Freshman representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) said again on the House floor Tuesday that he will not resign from Congress amid renewed calls for his expulsion, even after a mid-November bipartisan Ethics Committee report found “substantial evidence” of the indicted congressman’s alleged criminal wrongdoing. The House will vote on an expulsion resolution on Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.
“I ask that all my colleagues in the House consider and understand what this means for the future,” said Santos, who announced this month that he won’t seek a second term in 2024. “And to set the record straight and put this in the record: I will not be resigning.”
Santos has pleaded not guilty to a superseding 23-count indictment charging him with an array of felonies including false statements, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Not even fresh allegations from the Ethics Committee that Santos spent campaign funds on Botox treatment, Sephora, and the pornographic site OnlyFans have led the disgraced lawmaker to preempt Friday’s scheduled expulsion vote with a voluntary resignation announcement.
Many House Republicans are optimistic that this month’s Ethics Report will sway many prior GOP no-votes to support his ouster, though multiple expulsion votes have already failed this year, and House GOP leadership is not whipping members to support the ouster resolution. Expulsion votes require a two-thirds threshold to pass the House.
“We’re going to allow people to vote their conscience,” Johnson told reporters this week.
Empire State Republicans — including many GOP members of Santos’s own freshman class — are counting down the days until he’s gone. As New York Republican Party chairman Ed Cox put it in an interview with National Review earlier this month: “He’s history.”