Rep George Santos expects to be expelled from Congress after scathing House Ethics report: Live

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LIVE – Updated at 15:16

Scandal-plagued New York Republican Rep George Santos has acknowledged that he expects to be expelled from the House as soon as this week.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” Mr Santos, 35, said last week in a broadcast on the X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

In the X Space event hosted by Monica Matthews, a rightwing personality, Mr Santos said, “I have done the math over and over and it doesn’t look really good”. But he claimed that he would wear his expulsion “like a badge of honour”.

The latest blow of many to Mr Santos’s short yet tumultuous political career came in the form of a 56-page report from the House Ethics Committee released earlier this month which outlined “substantial evidence” that Mr Santos violated federal law.

The report included allegations that Mr Santos used campaign money to pay for his personal expenses, such as Botox, and luxury purchases at Hermes and Ferragamo, as well as smaller sums spent on OnlyFans, food, parking, travel, and rent.

Key Points

• George Santos says he expects to be expelled from Congress
• Santos has survived previous attempts to expel him
• ‘I’m not running for re-election because I don’t want to work with a bunch of hypocrites’

VOICES: The House has no more options but to expel George Santos

14:10 , Eric Garcia

It might finally be over for Rep George Santos (R-NY) and, moreover, the House Republican conference might finally be out of excuses to keep him in the House.

On Friday, Rep Michael Guest (R-MS), the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, filed a resolution to expel the embattled and disgraced freshman Republican. This came a day after the committee released its damning report detailing Mr Santos’s misdeeds. (My colleague John Bowden wrote a list of the most outrageous parts of the probe.)

While many of the headlines noted how Mr Santos used campaign cash to pay for expensive meals, shopping trips to Sephora, Botox purchases and Only Fans sessions, fraud lies at the heart of the probe, specifically the fact he lied to the Federal Election Commission, with one of his staffers pretending to be a staffer for now-deposed speaker Kevin McCarthy. Similarly, he also lied about loans he made to his own campaign to qualify for assistance from the national Republican Party campaign apparatus.

As a result, Mr Guest’s resolution could easily be said to be speaking for the entirety of the committee.

It might easy to dismiss this effort by Mr Guest given that he is a conservative Republican from Mississippi who voted to overturn the 2020 election. Similarly, some may roll their eyes considering the House has already had two failed attempts to expel Mr Santos. But those efforts differ wildly from the current expulsion push.

The first time came when Reps Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres, both New York Democrats, led a motion in May that the House majority immediately referred to the Ethics Committee.

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‘I’m not running for re-election because I don’t want to work with a bunch of hypocrites’

14:08 , Mike Bedigan

Despite his explosive criticism of the report, Mr Santos acknowledged that he may soon be exiting the House, having already said that he won’t seek re-election in 2024. “I’m not running for re-election, not because this was a damning report,” he said.

“I’m not running for re-election because I don’t want to work with a bunch of hypocrites.

“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor.”

The House Ethics Committee began its investigation in March 2023, after allegations of campaign finance misconduct and that Mr Santos lied about biographical details surfaced.

Last week’s report found that the 35-year-old had violated ethics guidelines, the rules of the House and criminal laws, and that he had been aware that he was crossing the line.

Mr Santos was indicted on 13 federal charges in May 2023, and in October, a superseding indictment brought another 10 criminal counts against him, bringing the total to 23.

Santos has survived previous attempts to expel him

14:06 , Mike Bedigan

Mr Santos has survived two expulsion attempts already, but some members of the GOP have indicated that they will vote differently, following the publishing of the report.

In an interview on X Spaces on Thursday, Mr Santos declared that “due process is dead” and described the report as “flawed”, before launching a searing attack on the document which he said was “an affront against my rights”.

“The amount of hyperbole in this document is daunting. Every single person I’ve had discussions about it with – I have spoken to prominent Democrats who were troubled by the work of this committee,” he said.

“It was designed to smear me, it was designed to force me out of my seat. That is what the intention of this report was. This report wasn’t a finding of facts.”

He continued: “I will stand for expulsion. I want to see them set this precedent because this precedent sets a new era of due process, which means you are guilty until proven innocent.

“We will take your accusations and use it to smear, to mangle, to destroy you and remove you from society. That is what they are doing with this.

“This report is an affront against my rights and it should worry each and every single one of you guys.”

George Santos says he expects to be expelled from Congress

13:55 , Mike Bedigan

George Santos says he expects to be expelled from the House of Representatives, in the wake of a scathing report from an ethics committee accusing him of campaign finance violations.

The New York congressman said he felt like the “it girl” when he was first elected in 2022 – as the first openly gay Republican – and that everybody wanted him, “until nobody wanted me.”

Last week the long-awaited House Ethics Committee investigation into the embattled congressman was published.

It stated that there was credible evidence to indicate that the Republican misused campaign funds for a wide range of personal expenses, committed fraud, and misled the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

House Ethics panel chairman GOP Rep Michael Guest of Mississippi filed a motion for Mr Santos’ expulsion a day later. The chamber can take up the motion on 28 November upon lawmakers’ return from Thanksgiving recess.

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