On a frigid Thursday morning outside the U.S. Capitol, George Santos held what may be his last press conference as an elected official, railing against his critics while ultimately seeming to accept his expected ouster. He also vowed to inflict his own form of retribution, intending to file his own complaints including one against a Democratic New York colleague.
Speaking to reporters outside, the freshman representative derided the upcoming expulsion vote against him, the third such vote during his short time in office. Unlike the first two, Friday’s vote is highly expected to succeed, a fact Santos himself acknowledged last week.
“It’s just an unfortunate circumstance that I had to sit here and watch Congress waste the American people’s time over and over again, on something that is the power of the people, not the power of Congress, which is to elect and remove members of Congress,” he said.
Santos noted that an expulsion would put himself in unique company, as only five previous House members have ever been successfully expelled from the body, three of them during the Civil War.
He compared the treatment he received to that of his fellow New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, who pulled a fire alarm during negotiations over a government shutdown. After an investigation by U.S. Capitol Police, Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. Santos said he planned to file a privileged motion to expel Bowman from the House that afternoon, saying the responses to their two situations lacked “consistency.” He also said he intended to file “a slew” of additional complaints between Thursday and Friday, saying it’s a way to “keep the playing field even.”
In a statement, Bowman responded to Santos, saying, “No one in Congress, or anywhere in America, takes soon-to-be former Congressman George Santos seriously. This is just another meaningless stunt in his long history of cons, antics, and outright fraud.”
Bowman wasn’t the only lawmaker Santos went after. The congressman from the Third Congressional District accused Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas of “absolute dereliction of his duty.” He suggested that some of his House colleagues had “rap sheets” and “severe allegations against them.” When asked by a reporter to name any of the members he alluded to, Santos chided him for the question. “Why do I have to do your job for you?” he said.
The bulk of Santos’s ire was saved for the Ethics Committee, whose recent report on the congressman prompted him to drop his reelection bid and re-energized the movement to force him out of Congress. He called the report “slanderous” and suggested the committee’s investigation wasn’t thorough. When asked for specifics about his issues with the report, Santos declined to get into it, saying he will go through the report “line by line” at another time.
The congressman also pushed back on claims that he didn’t participate with the committee’s inquiry and suggested that chairman Michael Guest’s expulsion resolution, which will be voted on tomorrow, was merely a ploy for attention.
“It’s all theater. It’s theater for the cameras. It’s theater for the microphones and theater for the American people,” he said.
Santos said that he was proud of his voting record and of the work he was able to do in Congress. He maintained that he has no intention of resigning before the vote, calling the push to oust him “bullying” and accusing his critics of acting as “judge, jury and executioner.”
“Because if I leave, they win,” he said.
