On Friday, December 1st, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution (311-114) in favor of the expulsion of former representative George Santos (R-NY), including 105 Republicans voting in favor.
Santos joins an exclusive club of now 20 members of Congress (14 members of the Senate and 6 members of the House) who have been expelled, the bulk of whom came from the Civil War era for supporting the Confederacy. The most recent expulsions prior to Mr. Santos came in 1980 and 2002 with Michael J. Myers and James Traficant. Both were convicted of bribery and corruption in court prior to their expulsion.
As part of Santos’ campaign for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, he claimed he had graduated from Baruch University and New York University, and worked at both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Representatives for Baruch and NYU say they have no record of his attendance, and representatives for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs say the same regarding his alleged employment.
Santos was not only dishonest about his resumé, but also about his heritage. While addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition summit, he mentioned that “now there will be three” Jewish Republican members of Congress, but Santos isn’t Jewish and never has been. When reports and allegations began arising regarding falsities in his resume, he came out and told reporters that he “never claimed to be Jewish. I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish,’” but once the truth started to unravel, it spiraled quickly. Santos had claimed his mother passed away on 9/11, but immigrant documents were revealed later showing that his mother was not present in New York on 9/11 as he had previously claimed she was and passed in 2016 from a battle with cancer.
In addition to these falsities, Santos has been accused of conning people out of money. One accusation emerged that he scammed $3,000 from a GoFundMe campaign for a disabled veteran’s dying service dog. The situation only became more bizarre as Brazilian authorities revived fraud charges against him earlier this year. He faced charges in a suburb outside of Rio de Janeiro on accusations that he stole checks to buy clothing and goods in 2008. In May, he signed a deal with Brazilian prosecutors that he would confess and agree to pay around $5,000 in fines and restitution in exchange for the charges being dropped in Brazil.
Also in May, Santos was indicted on 13 criminal charges including fraud, theft of public funds, money laundering and making false statements to Congress. A second indictment was filed 5 months later in October, charging him with an additional 10 crimes: conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S., two counts of wire fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, two counts of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsifying records to the FEC, and access device fraud. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and a trial has been set for September 9, 2024.
Even though nothing is ever certain in Congress, many hoped that the expulsion of a congressman who lied about his entire life would be certain. Following his indictment on multiple federal charges and a scathing House Ethics Committee report, 114 congress members (112 Republicans and 2 Democrats) still managed to vote against his expulsion, leading many Americans to question government corruption and Congress’ aptitude to make seemingly straightforward decisions. However, this expulsion does prove promising for the future, hopefully dispelling any future candidates from trying the same thing.
