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As you may have heard, Representative George Santos (Republican) has been expelled from the House. Here is a timeline of what happened:
November 17, 2023: House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, introduced a resolution Friday to expel GOP Rep. George Santos of New York from Congress, one day after the Ethics Committee released a damning report on its investigation into Santos. (CNN)
Lawmakers are expected to address the resolution at the end of the month once they return from the Thanksgiving holiday.
…Expulsion is exceedingly rare and requires a two-thirds majority vote in the House to succeed. So far, 13 GOP lawmakers have come out in support of expelling Santos since the report was released, and that number is expected to grow in the days ahead…
…Santos, who has only been in Congress since January, announced that he will not seek reelection following the release of the committee’s report, though he remained defiant and denounced the investigation, calling it a “biased report.”…
November 25, 2023: Republican George Santos has said he expects to be expelled from Congress following a scathing report by the House ethics committee that found substantial evidence of lawbreaking by the lying New York Representative. (The Guardian)
In a defiant speech on Friday sprinkled with taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional colleagues, Santos insisted he was “not going anywhere.” But he acknowledged that his time as a member of Congress may soon be coming to an end.
“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said on Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”…
…While Santos has survived two expulsion votes, many of his colleagues who formerly opposed the effort now say they support it, citing the findings of the committee’s months-long investigation into a wide range of alleged misconduct committed by Santos…
…The report found Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, such as purchases at luxury retailers and adult content websites, then caused the campaign to file false or incomplete reports.
“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” investigators wrote. They noted that he did not cooperate with the report and repeatedly “evaded” straightforward requests for information.
On Friday, Santos said he did not want to address the specifics of the report, which he claimed was “slanderous” and “designed to force me out of my seat.” Any defense of his conduct, he said, could be used against him in the ongoing criminal case brought by federal prosecutors…
November 29, 2023: Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday expressed “real reservations” about expelling Rep. George Santos from the House since the New York Republican has yet to be convicted of a crime – even as GOP support grows to make him just the sixth member of the chamber ever to be formerly ousted from his seat in the face of damning allegations about his conduct. (CNN)
Santos has survived previous attempts to remove him from the House, but momentum is building for the latest effort after the release of a scathing report from the House Ethics Committee earlier this month, which concluded that he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”
According to CNN, if he were to be expelled, Santos would be the first House member to be ousted without having been convicted or having supported the confederacy. House Republicans also control a very narrow majority, and expulsion would shrink it even further.
Santos announced that he would not seek reelection following the release of the ethics report, but he has said he will not resign and has denounced the congressional investigation and its report as “a disgusting politicized smear.”
December 1, 2023: Rep. Max Miller, a GOP freshman from Ohio, accused Rep. George Santos of stealing money from him and his mother, and attacked Speaker Mike Johnson for opposing Santos’ expulsion. (CNN)
“I think leadership – this is just another example of Republicans who can’t lead. And that’s a really shameful. You know, the speaker and everyone in leadership knows this man is a crook,” Miller said.
He accused the New York Republican of using his and his mother’s credit card information to steal $5,000 from each of them, and marking them as an over donation.
“In January, I got an FEC Complaint because of an over donation to George Santos, and I’ll explain why. I’m Jewish. My family’s Jewish and they were donors and they like to give money to people who are Jewish, who are Republicans, because that’s who we are.”
“And Mr. Santos took, not only my credit card personally, he took my mother’s credit card personally and he swiped them both for an additional $5,000, marking it as an over donation. And I have it by the FEC, and I have the document in my office. And what I can tell you is within that document – I won’t disclose other names – but he defrauded over 350 people for hundreds of 1000s of dollars under undisclosed amounts, and I had to hire an attorney to fight it by the FEC that I think cost me 15 or $20,000. Altogether, this man has cost my family $30,000.”
December 1, 2023: The House has voted to expel New York Rep. George Santos over ethics violations, making him only the sixth lawmaker ever to be kicked out of the chamber. (CNN)
The resolution requires a two-thirds majority vote to succeed. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that 311 members of the House voted to expel Santos, which included 105 Republicans. Another 114 voted against the expulsion, with two members recording them selves “present.”
All four top House GOP leaders, including Johnson, voted to keep Santos in Congress.
Santos is the first member of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War who wasn’t first convicted of a felony…
December 1, 2023: GOP Rep. George Santos told CNN after the House voted to expel him that “it’s over.” (CNN)
“The House spoke, that’s their vote. They just set new dangerous precedent for themselves,” he added.
When asked if he would still stay and use nonmember privileges because he is not convicted, Santos said, “Why would I want to stay here? To hell with this place.”
Pressed if he knew this was how it was going to go, Santos said, “I had no skin in the game.”
And then he said, “You know what? As unofficially no longer a member of Congress, I no longer have to answer your questions.”
December 1, 2023: GOP. Rep. George Santos of New York was expelled from the House in a bipartisan vote Friday, with dozens of his Republican colleagues joining Democrats in ousting him from Congress. (CBS News)
Santos has been the center of overlapping scandals since he won election last year, and he faces a slew of federal charges related to alleged fraud and campaign finance violations. The explosive allegations were detailed in a pair of federal indictments handed down earlier this year, and the House Ethics Committee issued its own scathing report earlier this month.
