House Ethics chairman files resolution to expel Rep George Santos from Congress

Table Of Content

• Karen Bass elected mayor, becoming first woman to lead L.A.
• Cheat sheet for the 2022 Westside L.A. City Council District 11 primary race
• House Ethics chairman files resolution to expel Rep. George Santos from Congress
• Editorial: NIMBY cities, watch out. California is cracking down on housing scofflaws
• news Alerts
• House Ousts George Santos From Office in Bipartisan Vote

Others, most notably some of his colleagues in New York, tried to oust him earlier this fall. “Anyone who thinks a special election on Long Island is a slam dunk for Democrats has been living under a rock for the last three years,” said Isaac Goldberg, a strategist who advised the losing Democratic campaign against Mr. Santos in 2022. Local Republicans moved decisively to distance themselves from Mr. Santos last January, and the strategy has shown signs of working. When Long Island voters went to the polls for local contests last month, they delivered a Republican rout that left Democrats scrambling to figure out how to rehabilitate a tarnished political brand. Political analysts rate the district, stretching from the outskirts of New York City into the heart of Nassau County’s affluent suburbs on Long Island, as a tossup.

Karen Bass elected mayor, becoming first woman to lead L.A.

The resolution is unlikely to succeed, given the political dynamics at play and underlying mechanics involved in expelling a sitting representative. Under House rules, Republicans can move to table the measure or refer it to the House Ethics Committee, both of which would require a simple majority. A vote on the underlying resolution to expel Santos would require the approval of two thirds of members under the Constitution. Republicans control the 435-seat House by a margin of four seats, meaning dozens of GOP members would need to side with the Democrats to successfully expel Santos. The indictment alleges he stole the identities of campaign donors and then used their credit cards to make tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges.

Cheat sheet for the 2022 Westside L.A. City Council District 11 primary race

Republicans mount 11th-hour push for George Santos to resign - Axios

Republicans mount 11th-hour push for George Santos to resign.

Posted: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Santos faces nearly two dozen felony counts related to alleged wire fraud, identity theft and campaign finance violations. Proponents say this new tax is essential because city officials expect funds available for affordable housing construction to plummet in the coming years. Although the measure has received endorsements from a slew of unions, social justice groups and The Times’ editorial board, neither mayoral candidate has come out in favor of it (Remember, the editorial boards operates separately from the newsroom). But the resolution from Democrats is privileged, meaning that Speaker Mike Johnson must address it within two days.

House Ethics chairman files resolution to expel Rep. George Santos from Congress

The first-term New York Republicans who have been Santos’s biggest G.O.P. critics are holding a news conference on the House steps. “It’s time to move on from George Santos,” Representative Nick Lalota tells reporters. Unlike in a normal election, party leaders in Washington and New York — not primary voters — will choose the Democratic and Republican nominees. They were moving quickly to winnow the field of potential candidates, and could announce their picks in a matter of days. He and others argued that Mr. Santos should not have been removed based on the findings of a House ethics report that unearthed multiple wrongdoings and instead should have let his criminal case play out to determine his fate. The office — for months the background for television news shots and the staging ground for protests demanding he leave the House after his penchant for lies was exposed — became a gathering point after Mr. Santos was expelled from Congress, with people taking selfies outside.

Six candidates are seeking to replace City Controller Ron Galperin at City Hall, which has been buffeted by FBI probes into council members, political aides and others. In a break from recent tradition, there’s not an incumbent or a well-known elected official among the candidates running to become L.A. Seven people are running to be Los Angeles city attorney, a race with a wide field and no incumbent. As voters head to the polls across Los Angeles to elect new leaders, a new poll finds homelessness, housing affordability and crime among their top issues. On X, LaLota reacted to Santos' statement, saying, "He's taking a plea deal," referring to the 23 federal charges Santos is facing and his upcoming trial. There is no funding mechanism as part of this measure or accompanying tax hit for voters.

They are wary of repeating their experience with Mr. Santos, who secured the party’s backing in 2020 and 2022 despite presenting them with a fraudulent résumé and other glaring fabrications that they failed to catch. Jay Jacobs, the Democratic leader for the state and Nassau County, said he still intended to screen multiple candidates, including Ms. Kaplan, a more progressive former state senator who remains in the race, even as other candidates dropped out and coalesced behind Mr. Suozzi. Democratic strategists said they would continue to use the embarrassment of Mr. Santos to attack Republicans, blaming them for aiding the former congressman’s rise.

