Congressman George Santos (R-NY) avoided being expelled from the House of Representatives Wednesday night after a Republican-led resolution to expel him from Congress failed to pass.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito on Thursday formally filed the expulsion resolution as privileged — which forced the House to move quickly on Santos’ possible removal. D’Esposito was joined by Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams.
The resolution needed a two-thirds majority to succeed, but fell well short. The final vote was 179 to 213 with 19 members voting present.
Santos issued the following statement to House members before the vote:
“The loss of the presumption of innocence establishes a dangerous precedent that threatens the very foundation of our legal system, and we risk losing the trust that the American people placed in us by passing judgement without due process,” Santos said. “If we work together, we can protect the integrity of our system and the rights of all citizens.”
Tonight was a victory for due process not me.
This was never about me, and I’ll never let it become about me.
We all have rights under this great Constitutional Republic and I’ll fight for our right to uphold them till my last dying breath. pic.twitter.com/dLyNDEsmuQ— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) November 2, 2023
The resolution came not long after Santos was indicted on more Federal charges related to fraud and lying to the Federal Election Commission.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) received ten additional indictments from a Federal Court in Central Islip, New York, Tuesday for several violations, including wire fraud, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, and charging donors’ credit cards without permission.
The charges add new criminal exposure for the embattled lawmaker, who began his first term in January after admitting to embellishing parts of his background while campaigning. Santos is due to appear in court Oct. 27. The additional indictment comes days after Santos’s former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to conspiring with the then-candidate to carry out a scheme prosecutors are dubbing the “Party Program,” in which the duo committed fraud on Santos’s campaign finance reports.
The scheme was meant to ensure that Santos and his campaign qualified for a “national party committee” program that would provide financial and logistical support to Santos’s bid for Congress, prosecutors said. To qualify, the New York Republican had to show his campaign raised at least $250,000 from third-party contributors in a single quarter.
Ironically, it was several House Democrats who voted to keep Santos there. It was the Democrats, after all, who introduced their own resolution to expel him from Congress back in May after his first set of indictments were handed down. Though Santos remains in the House, he is still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and has said that he intends to cooperate fully with their investigation.
