So lengthy, George Santos, we hardly knew ye—and that was just about the issue.
This morning, Home members evicted considered one of their very own for less than the sixth time in historical past, terminating the congressional profession of the Lengthy Island Republican barely a yr after he received election on a marketing campaign of lies and alleged fraud. The vote to expel Santos was 311–114, simply clearing the two-thirds threshold wanted to cross. As with most different consequential votes this yr, a unified Democratic caucus carried the decision together with a divided GOP, whose members struggled with the choice of whether or not to trim their already slender majority by kicking Santos out of Congress. A slim majority of Republicans stood by Santos, whereas all however 4 Democrats voted to expel him.
Santos’s tenure was as memorable because it was transient; to the bitter finish—and it was bitter—he appeared to be auditioning for a actuality present, or maybe the title function in a sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can. In the end, a Republican Social gathering that has largely embraced a former president indicted in 4 separate legal instances was unwilling to supply the identical assist to a freshman member of Congress whom a big majority of GOP lawmakers wouldn’t have acknowledged earlier than January. The vote prompt that some moral line stays {that a} Republican politician can’t cross with out reproach—at the very least if that particular person shouldn’t be named Donald Trump. The place precisely that line sits, nevertheless, is unclear.
Republicans largely stood by Santos via earlier efforts to oust him this yr after a federal grand jury indicted him on fees of wire fraud, cash laundering, false statements, and theft of public funds; only a month in the past, the Home overwhelmingly rejected an expulsion decision throughout get together traces. Then got here a damning report by the Home Ethics Committee that alleged in placing element simply how flagrantly Santos had deceived his marketing campaign donors. He used marketing campaign funds on OnlyFans and Botox, amongst different salacious tidbits investigators uncovered. “Consultant Santos sought to fraudulently exploit each side of his Home candidacy for his personal private monetary revenue,” the report concluded. “He blatantly stole from his marketing campaign.”
Santos denounced the report and customarily denied the allegations, however he has refused to supply a selected protection of his actions. Nonetheless, Republican leaders resisted expelling him. Speaker Mike Johnson privately urged Santos to resign to be able to spare his get together the tough vote of eradicating him. However Santos, who had already introduced that he wouldn’t search a second time period subsequent yr, was executed with get together loyalty. “If I depart, they win,” he instructed reporters, accusing his colleagues of “bullying” him.
Johnson tried to stress Santos, however he wouldn’t foyer different Republicans to expel him. He described the expulsion decision as “a vote of conscience”—which is Capitol code for “vote nevertheless you need.” However within the hours earlier than right now’s vote, he and Majority Chief Steve Scalise instructed reporters that they might vote to avoid wasting Santos.
The rationale GOP leaders would shield Santos was plain: With such a small majority, they couldn’t spare a single vote, even one as ethically and legally compromised as his. “Do you suppose for a minute if Republicans had a 25-seat majority, they might care about George Santos’s vote?” Consultant Pete Aguilar of California, the Home Democratic caucus chair, requested earlier this week. “They wanted him to vote for Speaker McCarthy. They wanted him to vote for Speaker Johnson. That’s the one purpose why he’s nonetheless a member of Congress.”
Just a few Home Republicans acknowledged that the get together may in poor health afford to jettison Santos when it has had sufficient bother passing payments as is. The contingent pushing most aggressively for expulsion was Santos’s New York Republican colleagues, who had been each personally appalled that he had slipped into Congress alongside them and most definitely to endure politically from his continued presence. A handful of GOP-held seats in Lengthy Island and upstate New York—together with the one previously held by Santos—may decide whether or not Republicans maintain management of the Home subsequent yr.
Santos received his aggressive seat in 2022 after by some means evading the scrutiny that normally accompanies intently fought Home races; not till weeks later did The New York Occasions report that he had nearly solely invented his life story. Santos had lied about attending a prestigious prep faculty and incomes levels from Baruch School and NYU. He lied about engaged on Wall Avenue for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He mentioned that his grandparents survived the Holocaust and that his mom was working within the Twin Towers on 9/11. Each had been lies. “He has manufactured his whole life,” Consultant Marc Molinaro, a fellow New York Republican, mentioned yesterday in a flooring speech arguing for Santos’s expulsion.
Publicly, the Republicans who voted with Santos—primarily staunch conservatives—argued in opposition to his removing on procedural grounds. The one different lawmakers the Home has expelled had been both members of the Confederacy throughout the Civil Warfare or convicted of crimes in courtroom. Ousting Santos based mostly on accusations alone, these Republicans mentioned, would set a harmful new precedent and overturn the need of the voters who despatched him to Congress. But none of them was truly keen to vouch for him. “I rise to not defend Geroge Santos, whoever he’s,” Consultant Matt Gaetz of Florida mentioned in a flooring speech, “however to defend the very precedent that my colleagues are keen to shatter.”
Santos was a performer till his final moments in Congress. “I cannot stand by quietly,” he declared on the Home flooring. It was one assertion of his that was indisputably true. Santos was a ubiquitous presence within the days main as much as the vote, keen to assault anybody standing in opposition to him. Throughout a three-hour look on X (previously Twitter) Areas, he accused his colleagues of voting whereas drunk on the Home flooring. When one Republican, Consultant Max Miller of Ohio, known as Santos a “criminal” to his face, Santos replied by referring to him as “a woman-beater,” dredging up allegations that Miller had bodily abused his ex-girlfriend. (Miller denied the accusations.) Lastly, Santos tried one final little bit of retribution by submitting a movement to expel Consultant Jamaal Bowman of New York, the Democrat who pleaded responsible final month to a misdemeanor cost for falsely pulling a hearth alarm en path to a Home vote.
“It’s all theater,” Santos declared yesterday with no trace of irony, on his penultimate day as a member of Congress. He had scheduled a press convention exterior the Home chamber, utilizing the Capitol dome as a picturesque tableau. Within the background, nevertheless, was a unique icon: a rubbish truck, presumably there to take out the congressional trash.
