Santos, Humiliated by Ethics Report, Faces a Third Expulsion Resolution

An embattled New York congressman, George Santos, is facing another resolution to expel him from the House in the wake of a scathing House Committee on Ethics report.The chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Guest, filed a resolution Friday morning to expel Mr. Santos from Congress, the third such effort this year.House investigators on Thursday released a sweeping report that, in their assessment, “revealed a complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos’ campaign, personal, and business finances.”The report detailed supposed abuses of campaign funds by Mr. Santos, including spending his campaign money on trips to the Hamptons, Botox treatments, and purchases at Ferragamo and on OnlyFans, a web platform best known for pornography.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the committee wrote in its report. “He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit.”In the first attempt to expel Mr. Santos, brought by Democrats in the spring, Republicans voted in favor of keeping him in the chamber, where they have just a narrow majority, sending the matter to the ethics committee.The second expulsion effort, brought by New York Republicans in early November, also fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to expel Mr. Santos, with some members citing a desire to see the ethics report before they removed him.Whether the report will sway enough members who voted against expelling Mr. Santos in the first and second attempts is unclear. However, it does appear that it is at least putting wind in the sails of those who want to see Mr. Santos, who this week declared he will not seek re-election, gone before January 2025.Speaker Johnson, who had previously said he wanted to afford Mr. Santos due process and wait for the House ethics report, called the report “very troubling” and said he thought both Republicans and Democrats should “consider the best interests of the institution.”Congressman Jamie Raskin, who has also opposed earlier measures against Mr. Santos on the premise of due process concerns, seems to have been swayed by the ethics report on Mr. Santos.“The House Ethics Committee is recommending criminal charges after finding George Santos misused campaign funds, lied to the FEC and defrauded the people of New York. Meantime, I’m recommending Mr. Santos resign immediately — and will vote for his expulsion if he does not,” Mr. Raskin said in a statement.Although Mr. Santos announced he would not seek re-election following the report’s publication, he has denounced the committee’s report as a “dirty biased act and one that tramples all over my rights.”“What the ‘ethics committee’ did today was not part of due process, what they did was poison the jury pool on my on going [sic] investigation with the DOJ,” Mr. Santos said in a post. Regardless of whether Mr. Santos leaves Congress before his term ends in 2025, handicappers like the Cook Political Report are giving Democrats the advantage in the post-Santos competition for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Santos, Humiliated by Ethics Report, Faces a Third Expulsion Resolution

Santos, Humiliated by Ethics Report, Faces a Third Expulsion Resolution

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