George Santos is a liar. That much has been easily provable since before he became a congressman in January. Even then, it was clear that he was not and is not fit for office.
In a swamp full of half-truths, oversimplifications, omissions of convenience, misinformation and downright lies, Santos stands out for the breadth — and potential illegality — of his repeated falsehoods.
Santos, a Republican from New York, faces multiple charges related to campaign finance fraud. His former campaign treasurer has already pleaded guilty to multiple charges. He predictably has blamed her, and denied allegations of wrongdoing. But a recent bipartisan House Ethics Committee report is both extensive and damning in detailing Santos’ many alleged campaign transgressions.
“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit. He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit,” The House Ethics Committee’s investigative subcommittee found, as outlined in the recent report.
“He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign — and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported ‘repayments’ of those fictitious loans. He used his connections to high value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings. And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.”
The logical conclusion to this information, as lawmakers from within Santos’ own party are increasingly reaching, is that Santos should no longer be in Congress. He has indicated that he won’t resign, so it falls to his colleagues to consider a rarely-used tool at their disposal: expulsion. A vote to potentially expel Santos is expected on Thursday.
Only five members of Congress have been expelled before, either for association with the Confederacy or after a conviction. Convention requires significant pause when considering such a weighty decision like expulsion. But when someone like Santos has so clearly, so cynically, so repeatedly smashed convention (and, likely it seems, federal law) in the process, they shouldn’t get to cling to it when accountability comes knocking.
As we’ve said in the context of former President Donald Trump’s ongoing and multiple brushes with accountability, unprecedented actions require unprecedented scrutiny.
And speaking of Trump, let’s not forget how Santos’ adherence to another lie — Trump’s ongoing whopper about the 2020 election that he lost — helped propel him to office in the first place. While the totality of Santos’ individual lying has been on another level, it must not be overlooked that his party remains enthralled with a single collective lie about the 2020 election. More and more House Republicans encouragingly look willing to confront Santos’ lies, and the same should prove true about Trump and the 2020 election.
“Everybody who thinks that the election was stolen or talks about the election being stolen is lying to America,” Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado told CBS News recently. Following the release of the ethics committee report, Buck has also signaled support for expelling Santos from Congress if he doesn’t resign.
Perhaps Buck, who announced earlier this fall that he won’t be running again in 2024 and wouldn’t typically be confused for a moderate, feels unencumbered by electoral considerations. But we’d like to think that he and the other Republicans speaking up are just fed up with the lies, and the liars who tell them.
Beyond Santos, the sad truth is that lying has become central to the current Republican Party message, via its presidential frontrunner. That will continue to be true until Republican leaders and Republican voters finally free themselves from Trump’s repeatedly disproven lie of a stolen election.
