George Santos’s notorious stint in Congress has finally come to an end after the House held its third expulsion vote against the congressman on Friday morning. The House voted 311-114 in favor of his ouster. His fate was seemingly sealed after the release of an Ethics Committee report earlier this month that claimed to have found “substantial evidence” that he had broken the law. Though the first two votes to oust Santos either fell short or were punted away, support for his removal grew rapidly on both sides of the aisle following the report. Here’s how the now notorious ex-congressman’s exit is playing out.
The sign outside Santos’s former congressional office has now also been changed, another example of how quickly Congress is moving on from the former member.
Democratic leaders are already beginning to field potential candidates for the upcoming special election to fill Santos seat.
CNBC reports that Jay Jacobs, head of the state Democratic Party as well as the Nassau County party chairman, and Queens County Democratic Party chair Gregory Meeks are meeting with prospective candidates today. Among those expected to sit down with the two leaders are former Congressman Tom Suozzi who previously held the seat and former state senator Anna Kaplan.
Both Suozzi and Kaplan had previously launched bids for the 2024 election for the New York Third Congressional District seat.
Per Fox 5 NY, Jacobs said the Democratic Party will probably announce its candidate by Tuesday. However, Joe Cairo, the Nassau County Republican Party chairman, said they won’t likely be done by then.
Intelligencer’s Matt Stieb has collected the nine craziest moments of his brief congressional career, including his Rosa Parks self-comparison, the mystery baby, and more. Read about them here.
Only a few hours after his expulsion, maintenance staff have already changed the locks on the door to Santos’ former congressional office.
With Santos out of the picture, a special election will have to be held to fill his seat in New York’s Third Congressional District for the remaining part of his term. In a previous piece, I took a look at what the timeline for this process looks like:
If Santos leaves his seat, whether by (nominal) choice or not, New York state law requires Governor Kathy Hochul to issue a proclamation for a special election within ten days of the seat becoming vacant. The election will then occur between 70 to 80 days following the proclamation. Members of the county party committees will nominate a candidate to run in the election.
Some people were reportedly taking selfies. And there are some flowers:
“Why would I want to stay in this place,” Santos told a reporter who asked him, following the expulsion vote, if he would take advantage of his ex-congressman privileges to visit the House floor again. “To hell with this place,” he added.
“The future is endless. You can do whatever you want next, and I’m just going to do whatever I want,” he said to another reporter.
Every Democratic House member present for the vote voted in favor of removing Santos from office except for two: Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia and Congresswoman Nikema Williams of Georgia.
In a statement, Williams said that, though the Ethics Committee’s findings were “damning,” Santos’s constituents should be the ones to decide his fate.
Scott also cited the need for process in his explanation for his vote:
As expected, all the members of the House Republican leadership voted against expelling Santos. This includes House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik, and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer.
Interestingly, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who declined to institute any punishments against Santos during his tenure, did not vote at all, per the House clerk’s tally.
Nearly all of Republicans in New York’s congressional delegation voted in favor of expelling Santos. According to the House clerk’s office, the only votes in Santos’s favor came House Republican Conference chair Elise Stafanik, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, and Santos himself.
Suggestions from our staff:
Nothing, legislatively, writes Sarah Mimms at NBC News:
An NBC News analysis of Santos’ legislative record shows that he introduced 40 bills or resolutions during his short career; that’s roughly average for a member of Congress, according to Brookings Institution statistics. The House did not act on any of them, and all died in committee without a vote.
What’s more unusual is that Santos convinced only one of his colleagues to sign on to any of his 40 bills — Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who backed Santos’ “Defund the CCP on Campus Act of 2023” (referring to the Chinese Communist Party).
Kathy Hochul’s press secretary shared an image of the governor watching as the vote against Santos came down.
With the New York’s Third District seat open, all eyes now turn to Hochul who has ten days to declare a special election. In a statement, the governor said she’s ready to act.
