At the end of what was certainly the most chaotic 331 days in Congress, Republican Rep. George Santos of New York was appropriately expelled by his peers after a 311-114 vote Friday morning. He became the sixth member to ever be expelled and only the third since the Civil War.
Good riddance to a phony who has lied to everybody, including the people who elected him.
Good riddance to a phony who has lied to everybody, including the people who elected him.
Santos’ job was in peril even before he was sworn in: On Dec. 19, 2022, five weeks after he was elected, The New York Times dropped a bombshell story detailing just a few of the many lies that we’d soon learn Santos told. According to the Times, he claimed jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which had records of his ever having worked there. He claimed he graduated from Baruch College in 2010, but the school had no record of him, either. He said he founded a nonprofit called Friends of Pets United, but the IRS had no record of that. He reported a $750,000 salary — from a company with no clients. He claimed his family had made a fortune in real estate, but there were no records backing up that claim. And Brazilian court records showed that he was accused of stealing the checkbook of an elderly man when he was 19 and living in that country.
Days after Santos was sworn in, Santos’ Democratic colleagues from New York, Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres, submitted a written request to the House Ethics Committee requesting an investigation “for violations of the Ethics in Government Act by failing to file timely, accurate, and complete financial disclosure reports as required by law.” The two congressmen would remain at the forefront of the battle to get Santos out, even as interest in the matter appeared to wane.
A combination of institutional factors allowed him to fall through the cracks and seize one of the country’s most prestigious jobs, but the damning House Ethics Committee report…
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