George Santos was arraigned in federal court on Long Island Friday morning, pleading not guilty to new charges that were filed against him in a superseding indictment several weeks prior. The New York representative’s trial date has been set for September 9, 2024, months after the Republican primary that Santos has already vowed to participate in. Prosecutors have requested a speedy trial, per ABC 7.
On Thursday, ahead of the arraignment, Santos reiterated that he has no intentions of stepping down from his seat in light of his ongoing legal troubles.
Earlier this month, prosecutors levied ten new charges against Santos, including identity theft and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States. This is in addition to the 13 counts already pending against him from May. Santos is alleged to have directly defrauded donors by using their credit-card information to make additional campaign contributions without their knowledge. Prosecutors claim that Santos then hid the actions by falsely attributing the donations to members of his family. They also allege that Santos and his former campaign accountant Nancy Marks fraudulently inflated the number of campaign donations received in order to reach a $250,000 benchmark required to receive additional financial and logistical support from a Republican Party committee program. Marks herself has already pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Congressman Anthony D’Esposito introduced a resolution to expel Santos from the House on Thursday, citing Santos’s legal troubles as well as his “history of misrepresenting his and his family’s connections to major events, including the Holocaust, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the Pulse nightclub shooting.” A similar motion put forth by House Democrats was ultimately forwarded to the Ethics Committee. The resolution, which will go to a vote next week, has the backing of several other New York Republicans including Representative Nick LaLota, Marc Molinaro, and Mike Lawler, who have long made their opposition to their colleague known.
But even given Santos’s deep unpopularity, the two-thirds majority required will likely be a steep climb. In the history of the U.S. Congress, only 20 members have ever been successfully expelled from the body, with the bulk of those instances happening during the Civil War. The most recent expulsions from the House of Representatives were Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers of Pennsylvania in 1980 after he was caught in the FBI’s Abscam sting and Congressman James Traficant of Ohio, who was convicted of bribery in 2002.
Mike Johnson, the newly elected Speaker of the House, suggested in an Fox News interview that he’s not in favor of efforts to expel Santos at a time when his party holds such a slim margin in the chamber.
“We have a four-seat majority in the House. It is possible that that number may be reduced even more in the coming weeks and months, and so we will have what may be the most razor-thin majority in the history of the Congress. We have no margin for error. And so George Santos is due due process,” he said.
