A 15-foot balloon of lying Long Island Rep. George Santos flailed in the frigid wind outside the Capitol on Tuesday as the lawmaker’s career and inflatable likeness remained full of hot air.
Progressive group MoveOn Political Action commissioned the ballon, which caricatured a grinning Santos (R-NY), in a bid to encourage lawmakers to expel the scandal-plagued congressman.
MoveOn paraded the balloon of a bespectacled Santos donning a tie that said, “Full of Lies.”
Inside the halls of Congress, lawmakers revved up efforts to consider a third bid to expel Santos.
A vote on that measure was expected to take place sometime this week and comes on the heels of a blistering report from the House Committee on Ethics.
The House panel concluded that Santos “blatantly stole” from campaign funds and committed a host of ethics violations.
The report flagged jarring expenses Santos seemingly made with donor money, including OnlyFans subscriptions, Botox, trips, and more.
Although the report did not offer specific punitive recommendations — which it bypassed in order to speed up the publication of the findings — Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) furnished a resolution to expel him.
Guest introduced that resolution one day after the report was released, but partly due to Thanksgiving recess, the lower chamber did not consider it right away.
On Tuesday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) pushed for his own bill for expulsion to be taken up as a privileged measure, meaning it would get a vote this week.
Santos most recently survived expulsion earlier this month in an effort from his fellow New York Republicans in a 213-179-19 vote. To pass, an expulsion measure would need to garner a two-thirds majority.
The lying congressman’s outlook became worse once the ethics report was released. More than a dozen Republicans and Democrats who balked at the second attempt decided to reverse course.
Even Santos seems to think his days as a lawmaker are numbered.
“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said on X Spaces a day after Thanksgiving.
“I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”
He insists that he is “not going anywhere” even if he gets the boot from Congress.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed that he and Santos talked “at some length” over the Thanksgiving holiday about his options.
Expulsions from Congress are extremely rare. Only five have ever gotten the boot in US history, with the most recent taking place in 2002 against former Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio).
Traficant had been expelled 420 to 1 following a federal conviction for bribery, income tax evasion, and more.
Santos is facing 23 counts of campaign embezzlement, fraud, and more. He has pleaded not guilty to all pending charges.
The Ethics panel made a referral to the Justice Department on findings it unearthed that supposedly weren’t in the indictment.
The truth-challenged rep. has pinned much of the blame for his campaign finances on his former treasurer Nancy Marks, who pleaded guilty in the fall to falsifying campaign finance records.
Prosecutors cited correspondence between Marks and Santos in the sprawling indictment against him.
While Santos has admitted to fabricating large swaths of his backstory and conceded that there were issues with his campaign’s finances, he has blasted prosecutors and ethics investigators.
He also revealed that he will not be seeking reelection to the lower chamber.
Santos is planning to air out his grievances during an early morning press conference on Thursday.