On the campaign trail, Representative-elect George Santos, a Republican who would later win a traditionally Democratic seat in New York, misled voters about his work and educational background, his family’s ancestry, his former philanthropic activities and his Business.
The litany of inventions has raised questions about whether Santos, who was elected last month to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, will be allowed to take office next week when Congress installs the new legislature, or will be expelled as soon as he was sworn in.
But House Republican leaders, who have so far remained silent amid persistent questions about their colleague, are unlikely to punish him in any meaningful way. Even if they managed to expel him from Congress, that would require a special election for an undecided seat, setting up a possible blow to the party’s already precarious majority.
And Santos has promised to vote Kevin McCarthy of California for Speaker of the House next week as the party leader faces a right-wing rebellion and needs all the votes he can get.
Understand below what options are on the table to deal with Santos’ lies and omissions.
Can the Chamber refuse to accept it? The US Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that a person who met the constitutional requirements for office in the House of Representatives could not be refused his seat once elected.
In that case, known as Powell v McCormack, the court suggested that an admissible remedy for the House, should it attempt to exclude one of its duly elected members, be a vote to expel the legislator once he takes office.
House leaders could, in theory, band together to try to challenge that precedent and force Santos to challenge the change in court. But Republicans don’t have an appetite for that.
Can he be expelled? Theoretically, yes. In practice, probably not. Article 1 of section 5 of the Constitution states that “each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member”.
While the Constitution gives the House broad authority to expel one of its own, there has long been an internal debate over whether lawmakers can be expelled for behavior before taking office.
Some Republicans, for example, have argued that Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia should not have been stripped of her committees for her social media posts before she was elected. In publications, she supported the execution of leading Democrats, suggested that several school shootings were secretly committed by government agents, and repeatedly published anti-Semitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
But House Republican leaders are unlikely to want to oust Santos. Only 20 members of Congress have been expelled — five from the House and 15 from the Senate — according to the Congressional Research Service.
Seventeen of these expulsions were related to disloyalty to the US at the time of the Civil War, occurring only after the secession of the Confederate states. The others — including the most recent case, the 2002 expulsion of Democratic Representative James Traficant of Ohio — came after the representatives were convicted of public corruption charges.
Could Santos be removed from office in some other way? He may choose to resign if he faces pressure from the party leadership to do so, or if he is subjected to an ethics investigation and no longer wants to bear the costs of legal representation and the stress that accompany such proceedings.
There is no mechanism for voters to remove a member of the House of Representatives.
What punishments could the Chamber apply? The Ethics Committee, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers who have historically avoided punishing their colleagues, has not commented on Santos’ case and is in a state of limbo until a new Congress is installed on Tuesday. Their investigations often drag on for months or even years and rarely result in significant punishments.
If the Republican leadership of the House wants to apply some kind of punishment, it can censure him – a mostly symbolic gesture, which requires a simple majority of votes and is sometimes accompanied by a fine. When a legislator is censured, he must stand on the floor and hear a rebuke read.
Republican leaders can also choose not to put Santos on any committee or relegate him to lesser collegiate bodies.
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