George Santos, Official House portrait, 2023
CV NEWS FEED // The U.S. House voted Friday to expel Rep. George Santos, R-NY, who currently faces 23 felony charges and has admitted to pervasively fabricating his personal and professional background.
A bipartisan supermajority of the House voted to boot the freshman congressman out of office. The vote in favor of Santos’ expulsion was 311-114 – exceeding the required threshold of two-thirds of the chamber (290 votes).
The ex-congressman is only the sixth member in history to be expelled from the House. He is the first Republican to suffer this fate as the previous five have all been Democrats.
While the vast majority of Democrats voted in favor of the ouster, Santos’ fellow Republicans were more split. One hundred and five Republicans joined 206 Democrats in voting to expel the embattled lawmaker, while 112 Republicans voted against the expulsion resolution.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-LA, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-MN, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-OH, all voted against expulsion.
Interestingly, two Democrats voted against expelling Santos: Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA, and Rep. Nikema Williams, D-GA. Two left-wing Democrats, Rep. Al Green, D-TX, and Rep. Jonathan Jackson, D-IL, voted “present.”
Five Republicans and three Democrats did not vote. Notable members of the House in this category were socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, R-NY, longshot presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips, D-MN, and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-CA.
Santos had repeatedly refused to heed bipartisan calls for his resignation. His history of making numerous allegedly false statements was first revealed to the public shortly before he assumed office in January.
Last month, Santos announced that he would not run for reelection. That announcement followed the release of a report by the Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee which The Hill described as “scathing.” The report detailed “‘substantial evidence’ that the embattled Congressman ‘violated federal crimes,’” according to the media outlet.
FOX News reported that while the former congressman “has not been convicted of a crime,” he has still “been indicted on 23 counts related to wire fraud, identity theft, falsification of records, credit card fraud, and other charges.”
“He’s been accused of using campaign funds on a number of luxury goods and treatments such as botox,” FOX added. Santos pleaded not guilty on all charges.
Some of Santos’ colleagues had attempted to expel him on two earlier occasions before Friday’s successful vote.
Santos on Thursday gave an impassioned speech on the House floor emphasizing that he would “not stand by quietly.”
“The people of the Third District of New York sent me here,” he said. “If they want me out, you’re going to have to go silence those people and go take the hard vote.”
“This is the prerogative of the members of this House,” Santos later said during a FOX News interview Friday morning that aired just hours before his expulsion.
The then-congressman noted that he “hadn’t campaigned” amongst his colleagues to stay in office. “I want people to vote their conscience and I don’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable.”
“It’s their choice to change precedent and loop me in with three Confederate turncoats who were expelled for treason and two convicted members who were convicted in a court of law,” he told host Brian Kilmeade. “So, I’ll be the first person to get expelled from Congress without a conviction or without committing treason.”
Santos added that he believed his expulsion would “[set] dangerous new precedent for the future,” and hinted that it might usher in “the demise of this body [of Congress] eventually.”
Before Santos, the most recent member of Congress to be expelled was Rep. Jim Traficant, D-OH, in 2002. FOX News indicated that Traficant was “convicted of 10 felony counts, including racketeering and taking bribes.” The House expelled him by a near-unanimous vote of 420-1.
Before Traficant’s expulsion came that of Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Meyers, D-PA, in 1980. Meyers was also convicted of bribery. His expulsion was the first in over a century.
Rep. John Bullock Clark, D-MO, John William Reid, D-MO, and Henry Cornelius Burnett, D-KY, were all expelled in 1861, shortly after the Civil War broke out. All three members of Congress served in the Confederate military despite representing states that remained in the Union.
New York’s Third Congressional District is scheduled to hold a special election that will take place on a currently unspecified date sometime next year. The seat will remain vacant until then.
The election is anticipated to be hotly contested. On the Democratic side, Santos’ predecessor, former Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-NY, has confirmed he is running, but he still faces a competitive primary.
Last year, Santos defeated Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman by nearly eight points – an outcome considered by many to be an upset. Suozzi had retired to unsuccessfully run for Governor of New York. Santos’ victory flipped a seat that Democrats had held for 22 years.
Declared and likely Republican candidates to replace Santos include two Air Force veterans, a former New York Police Department (NYPD) detective, and a county comptroller.
Per The New York Times, if convicted on all charges, Santos could face up to 22 in prison.
