One Down, 534 to Go?
On January 8th, 2023, my Facebook page posted a prediction about George Santos who had just won the NY-3rd Congressional as revelations surfaced about his numerous misrepresentations to constituents and the press when on campaign. Turns out that I was wrong in my prediction, which in this case is for the better.
To recap, George Santos had campaigned in 2020 for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican, but won the seat in 2022, and only then the press began to scrutinize his record and his claims on the campaign trail. Santos had claimed attendance at schools which had no records of him as a student, and work experience in companies which had no trace of his association with them. Santos even campaigned as “openly gay” only for it to be revealed that he was married to a woman as late as 2019 (not impossible, of course, but also six years after United States v. Windsor had legalized same-sex marriage nationwide). Santos claimed descent from persecuted Ukrainian Jews, and made it sound like his mother had narrowly escaped the World Trade Center on 9/11, and even these claims turned out to be bogus. Most worrisome however were his personal and campaign finances, which revealed glaring discrepancies. Turns out that Santos was using campaign funds to pay for all sorts of personal expenses, like trips to casinos, Botox® and porn sites. In the institution of the U.S. Congress – notorious for its wanton prodigality with other people’s money – Santos took things a tad too far.
My prediction in January of last year was that the Republicans would rally to support Santos despite the mounting allegations against him. Republicans enjoy a majority in the House, but not so big that they can spare another vote to command. Yet as the evidence began to accumulate against Santos – with even fellow Representative Max Miller (OH-R) alleging that Santos had stolen $10,000 in campaign donations from him and his mother – it became clear that Santos was more liability than asset. On May 9th, 2023, Santos was formally indicted on federal charges for wire fraud and campaign finance violations. On November 16th, 2023, the House Ethics Committee released a lengthy report of its investigation into Santos, which revealed his flagrant abuses of campaign finance laws. And on December 1st, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 311 - 116 to oust Santos, with 105 Republicans voting affirmative.
Some Representatives from both legacy parties voted negative out of principle in that Santos was then only accused of misconduct and not formally convicted. A healthy respect for precedent and the rule of law makes me partial to such a stance, but I can understand the pressure on Representatives to be seen by their constituencies as “doing something” in terms of office lasting only two years. It took another nine months for George Santos finally to plead guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft on August 19th, 2024. Now he faces $370,000 in restitution owed to his victims, and a stint of six years in the pokey.
It is reassuring that justice prevailed over partisanship in this case. For Republicans to harbor someone who lied his way into Congress and conned donors out of fortunes just to hold onto another vote for pork, would have been irredeemable.
Now the question remains… who else in Congress is playing fast and loose with the rules?