Santos said he won’t run for re-election after panel finds likely crimes — but he may get expelled first.
House investigators found “substantial evidence” that Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., knowingly violated a number of ethics and criminal laws, a House Ethics Committee report released Thursday said, according to The .
“Representative Santos’ conduct warrants public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House,” Reps. Michael Guest, R-Miss., and Susan Wild, D-Pa., the committee’s chairman and senior Democrat, said in a joint statement.
The report recommended that the allegations against Santos be referred to the Department of Justice but did not call for his expulsion from the House or another form of discipline. Guest told reporters Wednesday that it would have taken the panel several more months to recommend punishment for the New York congressman. Instead, he said, the report would be released publicly to allow legislators to read it and “take whatever action that they felt necessary.”
In order to reach its conclusion, investigators compiled more than 170,000 pages of documents and testimony from dozens of witnesses, including financial statements, the committee said in the report. After a month-long investigation into the Republican representative, the report concluded that Santos “knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; engaged in fraudulent conduct in connection with RedStone Strategies LLC; and engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House,” Guest and Wild said.
Santos released a lengthy statement in response to the report on X/Twitter Thursday.
“If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the ‘Ethics committee’, they would have not released this biased report,” he began. “The Committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (My legal bills suggest otherwise).”
He went on to dub the report a “disgusting politicized smear” and declared that all the participating investigators should be “ashamed” of themselves. Santos also called for an Article V Constitutional Convention, which would convene legislators to propose amendments to the Constitution, pointing to a slew of hot-ticket Republican topics, including the nation’s debt, the government’s potential to shut down, the southern border and the unsubstantiated claims of the Biden family’s improper business dealings.
“I will remain steadfast in fighting for my rights and for defending my name in the face of adversity,” Santos continued.
