Embattled New York Rep. George Santos was expelled from the House on Friday in a historic vote following a House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged fraud perpetrated by his campaign after months of scandals around the freshman Republican lawmaker.
Following the release of the ethics report last month, Santos, 35, said he would not seek reelection to the Long Island-area seat he won in 2022. The congressman, however, said he would not resign because if he did, the “bullies” would win.
“I will not stand by quietly,” Santos said on the House floor Thursday. “The people of the Third District of New York sent me here. If they want me out, they’re going to have to go silence those people and take the hard vote.”
There were 311 votes to remove Santos, with 114 voting against and two voting present. Santos grabbed his coat and left the floor before the vote had concluded. One hundred and five Republicans voted to boot Santos, and 112 voted for him to remain. Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Nikema Williams of Georgia were the only two Democrats to vote against expelling Santos.
When asked for his reaction following the result, Santos said, “It’s over. What reaction?” Asked if he would use his privileges as a former congressman to visit the House floor in the future, he replied, “To hell with this place.”
There were reports Friday morning that Santos might survive, but in a letter to his colleagues, Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller claimed that Santos had defrauded both Miller and his mother by charging campaign contributions to their personal credit cards. Rep. David Joyce told CNN that Miller’s message resulted in some GOP members voting against Santos.
Santos survived one expulsion attempt last month, as an effort pushed forth by other New York Republicans fell short, with some legislators expressing concern about setting a precedent of removing a colleague from office before they’ve been formally convicted of a crime. However, a number of votes were expected to flip against him after the congressional report found he had spent campaign money on things like Botox, luxury shopping and the adult content website OnlyFans.
Following the vote, Santos’s seat will be immediately vacated and the already slim Republican majority under House Speaker Mike Johnson will narrow further. A special election to fill his seat in the competitive district will likely happen within three months. Johnson and other members of GOP leadership, including Steve Scalise and Elise Stefanik, voted against the expulsion.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that she was “prepared to undertake the solemn responsibility of filling the vacancy in New York’s 3rd District. The people of Long Island deserve nothing less,” presumably a reference to formally scheduling the special election. Marcus Dunn, Santos’s chief of staff, told reporters that there will be staff in the office to handle constituent services like passports and immigration. That personnel will report to the House clerk. Dunn added that someone will come by to take down Santos’s name outside his former office.
Santos’s short and scandalous history
Before Santos was even sworn in, a steady stream of media reports began last December revealing that he had misled voters about nearly every aspect of his life during the campaign.
Included in the lies put forth by Santos are his religion (he said he was Jewish and his grandparents had escaped the Holocaust before saying he was Catholic but “Jew-ish”), his educational background (he lied about attending both New York University and Baruch College, saying he was a star volleyball player at the latter), his employment history (he said he worked at Goldman Sachs when he had not) and the death of his mother (Santos said she had died in the Sept. 11 attacks, but she died in 2016 and was not in the United States on 9/11). The North Shore Leader, a Long Island outlet, reported during the campaign that Santos had filed his disclosure 20 months late and with an “inexplicable” rise in his net worth to $11 million.
Santos has also been alleged to have stolen money from a GoFundMe that was meant to help the dying dog of a military service member and was accused of writing bad checks to dog breeders in Pennsylvania, charges that were eventually dropped. One job he actually did have was with Harbor City Capital, which has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of operating a Ponzi scheme. Santos also said that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema told him to hang in there during the 2022 State of the Union address, which the Arizona senator’s office told Yahoo News was a lie.
In May, Santos was charged with 13 counts that included wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to the House of Representatives. Santos pleaded not guilty and called it a “witch hunt.”
In October, the Justice Department charged him with 23 counts tied to campaign fraud, putting forth allegations of “stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with nonexistent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen.” That trial is set for next year.
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