Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) says he is intending this week to compel a vote in the House on a proposal for the expulsion of Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.). Santos, already documented as a serial liar, was the subject of a recent report from the House Ethics Committee that accused him of misusing campaign funds on personal expenses and suggested members had uncovered conduct potentially outside the criminal charges he’s facing.
“Republicans have looked to Guest’s resolution as the primary expulsion measure, but Garcia said he believes his will be able to garner the necessary Republican support to pass,” Axios reported. The procedural mechanism allowing Garcia or any other member to force a vote is referred to as bringing forth a privileged resolution. As mentioned, there’s a separate, lingering proposal for Santos’ removal that originates with Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), the current Ethics Committee chairman who brought forward the initiative in his personal capacity rather than in tandem with that chairmanship.
Whichever resolution ends up with a vote first, a significant number of House members who previously rebuffed the idea have changed their tunes since the Ethics report, potentially dooming Santos. He has refused to resign, though polling has found a massive majority of New Yorkers want him to step down. He also refused until recently to step back from a dubious commitment to run for another term, though even if he’d actually moved forward, relevant polling strongly suggested he’d have lost by a significant margin.
Even local Republican Party leaders had long since been turning against him, a trend originating when the key questions around Santos roughly ended with just how extensively he’d misrepresented his personal and professional backgrounds. Now, he’s accused of even having misused credit card information from donors, making unauthorized charges. (Those allegations are, in fact, already in the federal case he’s facing.) His alleged offenses including lying to the House, money laundering, wire fraud, and lying to the Federal Election Commission.
