Less than 11 months after arriving in Washington, New York Rep. George Santos’ time in Congress may have reached a dramatic ending fitting of his tenure with an expulsion vote slated for this week. Dozens of Republicans are expected to vote with Democrats in an attempt to make their GOP colleague only the sixth House member in U.S. history to be stripped of his seat.
“Put up or shut up at this point,” Santos said to reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
Santos has remained defiant, refusing pressure to resign and spare his Republican colleagues from having to expel one of their own, but has admitted that he believes he’s going to get expelled. He has already said he won’t run for reelection in 2024 regardless of the outcome and plans to hold a press conference on Thursday morning.
A vote is possible on Thursday, but Spectrum News was told on Wednesday that the House GOP leadership expects it to be moved to Friday.
In a brief conversation with Spectrum News on Tuesday afternoon, Santos said he expects to be ousted and that he will immediately lose privileges to his office and congressional facilities. While he has not publicly revealed his career plans if ousted, Santos said he would be spending the holidays in Pennsylvania.
“They all act like they are on ivory towers with white pointy hats and they're untouchable. I mean, within the ranks of the United States Congress there's felons galore. There's people with all sorts of shiesty backgrounds,” Santos said during an audio chat last week on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “And all of a sudden George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress. We're all going to stone this motherf-----r because it's just politically expedient,”
The self-admitted fabulist and liar is facing a criminal prosecution in New York for 23 federal charges including for wire fraud, identity theft, lying to federal election officials, money laundering and stealing thousands of dollars from his donors. Santos pleaded not guilty and has denied all wrongdoing. His pattern of lies and questionable financials have haunted him since before he even took office and elevated the first-term congressman to national prominence.
A House Ethics committee made up of members of both parties found “substantial evidence” of wrongdoing earlier this month. Republican chair Michael Guest, R-Miss., said Santos’ conduct “warrants public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House.” The committee’s report included allegations he used his donors’ money, obtained both legally and illegally, to pay for vacations, Botox and a subscription to the pornography service OnlyFans, among other perks.
His former campaign treasurer Nancy Marks, a fixture in Long Island Republican politics, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government in October and pointed the finger at Santos for working with her to create false campaign finance reports and lie about the existence of a $500,000 loan.
Two motions to expel Santos were introduced and pushed the fore of House business — one by Guest and another by California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia. It is unclear which one will come to a vote, but Republicans may be more likely to vote on the motion brought by Guest, a fellow Republican. The vote must reach a two-thirds of the chamber threshold to pass.
A previous expulsion vote earlier this month failed to reach that mark when many Democrats voted against it, preferring to wait for the Ethics committee report. Now that it has been released, votes may change.
Santos has decried a lack of due process and punishment prior to a criminal conviction, something Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leadership has also expressed concern about.
“In history, five members of Congress have been expelled. All five had suffered convictions in a court, all five had due process. This expulsion vote simply undermines and underscores the precedent that we've had in this chamber,” Santos said in remarks on the House floor on Tuesday evening. “It starts and puts us in a new direction, a dangerous one that sets a very dangerous precedent for the future. Are we to now assume that one is no longer innocent until proven guilty? And they are in fact guilty until proven innocent?”
“Or are we now to just simply assume that because somebody doesn't like you, they get to throw you out of your job?” he continued.
Five of the over 11,000 members of Congress have been expelled in U.S. history. Three were expelled during the Civil War for serving in the Confederate army. Another was suspended in the 1980 after a bribery conviction and the fifth, then-Rep. James Traficiant, D-Ohio, was removed in 2002 after being convicted on federal charges of bribery, racketeering and fraud.
Despite many members of the GOP conference’s rank-and-file fed up with Santos — including freshman Republicans in New York battleground districts — Johnson’s slim majority would only get slimmer with the Queens and Long Island representative out of office. And in a district President Joe Biden won by over 10 percentage points in 2020, a special election early next year is far from a guaranteed victory for a Republican.
“He is a serial fraudster. There is no sense that George Santos should have ever been elected, but for his incredible lies to his own constituents,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., at House Democrats' weekly press conference on Wednesday. “George Santos has only been allowed to stay a member of Congress because of the thin majority. Do you think for any minute if Republicans had a 25-seat majority, they would care about George Santos his vote?”
“They needed him to vote for Speaker McCarthy. They needed him to vote for Speaker Johnson. That is the only reason why he is still a member of Congress,” Aguilar added.
On Wednesday morning, Johnson said GOP leadership won’t pressure members to vote one way or another and that his operation did not have a whip count of how they believe the vote will end. Republicans met earlier on Wednesday, Johnson said, and discussed the measure.
“I personally have real reservations about doing this. I'm concerned about a precedent that may be set for that,” the Louisiana Republican said. “So everybody's working through that and we'll see how they vote tomorrow.”
Politico spoke to dozens of GOP House members and reported that 75 said they plan to vote for expulsion and another 12 said they would be likely to support the motion.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a senior member of House GOP leadership, told Spectrum News on Wednesday she had concerns “about not respecting due process and I share many of my colleagues' concerns about that. I've always said we should let this play out and there's prosecution that's currently happening."
Many of Santos’ fellow first-term Republicans in New York — a slew of whom face reelection battles next year in districts that preferred Biden of former President Donald Trump — do not share Johnson and Stefanik’s hesitancy. Fellow Long Island Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who introduced on Tuesday one of the two expulsion measures Santos faces, told Spectrum News he is a liar and a “fraud.” Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler said he was “an embarrassment and a disgrace.”
Some far-right Republicans have leapt to Santos’ defense, including Texas Rep. Troy Nehls and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, whose former staffer Vish Burra is now Santos’ top aide.
“I’ll vote to expel Santos when Senator Menendez gives Egypt back their gold bars,” Gaetz posted on X, referencing the federal prosecution of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., for alleged crimes that included taking gold bars as bribes.
And Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, wrote in a letter to his fellow Republicans that he had “serious concerns” about the vote and said he would oppose the effort. Previous members charged with misconduct “weren’t publicly crucified” and subject to “a level of public character assassination that I have not witnessed” during his four terms in Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., questioned why Republicans were expelling one of their own when her desired impeachments of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been delayed. (Johnson said on Wednesday the probe into Biden would move forward with more intensity.)
But what little support Santos does have — 75% of New Yorkers believe he should resign, including 83% of Long Island residents and 68% of Republicans statewide, according to a recent Marist poll — may not be enough to keep him in office. He appears to have resigned himself to that fact, even if he’s not willing to resign from office.
"It's also my 2-year wedding anniversary on Thursday. So it's kind of not cool,” Santos said on an X audio chat on Tuesday night, according to The Hill. “So you know, I'm gonna try to just stick to our dinner reservation.”