George Santos, Expelled GOP Congressman (NY-3)
Photo via BI Courtesy of AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
It may sound obvious that just the sixth Congressman to get expelled from Congress would get named but he had competition for this mock award of Republicans behaving badly: among others, Trump had a strong position to be a repeat winner, getting indicted on some 91 felony counts; Ken Paxton, Texas AG, got impeached by the GOP-controlled House; Congresswoman Lauren Boebert got tossed out of a Colorado theater on public decency grounds; and the Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler is facing a rape allegation.
The nature and extent of allegations against Santos defy summarization. They include but are not restricted to:
- "Federal prosecutors charge Santos with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives." 5/9/23
- "Santos is hit with 10 more federal charges for allegedly stealing campaign donors’ credit card information and making purchases on their cards." 10/10/23
- "Santos is accused of sexual harassment by a prospective staffer." 2/9/23
- "The Campaign Legal Center files a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of illegally using campaign cash to pay for personal expenses and submitting false information about campaign contributions." 1/9/23
- Several counts of lying to the public:
- "Santos files his personal financial disclosure report, claiming assets of $11 million, a massive increase in his net worth since 2020, when he reported just $5,000 in a bank account."
- "His grandparents fled the Holocaust and that he has Jewish ancestry"
- "Baruch College and New York University, which he also claimed a degree from, say they have no record of him attending. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs tell NBC New York he never worked at their companies. A Times review finds none of the 49 Pulse victims worked with Santos."
- "Santos speaks at then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.:“They did to me what they did to Donald J. Trump: They stole my election.”"
- "News outlets post immigration records showing that Santos’s mother was not in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, after he had claimed that she was in the World Trade Center that day. "
- "The House Ethics Committee report in November that found “substantial evidence” the freshman Republican violated campaign finance and government ethics laws, including using campaign funds on Botox and the pornography website OnlyFans."
