The bar keeps getting lower and lower.
New York Representative George Santos has been an albatross around the neck of the GOP’s slim House majority ever since he was elected last November and his…ahem…embellishments came to light. Between his election and swearing in, the New York Times attempted to do a puff piece on the Republican who had caused an upset by winning a seat in a newly created district in a deep blue state. That’s when the trouble started.
NYT reporters called his former “employers” on Wall Street for background. They’d never heard of him. Then journalists called the college he claimed to have obtained his degree from. The institution had no idea who he was either. Further investigation discovered that Santos had lied about his alleged current self-employment, his financial holdings, being Jewish, losing family in the Holocaust, losing his mother in the 9/11 attacks and winning a national volleyball championship in college. He even lied about what his name was. On his first day in Washington, he lied about being sworn in as a congressman in the opening days of the new Republican House majority when there was no Speaker elected to swear him in.
Despite this Everest of fabrications, he refused to resign, and his Republican colleagues refused to remove him. Their majority in the House is too small and, liar or no liar, they needed his vote.
Then things got more complicated. The Department of Justice opened an investigation into Santos’ campaign finances. They wanted to know how he had gone from a stated income of $50,000 to a net worth of several hundred thousand dollars in under a year. How was he able to afford weekends in the Hamptons and the finest designer clothes? Who was paying for this stuff?
Still, despite the freshmen Republican House delegation wanting him removed for the embarrassment he was, the GOP leadership did nothing. Santos defiantly announced that he planned to run for reelection in the 2024 cycle. This despite the fact that there was more to come.
It was next revealed that Santos had solicited campaign contributions from supporters who used their credit cards. Santos used those credit cards to charge their stated donations…and then kept the names, numbers and credit card information to make unauthorized charges for his personal needs from designer clothes (the man loves to look stylish) to lavish dinners at expensive restaurants to trips featuring first class travel and accommodations. The DOJ charged him with identity theft, money laundering and theft of public funds.
Still the GOP leadership did nothing. The newly elected Republican delegation had had enough and introduced a resolution to expel Santos from Congress. It’s a drastic step, especially when taken by members of one’s own party, that required a two thirds majority vote to succeed. Santos beat expulsion by a vote of 213 to 179. The majority of the members of the People’s House still wouldn’t get rid of this grifter.
Now, yet another shoe has dropped. The House Ethics Subcommittee has been conducting its own investigation and released a damning report today that contends that he used “a complex web of unlawful activity involving Santos’ campaign, personal and business finances. Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”
The report went on to say, “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. He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported ‘repayments’ of these fictitious loans.”
The ethics committee is referring its findings to the DOJ for possible new federal charges.
My question is, does the House finally expel this conman? Or does the GOP majority, that is currently hanging by a thread, believe that their own power is worth significantly more than the integrity of the lower house of the legislative branch of the United States government?
To my deep disgust, I fear the latter.