The Blood Feud Between New York Republicans, George Santos

George Santos speaks to reporters outside the Capitol before the House voted on whether to expel him, a resolution introduced by five fellow New York Republicans.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

George Santos officially has more friends in Washington than in New York.

A majority of the House voted against a resolution to expel him on Wednesday by a vote of 213 to 179, giving him an extension on his political life as he faces a 23-count federal indictment. But those pushing the resolution were Republicans who represented the districts closest to him and those who have known him the longest. Leading the charge was Anthony D’Esposito, a fellow first-term Republican from Nassau County who sponsored the resolution, which was co-sponsored by four other newly elected Republicans from the state.

Even before he was exposed as a serial liar, he was not popular among his Republican neighbors. One plugged-in New York Republican described him as petulant, gossipy, and condescending. So once he was exposed as a fraud, the knives came out: All of his fellow downstate Republicans almost immediately called on Santos to resign from Congress. They finally felt compelled to force a vote on his expulsion last month after his former campaign treasurer pled guilty to criminal fraud connected to her work on Santos’s campaign, which followed Santos’s own indictment for fraud last spring. Her guilty plea led to federal prosecutors filing a superseding indictment against Santos, hitting him with additional fraud and identity theft charges. (He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.)

“Everybody understands the embarrassment of his conduct, the absurdity of having a member who basically lied about every aspect of his story to get to Congress,” his colleague Mike Lawler said in an interview, adding that he hasn’t heard any fellow Republican “making the case for George Santos to remain a member of Congress.”

When the debate began on Wednesday, D’Esposito, Lawler, and Nick LaLota took turns using Santos like a speed bag. LaLota used perhaps the ultimate insult, comparing Santos to President Joe Biden, whom Republicans have scorned for his history of exaggerations. “He has shown no interest in being a serious member of this chamber,” said LaLota as he defended the creation of a new precedent that “if a candidate for Congress makes his entire life up … we in the House of Representatives will exercise the authority given to us in the Constitution to expel him.”

Afterward, Santos finally stood up to defend himself. Wearing a suit jacket, slacks, and a bright-red sweater, Santos insisted that his colleagues were trying to act as “judge, jury, and executioner.” As he spoke, the New Yorkers chatted among themselves with Lawler visibly smirking at times. No one spoke in his defense — Santos told reporters he didn’t ask any of his colleagues to rally behind him. The closest Santos got to any sort of support was from New York Democrat Daniel Goldman, who called for Santos’s expulsion while also criticizing those Republicans pushing for it now as doing so belatedly and for political reasons.

Though no one supported Santos, the resolution failed because of concerns about setting a precedent that members could be expelled over criminal charges they have not been convicted of. Then there was the political math of losing Santos and therefore one of four Republican seats that form the party’s barely functioning majority — shown most recently by the coup against Kevin McCarthy, which left the House without a Speaker for over three weeks.

In a letter sent to fellow Republicans, the sponsors of the resolution tried to address these concerns by noting first that there is no constitutional requirement for Santos to be convicted from Congress before his expulsion and saying of the lies about his biography that “this issue is not a political question but a moral one. Plain and simple — this is a question of right and wrong.”

Yet, they didn’t convince a number of Democrats who shared real concerns over the process. Mark Takano, a California progressive who voted to keep Santos in office, told reporters after, “This is about trying to preserve the institution; we’ve been fraying at the edges … at some point, we’ve got to preserve due process.” Takano said he had been unsure whether he would vote against expulsion or simply vote present when he walked into the House chamber, but then he saw that 14 Democrats had already voted to keep Santos in Congress. In particular, he cited Jamie Raskin’s vote against expulsion as “a north star” for him. Takano did make clear that he didn’t think Santos was innocent. “No, I believe he’s probably guilty of this stuff,” he said.

In the final tally, 31 Democrats voted against expelling Santos while 24 Republicans voted in favor of making him the sixth representative in American history to be ousted from the chamber.

Immediately after the vote, Santos said he felt vindicated. However, he took pains to note, “I’m not claiming a victory. I’m just saying that this is a victory for due process. Due process won today, not George Santos.” He also went on to say twice — the second time so that it could be better captured by the television cameras surrounding him — that he would support “a wet rag” over LaLota in the next election because he “is not fit to be in office, and he knows what I’m talking about.”

This is by no means the end of the process for Santos. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the House Ethics Committee said that its investigation of Santos was still ongoing in what could only be read as an attempt to urge caution on Wednesday’s expulsion vote. The statement noted that investigators had spoken to 40 witnesses, issued 37 subpoenas, and “put countless hours into this investigation, which has been a priority for the investigative team and involved a significant amount of the Committee’s resources.” The committee said it will “announce its next course of action” by November 17.

LaLota has already said that another resolution of expulsion will be introduced after the Ethics Committee moves forward, which should ease the procedural concerns of those who voted to keep Santos around this time. And, of course, even if it falls short of the constitutionally required two-thirds majority, they will still have another year to try before Santos’s term in office ends.