This Friday, the United States House of Representatives expelled controversial Republican legislator George Santos, who had built his political career on lies and alleged crimes, on the third attempt.
Santos was expelled with 311 votes in favor and 114 against, with many of his Republican colleagues joining the Democrats to achieve the necessary two-thirds that forced his departure from Congress.
As it became clear that the votes for his expulsion would be enough, Santos shook hands goodbye to his few allies and left the chamber before the final result was announced.
His position, representing a wealthy district on Long Island (New York), is now vacant pending elections.
Santos’s is the sixth expulsion of a legislator in the 230-year history of the US Congress, making it an exceptional measure that in Santos’ case is unprecedented.
The first three expulsions, in 1861, were to secessionists from the Confederation, while the other two, in 1981 and 2002, to congressmen convicted of corruption crimes.
Santos has not been convicted of any crime, but is charged with 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds – for illegally collecting $24,000 from the unemployment fund -, among others.
He is also accused by an internal report by the House Ethics Committee, controlled by his Republican colleagues, of having pocketed more than $200,000 of his campaign funds for personal purposes.
Among the expenses that Santos would have incurred with that money are purchases at Hermès, Ferragamo or Sephora, a subscription to the adult content page OnlyFans or various trips, as well as recurring payments to his credit cards.
But beyond his alleged crimes and ethical misconduct, what has really made Santos famous during the 11 months that he has been a congressman, have been the recurring scandals usually related to his lies.
Santos lied when he explained that his grandparents had fled the Holocaust, when he claimed that his mother had survived the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York or when he said he was Jewish.
Also in his resume, when he said that he had worked on Wall Street or that he had studied at New York University (NYU). He also had an open judicial process for fraud in Brazil, where he had lived and from where he fled without being held accountable.
All of this had led to two previous expulsion attempts, but Santos had survived both.
On Thursday, in his last hours as a congressman, the Lower House held the debate in which Santos faced, above all, his party colleagues who were going to allow his fall.
“You are a thief,” Republican Max Miller snapped at Santos, to which Santos responded: “My colleague wants to come here and call me a thief. The same colleague who has been accused of mistreating women. We all have a past.”
