PHOTO CREDIT: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
The United State of America Congress on Friday voted to expel Rep. George Santos, New York's 3rd congressional district.
This move ends the New York Republican’s tumultuous tenure in Congress and officially etching his name in the history books as the sixth lawmaker ever to be ousted from the lower chamber.
The unprecedented move took three attempts over six months and required large numbers from both parties to meet the inflated threshold — two-thirds of the chamber — for expelling a sitting member.
The final vote count was 311-114-2, with 105 Republicans joining almost all Democrats to remove the scandal-plagued Santos after only 11 months in office.
Only Reps. Bobby Scott (Va.) and Nikema Williams (Ga.) voted against expelling Santos. Representatives Al Green (D-Texas) and Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) voted no.
The measure drew new attention to the Republican conference's simmering tensions, but its ultimate success demonstrated just how toxic Santos had become in the eyes of even many of his GOP colleagues.
Once seen as a GOP trailblazer, Santos is facing federal indictment on 23 counts of wire fraud, identity theft and other campaign finance charges, and many Republicans came to view him as a drag on the party’s image and a liability heading into a tough election cycle where control of the House is up for grabs.
Yet Santos’s ouster also creates immediate hassles for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team, whose razor-thin House majority just got a seat thinner heading into high-stakes battles to prevent a government shutdown and provide new funding for Ukraine and Israel — two topics that have created fierce rifts within the GOP conference.
Highlighting those internal divisions, 112 Republicans backed Santos on Friday despite the growing controversy swirling around him.
Those voices warned that removing an elected lawmaker from office — without a criminal conviction — sets a dangerous precedent that could lead to unwarranted, politically motivated expulsions in the future.
Johnson, just weeks into his Speakership, had sought to steer clear of that internal fight, freeing the members of his conference “to vote their conscience” on Santos’s fate.
But the new Speaker also made clear that he had “real reservations” with the effort to remove Santos before his criminal cases had run their course — a warning dismissed by the scores of Republicans who supported expulsion on Friday.