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The Great Prevaricator spent his last days in the House of Representatives in much the same way he spent the previous 11 months of his brief and inglorious congressional career. George Santos was living his best life.

There were more than 100 journalists waiting for the New York Republican when he emerged from a black Jaguar in the House driveway early Thursday morning, driven there by a staffer who also happens to be a former drug dealer. Photographers swarmed Santos from the moment he stepped from the vehicle until he rested his Ferragamo-clad foot on the lectern in front of the TV cameras.

He wore studio makeup on his face — perhaps from his shopping spree at Sephora, which he billed to his campaign. NBC’s Kate Santaliz asked whether the Ferragamos had been paid for by campaign donors.

Santos looked at his loafers. “These are six years old!” he protested.

The 35-year-old fabulist was  about to be expelled from Congress, after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/30/nyregion/george-santos-house-ethics-report.html" target=_blank>a scathing Ethics Committee report</a> found that he had swindled donors and used their funds for Botox, pornography, trips to the Hamptons and Atlantic City, and fashion shopping at Hermès. He might well wind up in prison after his trial <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/congressman-george-santos-charged-conspiracy-wire-fraud-false-statements-0" target=_blank>on 23 federal charges</a> of campaign-finance violations, identity theft, fraud and more.

But in his final hours, he was going to do what he had always done since becoming a household name for lying about his education, his employment, his family, his religion, his charity work and virtually everything else about his life story. He was going to create more mayhem.

“Today at noon, I’m going to be introducing a privileged motion for expulsion of convicted and guilty-pleaded Congressman Jamaal Bowman,” he announced, referring to the New York Democrat who pulled a fire alarm in a House building during a September vote.

Santos alleged that “many members of Congress have rap sheets” (he didn’t name them) and said “I will be filing a slew of complaints in the coming hours of today and tomorrow” with the Ethics Committee against his soon-to-be-former colleagues.

And he bashed the institution that was about to oust him. “It represents chaos — chaos — because we have a House that doesn’t work for the people,” he said, vowing to “take that story back to the American people” of a place where “no real work is getting done.”

But for himself, Santos saw boundless possibilities. Asked about his plans for after his expected expulsion on Friday, the former Brazilian drag queen who faked his way to national fame proclaimed: “The future is endless. … You can do whatever you want next. And I’m just going to do whatever I want.”

As long as he can do it from a prison cell.

It was a bravura performance by the man who had become the embodiment of this year’s unparalleled dysfunction in the House. During his ludicrous tenure, he was lawless, dishonest, vindictive, attention-grabbing, ignorant, goofy and ineffective. So was the House — and this week was yet another entry in the annals of maladministration.

Elizabeth Frantz

Santos’s expulsion resolution shared the House calendar on Thursday with another attempt by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to force an immediate vote to impeach President Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. Greene relented after House leaders assured her they would move expeditiously to impeach Mayorkas, the first such action against a Cabinet officer in nearly 150 years.

Also Thursday, five right-wing House Republicans, joined by a token Democrat, held an event to complain about the “deep state” concealing the truth about UFOs. Meanwhile, the Republican-created committee probing the “weaponization” of government, out of ideas, held a rerun of an earlier hearing it had, with the same witnesses.

The day before, House Republicans rolled out plans for a House vote on a formal <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">impeachment inquiry</a> into Biden, even though their year-long probe has failed to produce evidence of any wrongdoing.

Also Wednesday, right wingers lashed out at their new speaker, Mike Johnson (La.), who has been on the job only for a month after many of the same right wingers ousted his predecessor. Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/29/speaker-johnson-singed-by-a-blast-of-conservative-fury-00129180" target=_blank>called Johnson a “joke”</a> who “did a 180 on everything he believed in,” telling Politico’s Olivia Beavers that Johnson’s tying of Israel aid to IRS cuts was “a slap in the face to every Jew” and was “f---ing dumb.”

Coming to Johnson’s defense was … Santos, who told his 100-strong press contingent that “we have members with severe allegations against them having the gall … to call the speaker a ‘joke.’” Santos was referring to allegations of abuse made against Miller by his former girlfriend, Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

“What a joke,” <a href="https://twitter.com/MicaSoellnerDC/status/1730212708396523940?s=20" target=_blank>observed Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa)</a> as he walked by the Santos circus, in remarks overheard by Punchbowl News’s Mica Soellner.

Behind Santos, an Architect of the Capitol garbage truck beeped. Off to the side, behind barricades, spectators taunted him when he finished: “Hey b — ch, you ready to go back to jail? How much money did you spend on porn?”

