Should George Santos be expelled from the House?

Yes! The biggest fake ever! Stealing takes it to another level of unacceptable.
He says innocent until proven guilty but he doesn’t have to be convicted in order to be expelled.
Statistics show his supporters are about 7% right now.
This is even less than 10% of people believe the Earth is Flat and 12% of people believe we never landed on the moon.
So Long, Farewell

If the republicans didn’t have such a meager majority in the House, Santos would have been long gone. They’re keeping him around for political reasons, even though he is a criminal. That’s what the supposed law-and-order party does these days.

He should have been gone 6 months ago. Depraved republicans.

Yes! How the people in his district voted him in is beyond me!

Yup to the max!

I think so because even though he wasn’t convicted of a bunch of the accusations, he has admitted to them (for example, he admits to the lies told in his campaign like that he’s Jewish, mother died in 9/11, etc.) and he was convicted of crimes in Brazil.

Johnson (Speaker of the House) planted a seed of doubt the other day by saying it sets a dangerous precedent although he did say he’d leave it up to the people who have the vote, but I hope they get the ⅔ majority required to expel him. It’s funny GS says he doesn’t care but yet he was pleading his case in a press conference yesterday, about the dangerous precedent.

I also don’t envision him doing much politically for his people since he has stated he won’t run again and he’s like a Black Sheep in Congress now. Also at least half of the residents of his district hate him because of his outright lies. He is definitely into the drama though and probably loves the attention. It would be great to hear what a therapist diagnoses him with.

It’s amazing that nobody vetted him when he was running, to verify his story (his alma mater, past employment, did his mother really die in 9/11, what was her name, is she on the list of deceased, etc.).

@chyna Those in his district probably didn’t vote “for” him as much a they voted “against” the Dem running against him!!! Plus…he ran on 45’s coattails pretending to be just like him & that appealed to some. The left is using him because he’s an excellent distraction when needed!!!

Although I agree that expulsion is a dangerous precedent to set; personally, I think he should be the very first human to inhabit Mars!!! Even though he says he won’t be running again, I see that as another of his lies. When the time comes, he’ll simply say…oops, I changed my mind because my district needs me.

The vote is taking place at 10:30 this morning. For some reason, I am guessing he will not be voted out. It’s just a hunch. I wish he would be voted out but we’ll see.

@jca2 If you are able to watch and let us know when it happens, I would appreciate it. I’m at work or I’d be glued to the TV!

On the news, they said they’ll be talking about it at 11. I’ll definitely have it on! Will let you know. Fingers crossed hahahaha.

OMG the news says it appears t hey got the votes to expel him! WOW! WOW! Get the F OUT! hahaha

They got 311 votes. They needed 280 something for the majority.

@jca2 Thanks for keeping us apprised!

Yayyy! Happy dance!
Thanks @jca2!

They said it’s only the 6th time in history that a member was expelled, and I believe I heard correctlly that it’s only the 1st time since the Civil War.

These are the 6 who were expelled. Three were for fighting for the Confederacy in 1861. The other 3 occurred since 1980…

John B. Clark 1861 Fighting for the Confederacy
John W. Reid 1861 Fighting for the Confederacy
Henry C. Burnett 1861 Fighting for the Confederacy
Michael J. Myers 1980 Convicted of bribery
James A. Traficant 2002 Convicted of several crimes, including bribery
George Santos 2023 Alleged misuse of campaign funds

I still can’t believe that it actually happened but I’m smiling at this point. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at his house today!!! He threatened to “tell all” if he was expelled. Wondering where we go from here???

He did burn some bridges the other day by saying that they show up drunk and things like that, but apparently they’re not worried about his bad gossip. He has no integrity anyway, so they probably feel like who is going to believe anything that comes out of his mouth?

^True

I do find it interesting that 2 democrats voted against it.

Who were they, @chyna? I haven’t looked at any sites about it, just listening to the TV and I’m getting ready to go out so am distracted.

Bobby Scott from VA and Nike’s Williams from GA.

Hurrah!!!! He’s out!

Let’s see if he ever gets a job again. Perhaps cleaning toilets for Trump?

It isn’t setting a president. He’s the 6th law maker to get booted.

And take your little crew neck sweaters with you, Georgie!

@Dutchess_III , It is a precedent, because in the other cases, the people were previously convicted. I really think it will not make much of a difference. Getting two thirds of the vote is not easy to come by. The evidence needs to be pretty solid.

O I C

@Dutchess_III We talked about the fact that he’s the 6th (above).

Sry. Didn’t read ALL the comments.

They changed the locks and removed the plaque from his office right away.

With a record like that you would be fired from McDonald’s criminal trial or no criminal trial.

