Why has it taken so long to expel George Santos?
By Michael Jones
Before House members skip town for the weekend, they’ll vote on Friday to secure George Santos’s rightful place in infamy as just the sixth member—as well as the first Republican and first member in over two decades—to be expelled from the lower chamber of Congress.
The embattled first-term congressman from New York held an early-morning press conference on Thursday outside the US Capitol, where he reprised his defiant tone against his colleagues and the press that has defined what will likely be a tenure that falls short of the one-year mark. And in one of his final legislative acts, he introduced an expulsion resolution against Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York for pulling a fire alarm in a House office building on a rare Saturday session in September. (Bowman accepted a plea deal last month to dismiss a misdemeanor charge of willfully or knowingly falsely pulling a fire alarm. The expulsion measure against him will die when Santos is removed from office.)
The House debated the latest expulsion resolution Thursday afternoon ahead of tomorrow’s vote in what amounted to a legislative formality. Because if you ask lawmakers from both parties—and Santos himself, for that matter—they’ll tell you that the votes are there to pass the measure and close a sordid chapter of one of the most dysfunctional Congresses in modern US history.
“He’s a larcenist”: The Santos allegations explained
Santos was elected to Congress in 2022 after a failed attempt to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in 2020. His district—New York’s 3rd—includes part of Long Island, extends into Queens, and is the state’s wealthiest congressional district. It was one of 18 districts that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election or would have had they existed at the time.
Weeks after his election, numerous press reports emerged that Santos lied about his life story and personal identity, education and work history, criminal record, financial conditions, and even his religion. Two House Democrats from New York filed an ethics complaint with the House Ethics Committee, responsible for upholding members’ ethical conduct standards, over Santos’s financial disclosure reports. By May, Santos was indicted on 13 federal criminal charges, including theft of public funds and making false statements to the House.
In October, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment alleging another 10 felonies committed by Santos, including conspiracy against the US, wire fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud, and money laundering. While Santos has admitted to lying about his education and work history, he has emphatically denied the allegations against him.
“He’s a larcenist, and he actually represents what the American people think about Congress,” Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California told me after the House Democrats’ weekly meeting on Wednesday. “His presence confirms how they feel: A rogue bunch of out-of-touch, lying hooligans.”
Following the first indictment, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia along with Reps. Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman-—the two New York House Democrats who filed the ethics complaint—led the introduction of the first resolution to expel Santos from the House. (Expulsion resolutions are privileged, which requires House majority leadership to schedule a vote within two legislative days or pass a motion to kill the measure or to refer it to the Ethics Committee.)
The first resolution was referred to Ethics. But Santos would face another attempt to remove him after the second indictment by a fellow Republican New Yorker. The motion failed again. And Santos lived to fight another day.
The politics of expulsion
Members from both parties explained their opposition to the second expulsion resolution in simple terms: They believed removing him before he was convicted of a crime or the Ethics Committee filed its report would set an unsustainable precedent for the institution.
“It’s a very risky road to go down and we have to stick by due process and the rule of law, as obvious as the eventual result seems,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, one of the most influential House Democrats, said in a statement following his vote against expelling Santos. “In these times of war, chaos, insurrection, division, and lawlessness, the rule of law is a lifeline for us.”
But critics of this logic and Santos said Republicans slow-walked his expulsion based on House math. In other words, they needed his vote to pass an extreme, unpopular agenda that has included bills to ban books, prohibit DEI programs, restrict trans athletes from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity, slash funding from critical domestic programs, and advance steps toward a national abortion ban.
“George Santos has only been allowed to stay a member of Congress because of the thin majority,” House Democratic Chairman Pete Aguilar told reporters on Wednesday morning. “Do you think for any minute if Republicans had a 25-seat majority, they would care about George Santos’s vote? They needed him to vote for Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy. They needed him to vote for Speaker Johnson. That is the only reason why he is still a member of Congress.”
For others, the resistance to supporting an expulsion resolution from some members was to give Santos the space and grace to resign with some modicum of dignity.
But throughout his scandals, Santos has refused, saying that doing so would be a victory for his “bullies” and forcing his vulnerable colleagues into a tough vote.
The third time’s the charm
Several members changed their tune during the Thanksgiving break after the Ethics Committee released a scathing report implicating Santos in fraud and detailing some of the personal expenses he allegedly paid for with campaign funds, including Botox, personal credit card bills, travel to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and subscriptions to OnlyFans, the online content platform preferred by sex workers who produce porn.
Rep. Kamlager Dove, who characterized Santos as a “welfare queen” to me earlier this year, said that she was unsurprised that enough House Republicans are fed up enough to hammer the final nail in his coffin.
For starters, the New York Republican delegation, which includes many members who represent those Biden districts I mentioned at the top, is girding for fierce reelection campaigns against well-funded and -motivated candidates who would love to do nothing more than be the majority makers that elect House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black speaker in US history.
“Republicans cannot win with him as the albatross around their neck,” she said. “It’s too much fodder for Democrats and everyone else. He is literally of no value other than a vote” which matters less in an election year when the House will be away from Washington for all of next August and October.
75 House Republicans intend to vote for the resolution, with another dozen who say they’re leaning in that direction, according to a report from Politico. And while Democratic leadership isn’t formally recommending a vote to remove Santos, most, if not all, Democrats are expected to do so anyway.
What’s next for Santos—and the House
When asked about his post-expulsion plans, Santos was pretty mum.
But he said at just 35 years old, “the future is endless.” Not gonna lie: The optimism is commendable, considering his current political and legal situation.
“I’m just gonna do whatever I want. Whatever comes my way,” he said towards the end of his press conference. “I have the desire to stay very much involved in public policy and advocacy for specific issues.”
Santos also alluded that he could be involved in the 2024 presidential election but declined to delve into the specifics. “I think I’ve made this very clear, but I won’t rest until I see Donald Trump back in the White House.”
However, it seems he failed to consider that he may be occupied with his own legal jeopardy to support the Republican frontrunner, who’s facing 91 felony counts and will also see his fair share of the inside of a courtroom between now and next November.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed no confidence that the dynamics of the House would change once he’s gone, though.
“The problem within the extreme MAGA Republican House majority will still remain,” he said. “Because extreme MAGA Republicans have no vision, have no agenda, and have no track record to solve problems for hard-working American taxpayers.”
Zooming out, Santos’s looming expulsion has immediate political implications too. A special election will be scheduled in the next three months to fill the open seat in a district President Joe Biden carried by eight points over Trump.
Jeffries told reporters that local Democratic Party leaders and New York congressional Democrats would work together to select the best candidate to win back the seat. If Democrats succeed, it would shrink new Speaker Mike Johnson’s already thin majority from four to three votes and make the passage of his conference’s conservative priorities an even heavier lift.
What will they be looking for in a candidate? “Someone who’s actually interested in making life easier for the people on Long Island and Eastern Queens, as opposed to embarrassing them and embarrassing the nation,” Jeffries said.
The top House Democrat added that Santos represents a national embarrassment for New York Republicans, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who raised money and invested political capital to elect Santos: “It’s going to be up to Democrats to now clean up the mess in New York’s 3rd Congressional District that the Republican Party left behind.”
