Advertisement
Almost part of the Republican delegation in the House of Representatives voted to expel Mr. Santos, a rebuke to a colleague who had survived two previous deportation attempts.
By Michael Gold and Grace Ashford
Reporting from Washington
George Santos, the Republican congressman from New York whose series of lies and shenanigans made him a figure of national ridicule and the subject of a 23-count federal indictment, expelled from the House on Friday after a decisive bipartisan vote through his peers.
The resolution has relegated Santos, who in his short political career has invented links to the Holocaust, Sept. 11 and the shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, to a place in history: he is the first user deported from the country. House without having been convicted in the past of a federal crime or having supported the Confederacy.
President Mike Johnson of Louisiana announced the recount before a silent chamber of the House of Representatives: The measure, which required a two-thirds majority, passed with 311 lawmakers in favor of eviction, 105 Republicans and 114 against. Two members voted present.
“The new House in total has 434 votes,” announced a dejected Mr. Johnson, confirming that with the ouster of Santos, the already slim Republican margin had been reduced to 3 votes.
Mr. Santos’s expulsion ends one of the most turbulent political odysseys in recent memory, a stunning reversal in fortune for a political outsider whose election in Long Island and Queens last year was once heralded as a sign of Republican resurgence.
Instead, he has become a liability on the Republican Party, whose vast web of lies and misdeeds led many to wonder how he managed to evade his duty for so long.
George Santos, who was expelled from Congress, has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.
After months of turmoil in Congress, Santos finally met his death on Friday, after Republicans and Democrats each proposed separate expulsion resolutions.
Santos left the room before the vote was over. As he walked down the House steps to a waiting car, he told reporters that he was ready to turn the page on Congress.
“Why should I stay here?” -Said-. To hell with this place.
Santos, 35, appeared to be in a position to evade responsibility, having survived two previous deportation attempts. Republicans who supported him expressed the crux of their defense: deporting him before he is found to be at fault or before he is found to be at fault through the House Ethics Committee would set a bar. harmful precedent.
But in a scathing 56-page report released last month, ethics investigators uncovered “substantial evidence” that Santos had violated federal law, portraying his candidacy as a long-standing scam.
The political tides quickly turned. Mr. Santos immediately declared that he would not seek re-election. Democrats and Republicans alike rushed to condemn him, including the Republican chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Guest of Mississippi, who personally moved to have him removed from office and offered forceful testimony Thursday during a debate on his expulsion.
The debate captured the absurdity and unseemliness of Mr. Santos’s scandals. His use of campaign funds on Botox treatments was invoked several times. His detractors pointed to invented ties to the Holocaust and to his claims, contradicted by paperwork, that his mother was at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
“George Santos is a liar — in fact, he confessed to many of them — who used his position as a public accepted as true to gain non-public advantage from day one,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of New York. , who was the representative of Mr. Santos, the closest neighbor to Congress and the greatest ardent Republican enemy.
Mr. Johnson and the Republican leaders – fearful of wasting Mr. Johnson’s vote – are the ones who have been assassinated in the Republican Party. Santos or squandering his seat in favor of a Democrat in a special election – he still opposed the resolution; He and his entire management team voted against the expulsion Friday morning.
But after Mr. Johnson told his members to “vote their conscience,” nearly half of his conference chose to expel Mr. Santos, a remarkable rebuke from his colleagues.
“We followed the Constitution and how it was intended to be done,” Mr. Guest said as he stood in front of the House Chamber. “And then members of Congress voted today. I’m not proud of what happened today.
Santos’ forced departure will leave a turbulent Republican convention with an even smaller majority in Congress, exacerbating the demanding situations he will face in achieving his legislative agenda.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul will have 10 days to announce the date of a special election to fill the void left by Mr. Santos’ departure. The election must take place between 70 and 80 days after you have set the date. Local party leaders periodically decide on their candidates in special elections.