But the joke was on them, because Santos was loving every minute of the attention. “Today is my second-year wedding anniversary, and I’m going to enjoy it and try to forget the fact that it’s been one year from hell,” he said, promising to schedule yet more sessions with the media on his way out.

Santos, a man of no shame, pronounced himself “proud of the work I put forward” in Congress. “I wish I could do more,” he said, but “if this is it, this is it.”

Despite a last-minute effort by GOP leaders Friday morning to boost Santos, about half of Republicans joined almost all Democrats in the 311-114 vote to expel.

Congress has always had a full portion of liars, crooks and scoundrels. Still serving is Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), recently <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/investing/gold-bar-bribe-menendez/index.html" target=_blank>found in possession of gold bars and cash</a> stuffed into the pockets of a jacket with his name on it. Before him was Madison Cawthorn, who faced various gun and driving charges and also accused his colleagues of drug-fueled orgies; Duke Cunningham, who accepted a yacht, luxury cars, furniture, rugs and other items listed on a bribe menu he provided to interested parties; William Jefferson, found with $90,000 in cash in his freezer wrapped in aluminum foil; and James Traficant, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/james-a-traficant-jr-colorful-ohio-congressman-expelled-by-house-dies-at-73/2014/09/27/fa98868a-4431-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html" target=_blank>the last lawmaker to be expelled</a>, convicted of bribery and other charges, who ended his speeches on the House floor with the phrase “beam me up.”

But Santos is different, because he is a perfect distillation of this moment. At a time when Donald Trump’s Republican Party has been flooding the national debate with disinformation and conspiracy theories, Santos showed just how far one could go with a lie, right down to the knee injuries he didn’t sustain while not playing volleyball on a scholarship he did not receive for the college he did not attend.

And yet, as deplorable as Santos is, he was deeply entertaining as he makes the most of his 15 minutes of fame: standing, in his garish clothing, on the center aisle in the House; getting into obscenity-laced fights with everybody from Mitt Romney to an anti-Israel activist; going to a karaoke joint followed by the media; holding babies; buying snacks for reporters staking out his office; and granting endless interviews and media appearances — including a memorable, three-hour-long Q&amp;A session on the former Twitter’s X Spaces the day after Thanksgiving.

On the precipice of being expelled for conduct unbecoming a member of Congress, Santos seemed determined to become even more unbecoming.

“All of a sudden, George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress,” he remarked during the Q&amp;A. “We’re all going to stone this motherf---er because it’s just politically expedient.” (Fact check: Mary Magdalene was not stoned.)

The House Ethics Committee chairman, Mississippi Republican Michael Guest, “should be a man and stop being a p---y,” Santos added.

The Ethics Committee, he continued, “is a f---ing weaponization of who they don’t like,” and it injected “a s--- ton of hyperbole in their report.”

Of his House colleagues, he suggested voters “stop empowering people who vote to f--- this country,” and he asserted that “there’s a s--- ton of members that should be getting expelled following my expulsion.”

Oh, and by the way: “I’d love to be an ambassador” sometime after leaving Congress, Santos said.

My AI transcript of the session found 13 invocations of the f-word and 15 mentions of the s-word. He also identified a fellow Long Island Republican as an “a — hole” while positing that lawmakers are “legislating like “a — holes.”

Over the course of three hours, he offered not one rebuttal to the many allegations made against him. “I’ll answer questions when I feel like it,” he said, and, in the meantime, “I think you all should take the privilege of accepting what I’m willing to talk about now.” (It was an honor, Congressman.)

Instead of defending himself, Santos leveled dubious accusations of crime and impropriety against his colleagues. “They all act like they are in ivory towers with white pointy hats and they’re untouchable,” he said, but “within the ranks of the United States Congress, there’s felons galore.” He said his peers come from “shystie backgrounds,” that they are “getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re going to screw,” that they don’t “show up to vote because they’re too hung over,” and that they “just give their [voting] card out like f---ing candy for someone else to vote for them. This s--- happens every single week! … All of this s---, they’re coming after me?”

The Great Prevaricator alleged that the unnamed chairman of “one of the most powerful committees” in the House had committed insider trading (“there’s so much proof”). And he said the Ethics Committee lawyers are “hacks” who “should be disbarred” for their “slanderous” “smear” of his good name.

Clearly, this was not a man hoping his colleagues would show him mercy in an expulsion vote. Though he sounded defiant (“it’s done when I say it’s done”), Santos admitted that “I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” because “I can do math.”

But there was one part of Santos’s farewell rant that was inarguable. Asked whether the current Congress is the most “ineffective” in modern history, he replied: “Yes, 100 percent. The worst. We have spent the bulk of our time figuring out who we are as a Republican conference while stalling progress. … We have passed 21 pieces of legislation that the president has signed, none really consequential, most of them just giving money to other people and other places. And quite frankly, we have spent so much time censuring one another, expelling one another, going after one another, we’re doing absolutely nothing.”