Mark Chiusano doesn’t think so:
The lesson Santos learned over and over in his 35 years was that there’s a low price for lying in this cultural moment, whether he spun about Broadway producing or volleyball stardom; and he could keep getting second chances. Even politically. After all, as he once noted on a podcast about his first run for Congress in 2020, Democrat Tom Suozzi didn’t “sling mud” at him. Sure, Santos lost that race, but he wasn’t trashed or unveiled as a fabulist. And then in his 2022 run when his own campaign commissioned a $17,000 deep dive into his background, which uncovered lots of surprising stuff like his eviction cases and missing college degrees: Did he throw up a white flag and roll over? No. He said the diploma records were forthcoming, even though they weren’t. New staff replaced the old. And he barreled ahead, flipping the Democratic seat into his hands.
Santos has said he will wear his expulsion like a “badge of honor,” and in that he is following one of his main political mentors, Donald Trump. The quadruple indicted former president, of course, could plausibly be elected president once again. Like Santos, he is not running away from his critics and prosecutors, but turning on them. He stokes a sense of shared victimhood with his supporters, returning to the idea “they” are “coming after you.” He is merely “standing in their way.” Santos, the consummate cadger, stole the same construction for himself in October. Nothing rallies a crowd like an enemy. So why not keep going, even if a prison sentence beckons?
Former congressman Santos did not talk to reporters as he left the U.S. Capitol after becoming only the sixth House member in history to be expelled. Politico reports that Santos apparently quipped, “As unofficially already no longer a member of Congress, I no longer have to answer a single question. That is the one thing that I’m going to take forever.”
On Friday, the House of Representatives voted in favor of expelling Congressman George Santos from the chamber. Though the House Republican leadership came out against the measure, members voted 311-114 in support of ousting Santos with two voting present. 105 Republicans voted for expulsion.
Santos reportedly left the chamber prior to the tally being finalized.
Even if Santos survives Friday’s expulsion vote, it will likely not be the last he’ll have to contend with.
Congressman Rich McCormick told Axios that he will be voting against expelling Santos and that his sense of things is that his controversial colleague will survive the vote.
Axios points out that the consensus stance from House GOP leadership appears to be that Santos now needs to be convicted before they’ll support giving him the boot, noting Scalise saying Thursday that Santos “deserves” his day in court, and reporting that an unnamed Republican lawmaker remarked that leadership is now “kind of messaging that the absence of a conviction is problematic.”
Congressman Max Miller, who had a verbal altercation with Santos during the resolution debate Thursday, levied a significant allegation against his colleague ahead of the vote.
In an email sent to all House Republicans, Miller said Santos’s campaign charged Miller’s personal credit card as well as his mother’s credit card for contribution amounts that went over the individual limits set by the FEC. Federal prosecutors have alleged that Santos was personally guilty of making fraudulent donations with donors’ financial information.
Miller said that the charges were not approved by either him nor his mother and that they’ve spent “tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees” as a result of these actions.
“While I understand and respect the position of those who will vote against the expulsion resolution, my personal experience related to the allegations and findings of the Ethics Committee compels me to vote for the resolution,” he wrote.
House Republican leadership is reportedly not urging its caucus members to vote one way or the other on the Santos measure. Prior to the vote, Republican leadership gave a few indicators of how they were leaning.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Punchbowl News Thursday that he would be voting against the measure, saying that Santos is “going to have his day in court.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson previously noted his hesitance about the whole situation. “I personally have real reservations about doing this. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that,” he told reporters Wednesday. As of Friday morning, he is reportedly a “no” on expulsion.
Punchbowl News meanwhile reports that allies of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer believe he will ultimately vote in favor of expelling Santos, though he did not confirm that himself. However, the D.C. Examiner is now reporting that Emmer will vote against the resolution.
An hour out from the vote, The Messenger is now reporting that all of the Republican leadership is now expected to oppose expelling Santos, an example of how fluid the situation is.
Also:
George Santos’s fate will be decided upon around 11 a.m. Friday morning when the House gathers to vote on the expulsion measure.
Debate for the Santos expulsion resolution has ended. The House will officially vote on the matter tomorrow.
The debate briefly got heated between Santos and Congressman Max Miller. First, Miller called Santos a crook. Santos responded in kind, referencing allegations of domestic abuse that had been raised against Miller in the past.
Miller had been accused of abuse by Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary and his ex-girlfriend, in 2021. He went on to sue her for defamation, but voluntarily dismissed the case in 2023, per the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Congressman Matt Gaetz took to the floor to defend Santos from the vote, citing the new standard that expelling him would set.
