On Friday, December 1st, Congressman George Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives and received multiple charges. The House voted 311 to 114 on his expulsion, surpassing the required two-thirds majority after two previous attempts to vote on his expulsion. Along with his expulsion, he was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsification of records submitted to the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud. Santos was also previously charged with charged with an additional 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 U.S. House of Representatives in the original indictment.
Throughout his short term, Santos has had many lies come out. First, he allegedly used campaign funds on Botox, designer clothing, and adult media content. When asked if he was Jewish, he answered yes. When confronted, he said that he meant he was “Jew-ish,” because he is Catholic. He claimed that he went to NYU and Baruch, as well as that he had a volleyball scholarship for the second and was a “star player,” although both schools have no record of his attendance.
Santos has also used his family as a tool in his lies. He has previously said that his mother lost her life in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, despite actually passing away in 2016. Santos has also said that his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust, claiming that they were Jewish-Ukranian refugees that changed their name and fled to Brazil, when there is in fact no evidence of any Jewish or Ukranian heritage in his family.
Most recently, Santos has begun making himself a figure on social media, opening a Cameo account, an app which people can pay for video messages, and made over $50k over the first few days.
To get some insight on this situation, we talked to Brendan Metz (12.) Metz said that he has known about George Santos for a long time, even before this whole situation emerged. He stated, “It’s a very interesting situation, one I haven’t seen in politics, maybe ever.” Metz has extensive knowledge on this topic because he’s been following this story for over a year and has even done a project on Santos. Metz said the situation is unsurprising to him because people nowadays tend to either not do their research or they find false information. He said this whole thing demonstrates why people need to do their research before deciding who to vote for. Ultimately, Metz jokes “Apparently it’s illegal to girlboss now.”