House Ethics Committee opens an inquiry into George Santos

The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday that it had opened a broad investigation into Rep. George Santos, the embattled Republican from New York under scrutiny for lies about his background and questions about his campaign finances.

The inquiry will cover several areas where Santos has been accused of misconduct in formal complaints — including one filed by two of his House colleagues.

The committee’s topranking Republican and Democratic members said in a statement that they would seek to determine whether Santos had failed to properly fill out his House financial disclosure forms, violated federal conflict of interest laws or engaged in other unlawful activity during his 2022 congressional campaign.

The committee will also examine an allegation of sexual misconduct from a prospective congressional aide who briefly worked in Santos’ office.

Santos said on Twitter that he was “fully cooperating” with the committee’s investigation and would not comment further.

The Ethics Committee is not known for aggressively pursuing inquiries. Critics often argue that the body moves too slowly and has few options to punish lawmakers for misdeeds. Although scores of representatives supported an inquiry into Santos, it took two months for the committee to start one.

The committee’s investigation nonetheless adds to the mounting legal and political pressure that Santos has faced in the wake of reporting by The New York Times that revealed he had fabricated much of his life story. Subsequent reporting showed serious irregularities in his campaign finances, including $365,000 in unexplained spending.

Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Santos committed any crimes involving his lies about his background, an animal-rescue charity he ran and his finances. The Federal Election Commission has been examining irregularities in his campaign fundraising and spending, and prosecutors in Brazil revived fraud charges against Santos tied to an incident in 2008 involving a stolen checkbook.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has for months pinned Santos’ fate in Congress on the Ethics Committee’s findings. But the timeline for the committee’s inquiry remains unclear, and it typically defers to law enforcement agencies when its investigations overlap with theirs, a practice that may impede the House investigation.

A poll conducted by Newsday and Siena College in January found that voters in Santos’ district overwhelmingly thought he should resign, including 71% of Republicans surveyed.