What Might Keep George Santos from Serving His Term in the House?

WaPo has a solid rundown of the state of the Santos story after last night’s interview in The New York Post and another live interview Santos did last night. I want to give you a quick assessment of where this story likely goes next, what matters and what does not. On the endless list of fabrications in Santos’s resume and biography, his response has essentially been “LOL, whatever.” Yeah, I lied. Sorry. But who cares?

Narrowly speaking, he’s right. There’s no law that says you have to be honest with voters about your background or almost anything else. There’s no federal recall. The recourse to this behavior is either at the ballot box in two years or in the hands of his colleagues in the House who could expel him from the body. But expulsion is extremely rare. Only five members of the House have ever been expelled and three of those were tied to secession in 1861. In essence, it’s happened twice in U.S. history. It’s slightly more common for the House to refuse to seat a new member.

Absent getting shamed out of office for being an inveterate liar and weasel, the issue will come down to potential criminal conduct. So let’s run down the most likely points of vulnerability on that front.