Santos says he expects to be ousted
New York Republican lashes out at his colleagues with vote on expulsion coming.
NEW YORK — Rep. George Santos said he expects to be expelled from Congress following a scathing report by the House Ethics Committee that found substantial evidence of lawbreaking by the New York Republican.
In a defiant speech Friday sprinkled with taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional colleagues, Santos insisted he was “not going anywhere.” But he acknowledged that his time as a member of Congress, at least, may soon be coming to an end.
“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces.
“I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good,” he said.
The comments came one week after the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Mississippi Republican Michael Guest, introduced a resolution to expel Santos when members return from their Thanksgiving break.
Santos has already survived two expulsion votes, but many colleagues who formerly opposed ousting him say they’ve changed their minds since seeing the findings of the committee’s months-long investigation into a wide range of alleged misconduct by Santos.
The report says that Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, including purchases at luxury retailers and adult content websites, and that his campaign then filed false or incomplete reports.
“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” investigators wrote. They said that he did not cooperate with the investigation but repeatedly “evaded” straightforward requests for information.
On Friday, Santos said he did not want to address the specifics of the report, which he said were “slanderous” and “designed to force” him out of office.
Santos struck a contemplative tone at times during the three-hour livestream, tracing his trajectory from Republican “‘It’ girl” to “the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress.” And he lashed out at his congressional colleagues, accusing them of misconduct that he said was far worse than anything he’d done.
“They all act like they’re in ivory towers with white pointy hats and they’re untouchable,” he said. “Within the ranks of United States Congress, there’s felons galore; there’s people with all sorts of shystie backgrounds.”
His decision not to seek reelection, he said, was not due to external pressure, but to his frustration with the “sheer arrogance” of his colleagues.
“These people need to understand it’s done when I say it’s done, when I want it to be done — not when they want it to be done,” he added. “That’s kind of where we are there.”