Well he got expelled whether he should have or not. I, personally, am not upset that he got canned. BUT the argument is right. It does set an ugly precedent. He wasn’t convicted of anything. Effectively he was tossed out because of accusations. So let’s say the Repubs take the House next year. And let’s say they have a substantial majority. Could they make accusations against the most annoying Democrats and just bring forth the motion to expel them? If no actual trial or conviction is needed what is to stop that?

^He said, outright in an interview with Piers Morgan, that he lied on his resume. So beyond all else, that would have been enough to get me fired from any job I have ever had.
How would you like your heart surgeon to have lied on his resume? How would you like to find out the only surgery he has done was skin tag removal?
Beyond all else he has done, lying on his resume should have gotten him fired.

@seawulf575 , It requires a two thirds vote to expel someone. The Republlicans already have control of the House, and nearly half of them voted for expulsion. A committe had been formed and presented the evidence. Why would a jury be able to make a more informed decision?

@chyna I was thinking the same thing yesterday, that in the local government job that I had, if you were found to have lied like that in order to get hired, you would have been fired, no questions asked, your password has been disabled, don’t come in Monday.

I was listening to a radio show yesterday and they were talking about how some say it might mean that others are up to be voted out. John Fetterman (D, PA) suggested Bob Menendez (D NJ) should be next. I think Menendez should resign but he insists he’s not guilty. Still, I would be fine if Menendez were voted out.

Not sure why there’s a crossout in my post above.

Don’t forget in addition to the lies Santos told here, he admitted to theft in Brazil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65566074

@LostInParadise I get it. But let’s say he goes to trial now and is found not guilty. Basically he was accused and found guilty without even having a trial. So the punishment may not have been warranted.

As I said, Santos is pretty much slime anyway so in this case I don’t have much problem. But what they just did is to punish him without the trial taking place. And again, it sets the precedent that accusations and a good campaign against someone and you can punish them for false accusations. My comment is not about this case, it is about what has been set for the future. Our government is pretty dysfunctional anyway. Creating more ways to be even worse is not always in our best interest.

Santos is up on 23 count indictment ! ! !

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/10/george-santos-indictment-congress-00120830

What a scum.

@seawulf575 , If Santos is found innocent in a court trial, I would assume that the jury was rigged. Far more likely than having two thirds of the House expelling him without good reason.

“Good campaign” Wulfie? LOL. To quote SNL. “They are so unfair to me because they repoort everything I do and everything I say.”
He dug his own hole in full view of the public.

Santos out and out lied in order to get elected, big lies, which the people in his District said that they would not have voted for him had they known the truth. As I said on another post, if I got hired for my civil service job in local government by lying about my alma mater, I would have been shown the door as soon as they found out. Those lies, there’s no disputing. There’s no disputing that his mother did not die in 9/11, there’s no disputing that he did not go to such and such a college, etc. He told people he was Jewish, and then laughed about it when he was caught and said that he meant “Jew-ish.” The fact that, when these lies came to light, he made jokes about it and acted flippantly did not help his case. If he was contrite, it might have helped him somewhat, but he made a mockery out of the whole thing, blowing kisses to the press and all that. He fucked himself.

@LostInParadise and @Dutchess_III I think you two are missing a key point I am making. The first point is that Santos is indeed scum and I have no problem with him going out.

The second point is that the process that just occurred could (and probably will) be abused in the near future. I already saw other politicians are suggesting other politicians that should be expelled.

Do you have any idea of what it takes to get two thirds of the House to agree on anything? And the evidence is publicly available. Newspapers have been reporting on Santos’ criminal behavior for quite some time. If that evidence was not available, the public would never support an expulsion.

71 % not 66.6% (⅔rd) ! !

Oh his revenge against the GOP may make the House controlled by the Democrats . . . .

@seawulf575 I actually agree with you that this will be an abuse in the future. MTG and others are calling for the removal of other members just because.

Hopefully, if they try to abuse it, the constituents will speak out. In the case of Santos, he lost support in his district because he duped the voters.

I’ve got mixed feelings. I think the argument about the jury DOES hold alot of weight actually. The reason a jury is more qualified to judge than congress is that the jury is likely to be less politicized, the evidence they are reviewing has been vetted and deemed admissible in court, and it’s a very clear bright line standard that is less susceptible to abuse.

One congressman made the very valid point of asking why if Santos can be expelled before a conviction, is Menendez still in congress when what Menendez is accused of is FAR worse.

On the other hand…I think there is something to be said for the appearance of impropriety. We should hold our elected officials to the highest standards, not the lowest. The fact that there are still people on either side insisting that Trump or Hillary aren’t criminals shows how low our standards are with politicians. I’d like to raise that bar.

So I’m conflicted.

@chyna And Fetterman has started calling for the expulsion of Menendez. Again, it isn’t that Menendez is not a crooked idiot, but it is already starting to rear its ugly head. Political games are not limited to one party or the other. It is the nature of the beast.

