“The reality of it is it’s all theater. It’s theater for the cameras, it’s theater for the microphones, it’s theater for the American people at the expense of the American people, because no real work’s getting done,” Santos said as he stood in front of the U.S. Capitol on a frigid morning, surrounded by scores of reporters and cameras.
During the House debate on the resolution later in the day, Santos dared his colleagues to vote to expel him from the chamber.
“I’m willing to take the vote,” Santos said. “Take the vote, guys. I’m okay with it. This is your time. This is what they’ve all built up to all year.”
The latest effort to remove him from office — introduced earlier this month by Ethics Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) — follows the release of the scathing Ethics Committee report. A vote is expected on Friday and would require a two-thirds majority to pass.
The New York Republican also faces 23 federal charges, including fraud, money laundering, falsifying records and aggravated identity theft.
If the resolution passes, Santos would be only the sixth lawmaker in U.S. history to be expelled from the House and the first in more than 20 years. On Thursday, Santos noted he could be the first lawmaker expelled in modern times without having been convicted of a crime.
“If the House wants to start different precedent and expel me, that is going to be the undoing of a lot of members of this body,” Santos said at the news conference. “Because this will haunt them in the future where mere allegations are sufficient to have members removed from office when duly elected by their people in their respective states and districts.”
Santos argued on the House floor that he was not given due process in the Ethics Committee investigation, a notion that was emphatically countered by the lawmakers seeking his expulsion.
Guest defended the work and report of the panel he chairs, saying investigators worked for eight months, reviewing 172,000 pages of documents and interviewing 40 witnesses. The findings, he said, “were shocking.”
He also emphasized Santos had “ample opportunity to be heard” by investigators and the committee.
“He is once again presented the opportunity here today to before this body, before the American people, he has the opportunity today to rebut the findings of the Ethics Committee,” he said.
The Ethics Committee report, which was published on Nov. 16, accused Santos of — among other things — stealing money from his campaign, deceiving donors about how contributions would be used, creating fictitious loans and engaging in fraudulent business dealings. Santos, the report alleged, repeatedly used funds intended for his campaign for personal enrichment, including spa charges and paying down his own credit card debt.
“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit. 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,” the report stated.
According to the report, Santos was given an opportunity to submit to investigators a signed written statement responding to the allegations, but he did not do so. Santos also did not respond to the committee’s requests for documents, to voluntarily testify or to provide a statement under oath. Investigators noted that they thought any testimony from Santos “would have low evidentiary value given his admitted practice of embellishment.”
A handful of Republicans rose to argue against Santos’s expulsion during the floor debate.
Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Tex.), who has previously said he does not support efforts to remove Santos, argued, without evidence, that the Ethics Committee had been “weaponized” against Santos.
“You may accept this report as grounds for expulsion from Congress, but I say no,” Nehls said. “It’s not right. The totality of circumstance appears biased. It stinks of politics.”
Earlier Thursday, Santos introduced a resolution to expel Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who pleaded guilty last month to pulling a false fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) pointed to the ethics committee’s announcement last week that it declined to investigate Bowman and decided no further action was necessary.
“There’s no basis for George Santos, who’s a joke and an embarrassment and a serial fraudster to move forward with any resolution or to take him seriously at all,” Jeffries told reporters Thursday. “A question that we should all be asking is why is George Santos still around?”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday expressed “real reservations” about the motion to expel Santos but said lawmakers would be free to “vote their conscience.”
“We’ve not whipped the vote, and we wouldn’t,” Johnson told reporters then. “I trust that people will make that decision thoughtfully and in good faith. I personally have real reservations about doing this. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that.”
Santos on Thursday refused to address details in the report, claiming he would respond to it “line by line” at a later time. He also stood by his decision not to run for reelection, reminding a reporter that he was only 35 years old.
“It doesn’t mean that it’s goodbye forever,” he said.