The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday that it had opened an investigation into Representative George Santos, the embattled Republican from New York under scrutiny for lies about his background and questions about his campaign finances.
The inquiry will cover several areas where Mr. Santos has been accused of financial or sexual misconduct. The committee said in a statement that it would seek to determine whether Mr. Santos had failed to properly disclose information on his House financial disclosures, violated federal conflict of interest laws or engaged in other unlawful activity during his 2022 congressional campaign. It will also examine an allegation of sexual misconduct from a prospective congressional aide who briefly worked in Mr. Santos’s office.
Mr. Santos, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens, said on Twitter that he was “fully cooperating” with the investigation and would not comment further.
The action began on Tuesday when the 10-member body, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, voted unanimously to create an investigative subcommittee to scrutinize Mr. Santos, according to a statement released on Thursday by the committee’s top-ranking Republican and Democratic members.
The subcommittee will have four members — two Democrats and two Republicans — and will be led by Representative David Joyce, Republican of Ohio.
Two Democratic lawmakers from New York first requested an ethics investigation in January, and a number of Mr. Santos’s Republican colleagues have voiced support for the move.
Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, has largely pinned Mr. Santos’s fate in Congress on the results of a House ethics investigation.
Even though some of Mr. Santos’s House Republican colleagues, as well as local Republican officials in New York, have urged Mr. Santos to step aside, Mr. McCarthy has said that he would not pressure the first-term representative to do so. But he has vowed that the House would “take action” if the Ethics Committee found a reason to do so.
Mr. McCarthy’s stance toward Mr. Santos, who is also facing inquiries from federal and local prosecutors and the Federal Election Commission, appears to have hardened in recent weeks.
Even as some Republicans expressed unwillingness to work with Mr. Santos while he faced investigations, Mr. McCarthy and Republican leaders initially appointed him to two committees. At the time, Mr. McCarthy argued that Mr. Santos was duly elected and should not be penalized.
But Mr. Santos later removed himself from the committees at the direction of House leadership.
“We’re not allowing him to be on committees,” Mr. McCarthy said last month, later adding that he and Mr. Santos “had a conversation and we decided it’s best at this moment.”
The timeline of the Ethics Committee’s investigation remains unclear. Critics often argue that the body moves too slowly, with representatives generally preferring to see other lawmakers resign or reach the end of their terms rather than having to dole out punishments to their colleagues.
If the committee finds that Mr. Santos has committed an ethics violation, it has a range of disciplinary options, including imposing fines or recommending the House pass resolutions to censure or reprimand him. In extreme cases, the committee can recommend a member be expelled from the House, but such an action is rare and would require a two-thirds majority vote.