Rep. George Santos’s announcement that he will not seek reelection is not good enough. Republicans need to expel Santos so that he can’t collect his congressional salary.
The investigative findings reveal a blatant level of criminal fraud and corruption:
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.
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.
Santos announced after the release of a 56-page ethics report detailing several crimes that he is accused of committing to win his seat, “It is a disgusting politicized smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of Justice should all be ashamed of themselves. I will however NOT be seeking re-election for a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time.”
Allowing Santos to stay in the House for another year plus and collect his congressional salary and benefits would be a crime against the taxpayers. Several members of the House wanted to wait until the Ethics Committee report was released before they would vote to expel Santos.
The Ethics Committee report is in, and it is even worse than imagined.
If Republicans allow Santos to stay in the House, they will be allowing a likely criminal to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds for a job that he should not hold.
House Republicans will be dooming themselves if they refuse to expel George Santos.
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