santos’s behaviour demanded that he be ousted now, and that the ethics report was sufficient to address fairness concerns.

“This was not about party. This was about what is right for voters, for the American people, for the country and the institution that we serve in,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), an outspoken proponent of expulsion. “George Santos was unfit for public office. His conduct was not only unbecoming and embarrassing, it was criminal.”

GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio called leadership’s desire to keep Santos in office “gross.” He said the matter was personal, alleging both his own and his mother’s credit cards were improperly used by the Santos campaign. “I think it’s absolutely insane,” he said.

Santos has declined to address questions about the specific allegations against him or his campaign citing his ongoing criminal case.

House Democrats criticised Republicans for moving too slowly to remove Santos from Congress. Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) introduced a measure to expel Santos in February, but Republicans opted in May to refer the request to the Ethics Committee instead.

Santos “is a serial fraudster who conducted himself in a manner unbecoming of the House of Representatives,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) on Friday. He has said Republicans didn’t move to oust him earlier because they needed his vote. “It is unfortunate that George Santos was coddled for so long.”

Altogether, 206 Democrats voted in favour of expulsion, with two — Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Nikema Williams of Georgia — voting against. Williams said Santos wasn’t worthy of serving in Congress but the matter should be left to the voters.

Two Democrats, Reps. Al Green of Texas and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois, voted present, and three members didn’t vote. Among Republicans, 105 voted to expel Santos, with 112 against and five not voting.

Santos’s fate has been up in the air since it was disclosed in late 2022 that he had made bold fabrications about his personal history, ranging from his college education to his employment record at Wall Street banks to his family’s connection to events such as the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He later explained questions about his religion — he had embraced a Jewish identity while running for office — by saying he was Catholic but also “Jew- ish.”

In May, Santos reached a deal with Brazilian authorities to settle criminal charges that he committed fraud — including by using stolen blank checks to buy goods at a clothing store — when he was 19 years old and living in Rio de Janeiro.

Santos has also claimed he was a star player on his college volleyball team and that he founded a charity that rescued 2,500 dogs and cats. Neither claim was supported.

Heading into Friday, only two House lawmakers since the Civil War had been expelled. In 1980, Rep. Michael Myers (D., Pa.) was expelled on a 376-to-30 vote after being convicted on charges of bribery and conspiracy in the Abscam sting, in which Federal Bureau of Investigation operatives posed as Arab sheiks seeking favours from members of Congress. Rep. James Traficant (D., Ohio) was expelled in a 420-to-1 vote in 2002 after being convicted on felony counts including taking bribes and filing false tax returns.

Three House lawmakers were expelled during the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy.

Santos’s departure comes amid other expected resignations that will alter the makeup of the House. Another Republican, Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio, said he would leave early next year to become president of Youngstown State University.

A Democrat, Brian Higgins of western New York, is also leaving Congress early next year to lead a performing arts centre. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has said he is weighing whether to leave the House.

At least 10 people have expressed an interest in Santos’s seat, which Democrats see as a possible pick-up in a special election. The district covers parts of Queens and Nassau County along Long Island’s North Shore. Biden won the district by 9 percentage points in 2020, but Republicans subsequently picked up local and state offices throughout Long Island. Santos won the seat by eight points in 2022.

Under New York law, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has up to 10 days to call a special election, which must be scheduled between 70 and 80 days from her order. No party primaries are held in such a contest; party leaders in Queens and Nassau counties, parts of which are in Santos’s district, would designate their candidates.

Hochul said she was ready to call a special election.

“I’m glad he’s gone because I need people I can work with to fight for New York,” she said Friday on NY1. “George Santos just took up space.”

Potential Democratic candidates include former Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represented the district from 2017 to the start of this year; former State Sen. Anna Kaplan; and Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committee member who lost the 2022 race to Santos.

The Wall Street Journal