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He withdrew from the House of Representatives in August 1861 and was expelled four months later for disloyalty to the Union. He was a volunteer aide to General Sterling Price of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. A lawyer and militia officer, he was a member of Missouri’s House of Representatives before being elected to Congress in 1856. A lawyer and politician, he was the Trigg County Court clerk before being elected to represent Kentucky’s First Congressional District in 1854.

Expelling a representative requires a two-thirds majority, a threshold that the previous efforts failed to meet. But since the ethics report was released, a number of lawmakers who previously opposed expulsion have publicly changed their views. In May 2023, while facing a House ethics probe, Santos was arrested on federal fraud charges that accuse him of bilking political donors.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., soon took the gavel, quieted the chamber and solemnly instructed the House clerk to inform the governor of New York that Santos’ former House seat was now vacant. Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a post on X that she is "prepared to undertake the solemn responsibility of filling the vacancy in New York's 3rd District. The people of Long Island deserve nothing less." “If there is a report forthcoming, I think we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves a couple of weeks so that we are all operating off the same information,” she said.

President Biden won the district by eight points in 2020, but it has shifted rightward in three consecutive elections since, as voters fearful about crime and inflation have flocked to Republicans. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has 10 days to formally schedule the contest after Friday’s lopsided vote to remove Mr. Santos. But both parties expect the election to take place in mid-to-late February, just over a year after he first took the oath of office. “To hell with this place,” Santos declared after a reporter asked him if he planned on visiting the House floor using the privileges given to former congressmen. In September, prosecutors said they were discussing “possible paths forward” with Mr. Santos’s team, leading to speculation that the congressman could be negotiating a plea deal that might include his resignation. Mr. Santos has also asserted that he had no involvement in his campaign’s finances.

They long argued that his presence in their delegation was an embarrassment to the state party and hurt their chances for electoral success in 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson, still just weeks into his tenure, and members of his leadership team voted to save Mr. Santos, concerned about further winnowing down the party’s slim House majority. They joined with some of the same hard-right rebels who often revolt against them, in an unusual alliance that sought to keep the serial liar in their ranks.

"If they want to introduce their own resolution now that this has happened, they're welcome to do so. But our goal is to expel him this week." George Santos was also asked during his press conference whether he was wearing anything he bought with campaign funds, including the Ferragamo shoes he was wearing, NBC’s Kate Santaliz reports. Garcia called McCarthy's approach "a cop-out" at a news conference Wednesday morning.

The vote — 213 opposed to 179 in favor, with 19 representatives voting “present” — is the second time in nearly six months that Mr. Santos, 35, has evaded a push to expel him. And it has cleared the way for him to remain in office as he fights the 23-count federal indictment accusing him of involvement in a range of fraudulent schemes. LaLota is one of the Republicans who voted to expel Santos in December amid federal criminal charges. Santos has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges, and is scheduled to stand trial in September.

Also on Wednesday evening, the House voted to reject an effort to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Democrats called off an effort to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). We have due process in America,” said GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who opposed the expulsion resolution. The House floor debate over whether to expel Santos was undertaken strictly by members of the New York congressional delegation. On one side, Republican Reps. Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler laid out their case for expelling Santos.

Both Republicans and Democrats now expect a heavily contested special election to find Santos’s replacement in the coming months. Additionally, they found he misrepresented the use of these funds to donors and didn’t properly file reports to the Federal Election Commission. The lawmakers referred Santos’s case to the Justice Department for any potential penalties, and shortly after the report’s release, House Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-MS) filed a resolution for Santos’s expulsion. “I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk with the next lobbyist that they’re gonna screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on and sell out the American people,” he said in the X Space. Representative George Santos, Republican of New York, has told so many lies they can be hard to keep straight.

Two lawmakers moved Tuesday to force action on separate resolutions seeking to remove Santos from Congress, setting up votes in the House before the week's end. Bowman said in response to the expected expulsion resolution targeting him that Santos should not be taken seriously and called the Republican lawmaker's threatened measure "another meaningless stunt in his long history of cons, antics and outright fraud." Their goal was, in part, to force Republicans into taking a public position on Mr. Santos, who pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges.