Republican Rep. George Santos expelled from Congress after scathing fraud allegations

WASHINGTON — Embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was expelled from Congress Friday after a scathing House Ethics Committee report found substantial evidence Santos misused campaign funds for his own personal benefit and committed federal crimes.

The House voted to boot Santos from the lower chamber by a bipartisan vote of 311-114. An expulsion vote requires a heavy lift in the House, a two-thirds vote to pass.

Despite the early momentum for his expulsion, Santos’ removal was put into question the morning of the vote as lawmakers demurred over whether they were certain the support was there to oust Santos. All of top House GOP leadership as well, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced they would vote against his expulsion.

Santos has long been mired in controversy, even before entering Congress when it was reported he embellished and fabricated parts of his resume and background on the campaign trail.

During his tenure in Congress, the Long Island Republican was slapped with a multitude of federal charges, including money laundering, wire fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud and lying to Congress.

Santos has faced calls to resign from both sides of the aisle in the face of those controversies, but he remained defiant up until his expulsion. While he has admitted to lying about his background, he has denied all wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

His opponents have pushed to remove him from Congress twice already, but those efforts ultimately failed while lawmakers awaited the House Ethics Committee to release its report.

After the report was released earlier this month, momentum among lawmakers to expel Santos once and for all swiftly gained traction, sealing his fate leading up to the vote on the expulsion resolution introduced by Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., chair of the Ethics committee.

Among the findings in the 56-page report from the subcommittee tasked with investigating Santos, his fellow lawmakers found evidence Santos sought to “exploit” his House campaign for his financial benefit including “blatantly” stealing from his own campaign and deceiving campaign donors.

“Representative George Santos cannot be trusted. At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles,” the report read.

In one instance, Santos allegedly used $50,000 of campaign funds to pay off his own personal debt; make a purchase at Hermes, a luxury apparel store; make smaller purchases on OnlyFans, Sephora and for meals and parking.

On the campaign trail, Santos’ lies were so extravagant, his own campaign staff called him a “fabulist” and encouraged him to “seek treatment,” according to the report.

Despite the clear resounding support among both Democrats and Republicans to expel him in advance of the House’s vote, Santos refused to resign and accepted his fate, saying in a three-hour conversation on X spaces, formerly Twitter spaces, that he would be expelled in stride and “wear it like a badge of honor.”

Santos has also derided the ethics report as an attempt to “smear me” and “force me out of my seat,” saying it “wasn’t a finding of facts.”

Santos’ expulsion is a rare sight for Congress. Santos is the sixth member ever to be expelled from the House and is the first member in modern times to be expelled without having been convicted of a crime. His absence will shrink the House GOP’s already razor-thin majority to 220 seats over Democrats’ 213 seats.

To make matters worse for Republicans, Santos’ district leans Democratic, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, offering Democrats a pick-up opportunity to narrow the GOP’s majority further. New York law mandates Gov. Kathy Hochul must declare a special election within ten days of a seat’s vacancy, and the state must hold the election between 70-80 days after Hochul’s proclamation.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: George Santos expelled from Congress after scathing House ethics probe