George Santos is expelled from Congress after a historic vote

George Santos, the Republican congressman from New York whose tapestry of lies and schemes made him a figure of national ridicule and the subject of a 23-count federal indictment, was expelled from the House of Representatives at the age of 23. Friday after a decisive bipartisan vote by his colleagues.

The move gave Santos, who in the course of his short political career made up links to the Holocaust, September 11 and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, a real place in history: he is the first person to be released from prison put. House without first having been convicted of a federal crime or supporting the Confederacy.

Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana announced the outcome in a quiet House chamber: The measure, which required a two-thirds majority, passed with 311 lawmakers in favor of expulsion, including 105 Republicans, and 114 against. Two members voted present.

“The new integer of the House of Representatives is 434,” a dejected Mr. Johnson announced, confirming that with Mr. Santos’ ouster, the already razor-thin margin of Republican control had shrunk to three votes.

Mr. Santos’s expulsion ends one of the most turbulent political odysseys in recent history, a stunning turnaround in fortunes for a political outsider whose election in Long Island and Queens last year was once heralded as a sign of Republican revival .

Instead, he became a liability of the Republican Party, whose vast web of lies and misdeeds led many to wonder how he had managed to evade responsibility for so long.

After months of hand-wringing in Congress, Santos finally came down on Friday after Republicans and Democrats each introduced separate expulsion resolutions.

Mr Santos left the room before the vote ended. As he descended the House steps to a waiting car, he told reporters he was ready to turn the page on Congress.

“Why would I want to stay here?” he said. “To hell with this place.”

Santos, 35, appeared to be on the verge of escaping responsibility, having survived two previous deportation attempts. Republicans who supported him articulated what became the core of his defense: Expelling him before he was convicted or found guilty by the House Ethics Committee would set a dangerous precedent.

But in a scathing 56-page report released last month, ethics investigators found “substantial evidence” that Mr. Santos had violated federal law, dismissing his candidacy as a protracted conflict.

The political tide turned quickly. Mr Santos immediately declared that he would not seek re-election. Both Democrats and Republicans rushed to condemn him, including Republican House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi, who personally moved to have him removed from office and delivered strong testimony Thursday during a debate over his expulsion.

The debate highlighted the absurdity and impropriety of Mr Santos’s scandals. His use of campaign funds for Botox treatments has been called upon several times. His opponents pointed to fabricated links to the Holocaust and to his claims, contradicted by paperwork, that his mother was at the World Trade Center on September 11.

“George Santos is a liar – in fact, he has admitted it to many of them – who has used his position of public trust to gain personal advantage from Day 1,” said Representative Anthony D’Esposito of New York, who leads the Mr Santos was. Congress’s closest neighbor and most ardent Republican enemy.

Mr. Johnson and other Republican leaders — fearful of losing Mr. Santos’ vote or losing his seat to a Democrat in a special election — still opposed the resolution; he and his entire leadership team voted against expulsion Friday morning.

But after Mr. Johnson told his members to “vote their conscience,” nearly half of his conference chose to expel Mr. Santos, a notable rebuke from his colleagues.

“We followed the Constitution and the way this was going to go,” Mr. Guest said Friday as he stood before the House chamber. “And then today, members of Congress voted. I’m not proud of what happened today.”

Mr. Santos’ forced departure will leave a divided Republican conference with an even thinner majority in Congress, exacerbating the challenges the party faces in advancing its legislative agenda.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has 10 days to announce the date of a special election to fill the vacancy left by Mr. Santos’ departure. The election must take place between 70 and 80 days after it sets the date. Local party leaders typically choose their nominees in special elections.

The Nassau County Republican Party chairman has been exploring possible candidates for months, while Democratic leaders have privately indicated they will most likely put forward Thomas R. Suozzi, who held the seat before Santos but gave it up to run for the governorship.

His decision paved the way for Santos’ election last year, one of several Republican victories that flipped Democratic districts in New York and helped his party gain control of the House of Representatives.

Santos’ victory was also celebrated as a milestone: The son of Brazilian immigrants, he was the first openly gay Republican to win a seat in the House of Representatives as a non-incumbent candidate.

But shortly before he took office, a New York Times investigation revealed that his journey from rags to riches, from a basement apartment in Queens to the halls of Congress, was built on layers of fabrication, exaggeration and omission.

In several campaign biographies, a resume and interviews, Mr. Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in New York City, where he was a volleyball player on a championship team.

He boasted that he had worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and amassed personal wealth. He claimed to be a descendant of Holocaust refugees; that his mother was at the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks; and that he lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

None of these claims were true.

Mr. Santos is only the sixth House member to be expelled from the body’s history. Three representatives were dismissed in 1861 on charges of treason at the start of the Civil War. Two others were convicted in criminal court before deportation: one in 1980 and the most recent in 2002.

Mr. Santos still faces federal charges, in which prosecutors have accused him of multiple criminal schemes. In May, prosecutors charged him with bank fraud, unlawful monetary transactions, stealing government funds and lying on federal disclosure forms.

In October, prosecutors added more charges in a superseding indictment, accusing Mr. Santos of forging a $500,000 campaign loan, stealing the identities of donors to his campaign and using their credit card information to transfer money to his personal bank account to transfer.

While Mr. Santos’ lies fueled his fame and cemented his public reputation as a fraudster, it was larger questions about his finances and campaign practices that prompted the charges and ethics report.

Much of the speculation surrounding him has been linked to the source of the more than $700,000 he claimed to have borrowed for his 2022 political campaign.

When he first ran for office in 2020, he filed a financial disclosure with the House saying he made just $55,000 a year. Two years later, he claimed to be earning a salary of $750,000 at his own company, the Devolder Organization.

Mr. Santos said the company had dividends between $1 million and $5 million, and he had millions of dollars in savings and a checking account with between $100,000 and $250,000.

In their report, House ethics investigators said these claims were false.

They also explained how Mr. Santos used donor money to maintain a fabulous and fraudulent lifestyle, documenting campaign spending on designer clothes, luxury hotels, Botox and OnlyFans.

The Ethics Commission found evidence that Mr. Santos had fraudulently paid himself back for loans he never made, netting him $27,000 in profits during his failed 2020 campaign.

Federal prosecutors said Mr. Santos again forged loans in 2022 to make his campaign look more financially robust, reporting in March a $500,000 donation to his campaign that he did not actually make.

The Ethics Commission report said real money came in months later to fill the gap, but it nevertheless raised questions about whether it had been legally transferred.

Mr. Santos and his treasurer, Nancy Marks, have been accused of fabricating tens of thousands of dollars in donations on campaign finance reports to make it appear that Mr. Santos’ campaign was attracting significant attention.

Ms. Marks pleaded guilty in October to a felony charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and admitted her role in fraudulently reporting the fictitious loan and donations.

Mr Santos, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is due back in court on December 12 and is expected to stand trial in September.

Outside his district office in Queens’ Douglaston neighborhood, some of his constituents gathered outside Friday to take selfies and commemorate the moment. A passing motorist expressed his thoughts in a decidedly New York way.

“Good riddance, you piece of shit,” 60-year-old John Johnson shouted from his car as he was stopped at a traffic light in front of the office.

“I thought the Republicans would save him,” he added. “But I think they came to their senses at the last minute.”

Nicholas Fandos, Catie Edmondson, Lucas Broadwater And Olivia Bensimon reporting contributed.