Santos refused repeated calls for his resignation and survived two major prior attempts to remove him from office. The first attempt was led by Democrats in May after he was originally indicted by the Justice Department. Republicans renewed the expulsion effort in October following a superseding indictment. But Friday’s vote of 311 to 114 made clear that his support among many of his Republican colleagues had eroded…
…In total, Santos is charged with:
one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States
two counts of wire fraud
two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission
two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC
Two counts of aggravated identity theft
one count of access device fraud
seven counts of wire fraud
three counts of money laundering
one count of theft of public funds
two counts of making materially false statements to the United States House of Representatives
December 1, 2023: Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took aim at ousted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) after he exited the House chamber Friday before his expulsion vote had come to an end, calling him a “coward” for doing so. (The Hill)
Pelosi said that while the historic 311-114-2 vote to boot Santos was “heartbreaking,” it was “necessary.”
“This is not a casual vote for us. It’s something you take very seriously, and and he should have taken it seriously,” Pelosi told reporters following the vote, adding that he “should have been a man about it.”
“This is a very serious matter to uphold the dignity and respect of the House of Representatives,” she continued. “He has not, and he didn’t today … by not even showing up and being a coward.”…
December 1, 2023: The expulsion of George Santos from Congress Friday has ramifications beyond the New York Republican’s career prospects (The Guardian)
The historic vote has sparked a scramble among Democrats and Republicans to elect a replacement for Santos, who was found by an ethics committee to have used campaign funds for purchases. A special election is likely to take place early next year.
Given Santos’s troubles – the now former congressman also faces 23 federal charges including fraud and conspiracy – several candidates have already announced they would run for his seat in New York’s third congressional district.
While New York legally requires to hold a special election in less than 90 days, the race for Santos’s Long Island district, which voted for Joe Biden in 2020, was represented by Democrats for 10 years before swinging Republican last year, has dramatically accelerated.
There will be no primary in the special election. Instead, local Democratic and Republican Party leaders will choose the parties’ nominees to replace Santos in a finely balanced House of Representatives – Santos’s expulsion reduced Republicans’ advantage over Democrats in the House of Representatives by eight seats: 221-213. Democrats are expected to announce their nominee on Tuesday, with Republicans also likely to reveal their candidate soon…
December 1, 2023: Sticky Fingers Diner posted the following on Instagram:
“Adios Santos! We’re serving up a Santos sendoff cocktail for disgraced Republican House member, George Santos. To celebrate, we’ve mixed up an “Adios Santos” Grapefruit Margarita & will be offering it all weekend for $10.
To help turn the grift into a gift, $1 of each cocktail will go to CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.”
This is what the “Adios Santos” drink looks like:
December 1, 2023: Former Rep. George Santos’s (R.N.Y.) name plaque was removed from his former office Friday, hours after he was expelled from Congress. (The Hill)
Surrounded by reporters, a House employee unscrewed the plaque from the wall and removed Santos’s name at about 3:30 p.m. It was replaced by a temporary sign stating “Office of the Third Congressional District of New York.”…
…In political terms, the expulsion leaves Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) with one fewer vote for an already slim GOP majority. The vacancy is expected to be filled in a special election in Spring 2024.
The 3rd District is expected to be tightly contested in 2024. It is considered a “Toss Up,” according to the Cook Political Report.
December 2, 2023: The House on Friday took the remarkable step of expelling George Santos (R-N.Y.), shrinking the GOP’s already thin majority and depriving Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of a precious vote as the chamber charges toward a series of legislative landmines. (The Hill)…
…Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) is headed for the exits to lead Youngstown State University early next year, and there’s swirling speculation that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will quit Congress early after the House deposed him in historic and embarrassing fashion after just nine months with the gavel.
…Santos’s removal has immediately trimmed the Republicans’ four-seat advantage down to three – a wafer-thin cushion that leaves Johnson, just weeks into his Speakership, with little room for error as he attempts to steer the party’s conservative agenda through the second half of the 118th Congress with a deeply divided conference…
…Then, there’s the special election to fill Santos’s seat, which could either permanently deprive Republicans of the ousted lawmaker’s vote or keep the district red. Political headwinds are trending in Democrats’ direction: President Biden carried New York’s 3rd Congressional District by roughly 8 percentage points in 2020, and the Cook Political Report rates the area a “Republican toss up” for 2024.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) will call a special election within 10 days of Santos’s expulsion, and the election is required to take place between 70 and 80 days later, according to state law, teeing up a February or March election day…
December 2, 2023: Former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) in late-night posts on social media pledged to file ethics complaints against several of his House colleagues after he was expelled from office Friday. (The Hill)
His threats were levied against Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), and Rob Menendez (D-N.J.), over campaign finance violations and other ethics claims. The embattled former lawmaker said he will file official complaints Monday…
…Santos said the complaint against Malliotakis will focus on “her questionable stock trading since joining the Ways and Means committee this Congress.”…
…The Lawler claims center on allegations that he funneled campaign expenses through a company he has a stake in…
…Against LaLota, Santos raised assertions that the fellow Long Island congressman was a “no-show: at his local board of elections job while attending law school…
Santos also demanded the Ethics Committee look into Menendez’s relationship with his father, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) who has been charged with multiple federal crimes in a bribery scheme…