The Republican Party chairman in Nassau County has been vetting possible candidates for months, while Democratic leaders have privately indicated that they would most likely put forward Thomas R. Suozzi, who held the seat before Mr. Santos but relinquished it to run for governor.
His resolution paved the way for Santos’ election last year, one of several Republican victories that flipped Democratic districts in New York, helping his party win the House.
Santos’ victory was also celebrated as a milestone: The son of Brazilian immigrants, he is the first blatantly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent.
But shortly before he took office, a New York Times investigation found that his rags-to-riches journey, from a basement apartment in Queens to the halls of Congress, was built on layers of lies, exaggerations and omissions. .
In cross-biographies, a resume and interviews, Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in New York, where he was a volleyball star on a championship team.
He boasted of having worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and of having accumulated private wealth. He claimed descent from Holocaust refugees; that his mother was in the World Trade Center at the time of the 9/11 attacks; and that he lost 4 workers in the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
None of those claims were true.
Santos is only the most expelled member of the Sixth Chamber in the history of the body. Three representatives were removed from office in 1861 for treason at the start of the Civil War. Two others were criminally convicted before being deported, one in 1980 and the most recent in 2002.
Santos has yet to face federal indictment, in which prosecutors accuse him of criminal schemes. In May, prosecutors charged him with wire fraud, illegal monetary transactions, theft of the public budget and mendacity on federal disclosure forms.
In October, prosecutors added additional charges in a superseding indictment, accusing Mr. Santos of forging a $500,000 loan to the campaign, stealing the identities of his campaign donors and their credit card information to transfer cash to his private bank account.
While Mr. Santos’ lies fueled his notoriety and cemented his public reputation as a fraudster, it was broader questions about his finances and crusading practices that sparked the accusations and ethics report.
Much of the speculation surrounding him has been tied to the source of the more than $700,000 he claimed to have lent his political campaign in 2022.
When he first ran for office in 2020, he filed a monetary claim with the House alleging that he only earned $55,000 a year. Two years later, he claimed to be earning $750,000 at his own company, the Devolder Organization.
Santos said the company has dividends of between $1 million and $5 million, and he has millions in savings and a checking account of between $100,000 and $250,000.
In their report, House ethics investigators said those claims were false.
They also detailed how Mr. Santos used the donors to perpetuate a fabulous, fraudulent lifestyle, documenting the crusade’s spending on designer clothing, luxury hotels, Botox and Onlyfans.
The Ethics Committee uncovered evidence that Santos had fraudulently repaid loans he never made, earning $27,000 in benefit from his failed 2020 campaign.
Federal prosecutors said Santos had backed counterfeit loans in 2022 to make his crusade appear more financially sound, pointing to a $500,000 donation to his crusade in March that he did not make.
The Ethics Committee’s report says that months later genuine cash arrived to fill the void, but raises questions about whether that cash was legally transferred.
Mr. Santos and his treasurer, Nancy Marks, have been accused of making donations of tens of thousands of dollars in financial reports of the crusade, to give the impression that Mr. Santos’ crusade was not in public view. Santos attracted a lot of attention.
Marks pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States in October and admitted to his role in filing fraudulent reports on fictitious loans and grants.
Mr. Santos, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is due back in court on Dec. 12, and is scheduled to go on trial in September.
On Friday, outside his district office in the Douglaston neighborhood of Queens, some of his constituents gathered outside to take selfies and commemorate the moment. A passing motorist shared his opinion in a decidedly New York manner.
“Bye-bye, you,” John Johnson, 60, shouted from his car as he pulled into a traffic zone outside the office.
“I thought that Republicans would save him,” he added. “But I guess they came to their senses last minute.”
CNN’s Nicholas Fandos, Catie Edmondson, Luke Broadwater and Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Michael Gold is a political correspondent for the Times covering the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and the 2024 presidential candidates. Read more about Michael Gold
Grace Ashford is a Metro bureau reporter covering New York State politics and government from the Albany office. In the past, he worked on the investigations team. Learn more about Grace Ashford
Advertisement