Congressional knives are out for their disgraced colleague, Rep. George Santos, following the publication of a damning report by the House Ethics Committee detailing the New York representative’s sordid escapades using campaign cash, which allegedly include subscriptions to online porn site OnlyFans.
Via NBC News (emphasis added):
House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., filed a resolution Friday morning to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress.
The resolution comes a day after the committee released a scathing report that concluded there is “substantial evidence” Santos “violated federal criminal laws,” including using campaign funds for personal purposes and filing false campaign reports.
“The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion,” Guest said in a statement Friday. “So, separate from the Committee process and my role as Chairman, I have filed an expulsion resolution.”
Santos is "not fit to serve as a Member of the United States House of Representatives" because of "his egregious violations," the resolution said.
The earliest a vote on the expulsion can be held would be the week after Thanksgiving. The House returns Nov. 28.
You mean to tell me there’s gambling in this establishment?
Shocking!
Don’t let the media lie to you (I know I’m preaching to the converted here): George Santos is by no means an outlier in Washington in terms of his congenital lying or psychopathy; they’re almost all congenital liars and psychopaths. It’s basically an essential job qualification for anyone who climbs the ladder that high in national politics. Having a soul is entirely counterproductive to establishing a nice career for yourself as a U.S. Congressman.
They almost all do insider trading. They almost all influence-peddle both in office and once they’re done with their “public service.” I use the qualifier “almost” merely because I hold out the possibility that there are principled exceptions to the rule. But I wouldn’t give any of them the benefit of the doubt. If it’s in Congress and its lips are moving, it’s probably lying for cash and clout.
Related: Congress Quietly Passes Pay Raise for Itself
The real reasons Santos is being removed from the club are several-fold:
- He is not a well-groomed product of the oligarchy that sends its children to elite boarding schools on the Atlantic seaboard and Ivy League universities after that.
- His corruption was largely of a small scale, in the service to himself, and petty in nature, rather than primarily in service to the donor class and grand in scale.
- He is embarrassing the ruling class with his low-stakes schemes and gimmicks and lifting the veil on the façade of respectability/legitimacy that it so desperately wants to retain as members of the august body of representatives or whatever.
If it were up to me, the United States criminal code would be revised to make corruption of public officials punishable by public hanging. Summary judgments and executions would be preferred for the sake of efficiency.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
-Thomas Jefferson