I couldn’t have said it better. So far, only 22 bills (Santos’s count was slightly out of date) have become law this Congress, compared with 69 at this point in the last Congress and 77 at this point in the 2019-2020 Congress, which also operated under divided government. The “achievements,” if they can be called that, are mostly minor — a Marine Corps commemorative coin act, the naming of a veterans’ clinic in Indian River, Mich. — along with temporary spending patches that keep the government running on autopilot.

“It’s like a dog that’s chasing its own tail. It’s abysmal,” Santos said.

Congress obviously had to expel this guy — and fast. The only thing worse for House Republicans than a lying Santos is one who tells the truth.

In the past, when confronted with a scandal of this magnitude, the offender would typically resign. But Santos  wasn’t about to start doing the right thing at this late stage in his congressional career.

Because expulsion requires a two-thirds vote, Republicans were in control of Santos’s fate. Some worried about setting a bad precedent — and it is true that the other five members of the House expelled in U.S. history were either Confederates or convicts.

But really, the debate was about politics. Some Republicans didn’t want to see their four-vote majority become a three-vote majority; others, particularly New York Republicans, were concerned that Santos would drag the party down in next year’s elections. No one actually cared about Santos, of course.

On Tuesday night, Santos went to the floor to deliver a one-hour, special-order speech in his own defense. It lasted six minutes. With a maroon double-breasted jacket stretching across his middle and a trademark sweater underneath it, he boasted about his achievements in office, which turned out to be routine constituent service: nominating kids to service academies, hosting a “congressional app challenge,” and helping constituents with passports and immigration issues. “I will not be resigning,” he concluded before the empty chamber.

As promised at his news conference, Santos appeared on the House floor just after noon Thursday to introduce a resolution to expel Bowman from the House because he “knowingly and willingly gave a false fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building.”

Also as promised, he continued to talk to reporters through the day. He explained why the Ethics Committee had found the Botox expenses in his campaign finances. “I mean, <a href="https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1730300987645034772?s=20" target=_blank>I use cosmetic Botox and filler.</a> That’s not a secret,” he said. “I mean, did anybody ever doubt that?” He also said he would be writing a book about his time in Congress, and he <a href="https://twitter.com/MicaSoellnerDC/status/1730301253727449295?s=20" target=_blank>wouldn’t rule out an appearance</a> on “Dancing With the Stars” or another reality TV show.

He called the people trying to expel him “freaking retarded,” and <a href="https://twitter.com/MicaSoellnerDC/status/1730301251542290733?s=20" target=_blank>called one of his main persecutors</a>, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), a “traditional meathead.”

In Thursday afternoon’s expulsion debate, even those on Santos’s side didn’t really defend him. “I rise not to defend George Santos, whoever he is, but to defend the very precedent my colleagues are willing to shatter,” argued Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). “Whatever Mr. Santos did with Botox or OnlyFans is far less concerning to me than the indictment against Senator Menendez who is holding gold bars inscribed with Arabic.”

Santos winced and shook his head at the mention of his Botox and porn.

Troy Nehls (R-Tex.) rose to speak in defense of “George Soros,” before catching himself.

And Clay Higgins (R-La.) called Santos’s expulsion “the congressional equivalent of a public crucifixion.”

The other side, mostly New York Republicans, denounced their colleague with contempt.

“George Santos is a liar,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.) said, kicking off the debate.

LaLota declared that “there’s no more provable case of election fraud before this Congress than George Santos’s 2022 election fraud.”

“Dear God,” added Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), to laughter from the gallery. “My future former colleague is divorced from reality. He has manufactured his entire life to defraud the voters of his district.”

And Miller, given just 15 seconds of floor time to close the debate, declared, “You, sir, are a crook!” — then hurried from the chamber.

Santos tried, unsuccessfully, to strike down Miller’s words. He then reminded the House that the Ohio congressman “is accused of being a woman beater.”

Seconds later, Santos declared, with piety, “I’m not going to stand here and use the time I have to say ill things about my colleagues.”

And with that final contradiction, the Great Prevaricator rested his case. “Take the vote,” he told them. “I am at peace.”

White House Correspondent Association's Beckman Award

National Press Club's Gingras Prize

Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America (Doubleday, 2010)

Homo Politicus (Doubleday, 2008)

Smashmouth (Basic Books, 2001)

The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party (Doubleday, 2022)

Yale University, BA cum laude in political science

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. His new book is “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party” (Doubleday). 

Dana Milbank

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