George Santos Is Going Out in the Most George Santos Way Possible

An airing of grievances, just in time for the holidays. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

In over two centuries, the House of Representatives has expelled members for only two reasons: being a Confederate and being a convict.

On Thursday, it debated a third grounds for expulsion: being George Santos.

It isn’t just that he was a compulsive liar or an accused fraudster or facing nearly two dozen federal charges. It was how each scandal piled on top of one another, compounded by Santos’s lack of shame and his continued defiance of calls to resign from office under circumstances where most politicians would have stepped aside. Once the House Ethics Committee issued its formal report detailing how he had fraudulently exploited “every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” including spending campaign funds on Botox and OnlyFans, the drive to oust him from Congress was inevitable.

In a defiant, chaotic Thursday-morning news conference ahead of the debate, Santos characterized the effort to expel him from Congress as “bullying” and that, if he resigned, he would be letting his bullies win. He dodged a question about why exactly he was being bullied.

Those who wanted him out berated him on the floor of Congress. Michael Guest, the ethics chair, solemnly intoned that Santos “has built his persona, his personal and political life on a foundation of lies.” Marc Molinaro of New York called his Republican colleague “divorced from reality,” while Max Miller of Ohio simply looked at Santos and said, “You, sir, are a crook.”

His defenders simply framed their arguments in procedural tones. Matt Gaetz opened his remarks by saying, “I rise, not to defend George Santos, whoever he is,” and argued that he was facing expulsion simply for the lurid details surrounding his conduct. Clay Higgins of Louisiana read a letter he had written that likened the effort to oust Santos to “a public crucifixion.”

The debate over his fate ahead of a Friday vote was the culmination of a nearly yearlong political scandal that started last December when it was revealed that the then–congressman elect from Long Island had invented much of his résumé and life story. Santos helped secure a narrow Republican majority in the House by running as a successful financier of Jewish descent with a degree from Baruch College and experience working for major Wall Street companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. None of that was true. Instead, he was a former telemarketer with an outstanding warrant in Brazil who had previously been charged with writing bad checks to Amish dog breeders in Pennsylvania. The saga turned him into a national punch line before he was even sworn into office.

Once he was finally seated in January, more outrageous falsehoods emerged, including Santos falsely claiming to be a producer of the infamous Broadway flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and his unsubstantiated accusation that Chinese agents had kidnapped his niece. There were also false claims that his mother was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and later died of a related illness, and that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. On top of that, there were allegations that he had stolen money intended to provide medical treatment to the service dog of a disabled veteran. (A more comprehensive list can be found here.)

More seriously, he has been charged with 23 federal counts including wire fraud, money laundering, and lying to federal investigators.

He also has been the subject of repeated efforts to oust him, including one led by fellow New York Republicans earlier in November. That was rejected by a majority of the House over concerns about the precedent that it would establish and the lack of due process for Santos rather than any belief that he might be innocent of the allegations against him. The Ethics Committee report provided more than enough findings to ease any process concerns over ousting him.

Santos accepted that the math was against him and that he was likely to be expelled. However, he was optimistic about the possibilities for him of life outside Congress. “The future is endless,” he said. “You can do whatever you want next, and I’m just going to do whatever I want.”

Unless, of course, he wants to be a member of Congress.