The House of Representatives on Wednesday is set to vote on whether to refer a Democratic-led motion to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress to the Ethics Committee.
House Democrats are urging their Republican colleagues to vote to expel Santos rather than voting on the Ethics referral, calling such a move a “cop-out.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy R-Calif. has indicated that is the course of action he would prefer to take, and the chamber is expected to vote on whether or not to refer the freshman congressman to ethics sometime Wednesday afternoon.
But Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia D-Calif. and Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., on Wednesday held a press conference to urge their colleagues on the other side of the aisle to move to expel Santos. The Ethics panel has been probing Santos since March.
“This is already in the Ethics Committee,” insisted Garcia Wednesday morning at a press conference at the Capitol. “We want an actual vote on the expulsion.”
Garcia, who co-sponsored the resolution with Reps. Goldman, Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., Becca Balint, D-Vt., and Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., placed a “privileged resolution” on the floor Tuesday to circumvent the Republican majority in the House to force a vote within the next two days. Republicans could try to block the measure by voting to send it to the Ethics panel or to “table” the resolution, meaning no action would take place.
Garcia introduced the measure on Tuesday after Santos was arrested and charged in federal court last week with money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress. Santos pleaded not guilty to all charges and pledged to “fight the witch hunt.”
“The Ethics Committee should not be a graveyard where accountability goes to die,” Torres railed Wednesday. “The United States Constitution confers on both chambers of Congress the authority to expel members for misconduct and our enforcement of our own ethical standards need not be contingent on the outcome of a criminal investigation.”
Goldman specifically addressed reports that the Ethics Committee was waiting for criminal charges to be filed before moving forward with its investigation. As a former prosecutor, Goldman said it’s likely that the Department of Justice will step in and ask the ethics committee to pause their investigation in order to allow the criminal investigation to play out.
“Prosecutors are going to ask the Ethics Committee to pause and let their prosecution go first,” Goldman said. “That’s what I did for 10 years, that is the nature of how these things work. And traditionally, the Ethics Committee will defer to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution and Kevin McCarthy knows that this is a complete fiction, to send it to the Ethics Committee, and that it is a cop-out, and that at the end of the day, it is a way of avoiding the accountability on this expulsion motion.”
“To be clear, the criminal process should play out. No one is saying that George Santos stands here convicted of his crimes, but that is not the measure of whether or not he should be a member of Congress,” he added.
Spectrum News’ Joseph Konig contributed to this report.