“Since the beginning of this Congress, there’s only two ways you get expelled: you get convicted of a crime or you participated in the Civil War. Neither apply to George Santos,” he said. “So, I rise not to defend George Santos, whoever he is, but to defend the very precedent that my colleagues are willing to shatter.”
Gaetz raised the issue of Senator Bob Menendez, who is facing federal allegations of bribery and acting as a foreign agent, to suggest that Santos’s misdeeds are far less concerning.
“Whatever Mr. Santos did with Botox or OnlyFans is far less concerning to me than the indictment against Senator Menendez, who’s holding gold bars inscribed with Arabic on them from Egypt while he’s still getting classified briefings today. But he’s not getting thrown out of the Senate,” he said.
Congressman Michael Guest, the chairman of the Ethics Committee, spoke in favor of the resolution he submitted earlier this week. Guest defended the work of his committee and emphasized their thoroughness, at one point holding up a stack of binders filled with the documents included in the report’s appendices.
Guest hit back at Santos’s criticism of the committee, pointing out that Santos had said several times prior that he would honor the panel’s findings in their investigation.
“George Santos would have you believe that the process that he endorsed in May is fatally flawed and that he instead is the subject of a political witch hunt,” he said.
Guest reiterated the report’s findings that the committee discovered “substantial evidence” that Santos had broken the law.
“I would ask that all members vote to support the expulsion of Representative Santos,” he said.
The House of Representatives officially opened debate on the pending expulsion resolution against George Santos. Congressman Anthony D’Esposito, a fellow New York Republican who previously introduced his own resolution against Santos, spoke first.
“George Santos is a liar. In fact, he’s admitted to many of them,” he said.
D’Esposito pointed to the 23 federal charges levied against him and the two former campaign staffers that have since pleaded guilty, citing these facts as evidence that Santos “knowingly and actively participated in a widespread misconduct with his campaign.”
“I ask my colleagues. If we do not take the Ethics Committee and its results seriously, then why even have the committee in the first place?,” he said.
Santos took the floor in response, stressing that he has yet to be convicted of a crime.
“It is a predetermined necessity for some members in this body to engage in this smear campaign to destroy me. I will not stand by quietly. They want me out of this body? The people of the Third District of New York sent me here,” he said. “If they want me out, they’re gonna have to go silence those people and take the hard vote.”
As the House prepares to debate the expulsion resolution against him, Santos seems to have accepted his probable ouster.
Many have mulled and joked about whether Santos might’ve missed his true calling as a reality-show star rather than a congressman. But when asked directly by reporters if he had ever been approached by any programs about joining, Santos declined to answer. However, when Dancing With the Stars was raised, the congressman didn’t say no.
The dancing competition show has featured several controversial political figures including former White House press secretary Sean Spicer and former energy secretary Rick Perry.
When Santos was asked by Politico about the most shocking of the claims made by the Ethics Committee, that he used campaign funds for OnlyFans, he seemed to claim ignorance.
For those worried that Santos’s potential departure from Congress means an end to his fascinating tales, fear not. While speaking to reporters, Santos suggested that a literary career might be in his future.
As promised, Santos took to the House floor to submit a privileged resolution to expel Congressman Jamaal Bowman from Congress over a September incident where he pulled a fire alarm during ongoing negotiations to keep the government open.
CNN reports that if Santos is expelled during the 48-hour window in which the resolution must be taken up, it’ll die and it cannot be picked up by another member. An expulsion vote against Bowman would likely fail due to a lack of support from Democratic members.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a press availability Thursday that he expects that the vote to expel Santos will be “bipartisan,” but said that Democratic leadership is not urging the caucus to vote one way or the other.
“We have no official whip recommendation. We recognize that this is an issue of conscience,” he said.
In a presser outside Congress on Thursday morning, the embattled representative once again claimed he was being treated unfairly:
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.”
As I noted earlier this week, expulsions in Congress are very rare, likely due to the two-thirds majority vote required for them to be successful. If the vote against Santos were to meet that bar on Friday, he would join an infamous club:
Only five members of the House have been expelled in the history of the chamber, with the bulk of those expulsions occurring during the Civil War. The most recent House members to be forced from office were Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers of Pennsylvania in 1980, who was implicated in the FBI’s Abscam sting, and Congressman James Traficant of Ohio, who was convicted of bribery in 2002.
This post has been updated.