@Entropy What it will take is a non-partisan media, something that hasn’t existed in this country for a long time. Woodward and Bernstein did the research and blew the lid off of Nixon’s games. Nixon was actually very popular, but they heard of a story and did the investigation. That doesn’t happen today. Look at all the stuff surrounding Biden these days. Yet the media refuses to investigate or accurately report any of it.

Until the media has their feet held to the fire we will continue spiraling into the sewer.

Violation of Congressional ethics does not depend on criminal convictions.

@janbb No, but neither does it mean expulsion. It could have been censure instead. Expulsion is a really hard reaction to an ethics violation.

“An ethics violation” doesn’t quite describe it, @seawulf575. It’s “multiple ethics violations.”

23 indictments !

23 ethics violations is not censure territory! More to come

@jca2 and @Tropical_Willie, I was responding to @janbb‘s statement of Congressional ethics violations. But to play devil’s advocate for a moment, and to keep in line with my original statement, how many ethics violations are too many? Where does it move from censure to expulsion? I need a number. And what is that number based on?

My point is that there are accusations out there. No jury of the peers has taken place in a courtroom for all the slime he likely committed. Taking the action of expulsion instead of censure is a political statement. Because of that, we need to establish the parameters of punishment lest it get out of control (as it already is) and start to be used as a weapon to get rid of your political adversaries. We just saw Rashida Tlaib get censured for ethics violations. Nothing she said was illegal, but because of her position she was effectively inciting violence and using her position to do so. Yes she has freedom of speech but it comes with responsibility always.

So where is the boundary between censuring (which is usually done for ethics violations) and expulsion (which apparently can be done for ethics violations as well? Provide a number. Anything short and it is open to be a political weapon (even though it is already).

I did a quick search for the list of congressional ethics. There is an entry that addresses this.

“10. (a) A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner who has been convicted by a court of record for the commission of a crime for which a sentence of two or more years’ imprisonment may be imposed should refrain from participation in the business of each committee of which such individual is a member, and a Member should refrain from voting on any question at a meeting of the House or of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, unless or until judicial or executive proceedings result in reinstatement of the presumption of the innocence of such Member or until the Member is reelected to the House after the date of such conviction.

(b) A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner who has been indicted for or otherwise formally charged with criminal conduct in any Federal, State, or local court punishable as a felony for which a sentence of two or more years’ imprisonment may be imposed should resign from any standing, select, joint or ad hoc committee, and any subcommittee thereof, on which such Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner serves, and should step aside from any party caucus or conference leadership position such Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner holds, unless or until judicial or executive proceedings result in acquittal or the charges are dismissed or reduced to less than a felony as described in this paragraph.”

By using the ethic claim to expel him, congress violated their own Ethics guidelines. There is a guideline for expelling, censuring, reprimanding, and fining members of congress for their behavior. But again, this article is rife with recommendations for caution when invoking these actions. The last person to face expulsion was on trial for bribery but the trial ended with a hung jury. The expulsion was put to the House before the second trial but it did not pass.

One thing I found in the expulsion guidelines that interested me is that the rules changed in the past from waiting for a person to be convicted to merely bringing charges up to the Ethics Committee to let them make the decision. THAT is what makes me leery of taking this action. The rules change. It could be that one party decides to get rid of political opponents and makes accusations. They send those accusations to the Ethics committee who, at that time, might have a majority of their same party in power. Voila! action without a trial.

Another thing I found interesting and really annoying (in the Santos case) is that he doesn’t really lose anything. Yes, he is out of a job but is still eligible for all his benefits. He can even run again for office and, if elected, the House cannot withhold anything from him. So right now he is still eligible for healthcare, retirement benefits, etc which we taxpayers have to foot the bill for AND he could snow the people of NY again to get re-elected.

@seawulf575 I looked at the NY Times article “What’s Next for George Santos” and it said this about his benefits (cut and pasted):

Financial records unearthed by investigators show that Mr. Santos’s $174,000 annual House salary was one of the most stable income streams he’d ever had. No longer.

After his expulsion, Mr. Santos will stop collecting congressional pay and medical benefits, which could add to his financial woes.

He will also lose access to a federal pension. According to Congress’s research arm, lawmakers have to accrue five years of federal service before they qualify for the annual retirement benefit.

@jca2 I merely cited the actual rules. I understand it can change. Welcome to my side of the argument.

^^. Have you ever thought of saying, “I’m sorry. I must have been wrong about that”?

@janbb I’m giving opinions. No…I’ve never considered apologizing for my opinions. And while some of you consider the NYT to be more accurate than the actual source documents, I don’t. Maybe @jca2 should apologize for not actually addressing how many ethics violations would lead to an expulsion? Or how about you apologizing for daring to bring up ethics violation? After all isn’t that what @jca2 tried hitting me about?