George Santos, we hardly knew ye.
After a turbulent 11 months in office, Santos was unceremoniously expelled from the House of Representatives Friday — a rare moment of overwhelming bipartisanship that reflected the gravity of the fraud allegations against the man elected in 2022 to represent the 3rd District covering northeast Queens and northern Nassau County.
From the start, Santos’ term was tainted by revelations in a New York Times exposé in December 2022 which found that he had extensively lied about his background on the campaign trail. The report alleged the Republican lied about almost everything — where he went to school, where he worked, his personal fortune, even his faith.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg. During his 11 months on Capitol Hill, Santos would be indicted not once, but twice on federal fraud charges after investigations found he had bilked thousands of dollars in campaign funds, and submitted fraudulent documents to both Congress and the national Republican Party regarding his personal fortune in order to receive more financial backing.
A House Ethics Committee only served to reinforce those federal indictments, which Santos slandered with the Trumpian vernacular as “witch hunt.”
And yet, over 11 months, Santos managed to outlast public shaming, calls for his resignation from even his Republican colleagues, two lengthy speaker votes and two failed expulsion votes before the House showed him the door.
The expulsion effort itself was extraordinary because it marked the first time a sitting House member had been ousted without previously being convicted of a felony, setting what some have deemed a concerning precedent.
But Santos’ occupancy of New York’s 3rd District seat was itself without precedent, given the magnitude of falsehoods that paved his way to Washington.
September 2022
Like many undoings of elected officials caught in scandal, the unraveling of George Santos began with a local newspaper article…
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