Vote Triggered to Expel George Santos from Congress
Two Democrats introduced a resolution requiring the House to vote on expelling U.S. Rep. George Santos from Congress within 48 hours.
Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) filed a privileged resolution on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives calling for the removal of George Santos (R-N.Y.) from Congress. The resolution triggers the start of a 48-hour countdown in which the full chamber must vote on whether or not to expel Santos.
The resolution drops two weeks after a scathing report from the House Ethics Committee that found Santos had violated various ethical and campaign finance laws.
That report, which has been made public, accuses the openly gay Republican lawmaker of deceiving donors into contributing to him, ostensibly to help pay for campaign expenses, only to use that money on personal expenses, including luxury clothing brands, Botox, spa treatments, and porn subscriptions.
He also reported fictitious loans to political committees to encourage donors to continue contributing to him, and to convince Republican Party officials that he should qualify for special campaign funding.
Following the report’s release, House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) filed a resolution calling for Santos’s expulsion. But that resolution has not yet been filed as privileged, meaning that the Republican-led House could choose to delay a vote.
Because Garcia and Goldman’s resolution is privileged, House leaders must schedule a vote on the matter within two legislative days, in this case by the end of Thursday.
“The time has finally come to remove George Santos from Congress,” Garcia said in a statement. “If we’re going to restore faith in government, we must start with restoring integrity in the U.S. House of Representatives. It is essential for the American people to have Representatives they can trust and who don’t build their careers on deceit and falsehoods.”
Goldman called Santos “an admitted liar, fraud, and cheat,” adding that the Ethics Committee report “confirms what we’ve long known: George Santos is wholly unfit for public office.”
Earlier this month, the House voted on a separate privileged resolution seeking to expel Santos, but it failed to reach the required two-thirds threshold needed to remove him from office.
At the time, many lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, voted against the motion to expel, urging their colleagues to wait until the House Ethics Committee released its findings. However, Politico reported shortly after the report was released that nearly 60 additional members of both parties have since gone on record supporting Santos’s expulsion from Congress.
Last week, Santos said during a conversation on X Spaces that he fully expects to be ousted. He has repeatedly resisted calls to resign, even though he previously announced he would not run for re-election in 2024.
“Look, you all want a soundbite,” Santos told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s the third time we are going through this. I don’t care. I was sent here by the people of the Third District of New York. I represent them. The political class in Washington, D.C., if they want to send me home, if they think this was a fair process, if they think this is how it should be done, and if they’re confident that this is a constitutional way of doing it — God bless their hearts.”
Santos said he would not attempt to lobby his colleagues to vote against the resolution, although some Republicans have expressed qualms about reducing their already slim majority by one seat. If at least 80 Republicans don’t break ranks, Santos will remain in office.
Santos argued that Congress would be better off voting on measures to combat inflation or secure the country’s southern border to prevent illegal immigration.
“If this building, if this city put in the effort to fixing our country the same way that they put on expelling me, we’d be in a better place,” he told reporters. “But this place is littered [with] political theater and the American people are the ones paying the price.”
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