In a historic vote, the House of Representatives voted to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from Congress, making him just the sixth member of the House to face that punishment.
In order to expel Santos, the House required a two-thirds majority, and the effort succeeded despite House GOP leadership voting against the resolution citing concerns about future precedent. The expulsion passed with 311 voting for, including 105 Republicans and 114 voting against and two present.
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The vote ends an era in Congress where, from the beginning, the embattled New York Republican continually made news for his antics, his legal woes, his lies, and his flamboyant interactions with the media.
Santos had previously survived two previous expulsion votes but, after a damning report from the House Ethics Committee that alleged, in part, he used funds meant to support his election to make purchases at OnlyFans, Sephora, and Hermes, get botox, and that he conspired to falsify Federal Election Commission reports, the flood gates opened, and his opposition grew exponentially.
By late last week, Santos was already publicly expecting that the resolution would be successful and he would be ousted. But he didn’t take it quietly.
He spent much of his final week in Congress lambasting his colleagues and accusing them of getting drunk and seeking out lobbyists to “screw,” he brought up on the House floor allegations that one of his colleagues beat a woman and called one of his New York delegation members a “meathead.”
And, at his highly anticipated press conference one day before his ouster, Santos did not resign as some suspected rather, he announced he would be filing an expulsion resolution against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who pled guilty earlier this year to pulling a fire alarm in a House office building as Democrats sought to delay a congressional vote.
But, the colleagues Santos has expressed his most significant disappointment in are his fellow New York Republican delegation members, who many of whom have led the effort to expel him.
“The New Yorkers all liked me until it was politically convenient to not like me,” Santos told a group of reporters he selected to talk to on Thursday ahead of the expulsion vote.
But ultimately, it would be the New Yorkers he claimed “liked” him that led the charge to oust him. And, they said it was not because it was “politically convenient”; rather, it was because he had “defraud(ed) the voters of his district” and he had “lied to donors and colleagues” and took advantage of campaign finance laws and his own campaign finances to “personally benefit himself,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) said.
“He has defamed not only his office but the institution itself,” Molinaro said.
And now, Santos has been kicked to the curb and expelled from Congress. When asked if he was sad, Santos said he was not and that he was “at peace” at this point.
But, his expulsion is currently the least of his worries.
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He has been indicted on 23 federal charges and faces a real challenge in avoiding jail time as a number of his former campaign staffers have already pled guilty to crimes they committed on his campaign.
“Of course,” Santos said when asked if he was worried about going to prison. “These are serious allegations, and I have a lot of work ahead of me.”