No, expelling George Santos didn’t set a bad precedent

Shortly after the now-expelled George Santos took office, the media presented a mountain of evidence that he lied during his campaign about almost every aspect of his personal life. Santos claimed, falsely, that he had been a volleyball star, a graduate of Baruch College, an employee of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, that he was Jewish, and that he had lost family both in the Holocaust and on 9/11.

Republican campaign officials subsequently acknowledged that some of this information was circulating just after Santos locked down the GOP nomination in 2022. They did not pressure him to withdraw because it meant losing the seat, but were pretty sure something was “going to come out about this guy.”

Santos also faces a 23-count federal indictment for wire fraud, stealing federal funds, lying on disclosure forms, falsifying a $500,000 campaign donation and transferring money from donors’ credit cards to his personal bank account, which he spent on Botox treatments, Ferragamo shoes and pornography.

The 311-114 vote to expel Santos, well over the required two-thirds majority, included 105 Republicans. That said, the four GOP House Leaders — Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Minority Whip Tom Emmer and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik — voted against expelling Santos.

Because the five members of Congress who had previously been expelled had all either been convicted of federal crimes or supported the Confederacy, Johnson expressed concern about the precedent “that may be set,” and that an expulsion might violate “Republican values” and “the rule of law and due process.” Santos deserves to “have his day in court” first, Scalise declared.

Expelling Santos did not set a bad precedent. It was the best option for his constituents, the House of Representatives and the country. Instead of shifting responsibility from Congress to the courts, the requirements of a bipartisan Ethics Committee investigation and a two-thirds majority to convict make it so expulsions will be infrequent, timely and appropriate.

In defending the Ethics Committee recommendation, Chairman Michael Guest pointed out that the Constitution does not require conviction of a crime and gives the House and Senate “the ability to discipline its members.” Santos’s conduct, Guest emphasized, “is so egregious that members should consider expulsion. And that’s how I’ll be voting today.” Expulsion is “right and necessary,” said GOP Rep. Nick LaLota, “if we’re going to claim the mantle of being the party of accountability.”

Although he was one of a handful of House members who did not vote on the expulsion resolution on Dec. 1, Kevin McCarthy said much the same thing when he was Speaker. In January 2023, McCarthy indicated that if the Ethics Committee found that Santos had broken the law, “then we will remove him.” In May, McCarthy indicated he wanted Ethics, “a safe bipartisan committee,” to “move rapidly” to a “conclusion of what George Santos did and did not do.”

McCarthy, however, did not express concerns about precedent when he brought a censure resolution (which requires only a majority vote) against Rep. Adam Schiff to the floor in June. Or when the House censured Schiff on a party-line vote for allegedly using his positions as chair of the Intelligence Committee and manager of the first impeachment of Donald Trump to endanger national security by “undermining our duly elected president,” in the words of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The censure resolution, it’s worth noting, directed the Ethics Committee to investigate Schiff after the vote.

Nor did Johnson mention precedent when he announced that Republicans had “a duty” to open a formal impeachment inquiry against President Biden, even though the GOP’s handpicked witnesses at an Oversight Committee hearing testified that there was as yet no evidence that Biden had committed a crime.

Citing precedent, it seems reasonable to conclude, was the good reason for opposing the expulsion of Santos. Several House Republicans, however, have disclosed what appears to be the real reason. “Why would we want to expel a guy,” said Rep. Troy Nehls, when “we’ve got a three seat, four seat majority. What are we doing?” After mentioning precedent and due process, Rep. Matt Gaetz declared, “Let’s do the math here. Now that we’ve kicked out George Santos, we’ve got a three-seat majority.” With several members in ill health or thinking of retiring, the GOP might lose its majority before the 2024 elections. And so, getting rid of Santos was “tactically, freaking stupid.”

If the Santos spectacle teaches any lesson at all, then, it’s that in “the People’s House,” precedent all too often has been highjacked by cynical, hyperpartisan pols.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”