George Santos may have been expelled from Congress, but he plans to haunt the halls of the Capitol for a very long time.
Santos, the self-described “Republican ‘It Girl,’” has an established flair for the dramatic. Examples include his habit of trolling the reporters regularly gathered outside his office, acquiring random babies, hard-launching his marriage in a tweet about the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and delivering a Renaissance art-level serve after his arrest in May. Even before he was removed from office, he took on the tone of a Disney villain and vowed that if ousted, he would “have a lot of time on my hands to return the favor in the most expedient fashion mankind has ever seen.” The point was clear: Santos would not go quietly.
Over the weekend, Santos laid out the first phase of his plan to exact revenge on his former colleagues, threatening to file multiple ethics complaints against New York Republican House members Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nicole Malliotakis, as well as Democratic New Jersey Rep. Robert Menendez (the son of indicted Sen. Bob Menendez).
Santos has recently leveled attacks at all four of his former colleagues. He promised to file a complaint against Malliotakis regarding alleged abuse of her position on the Ways and Means Committee to engineer favorable stock trades for herself; alleged that Rep. Lawler may have engaged “in laundering money from his campaign to his [communications] firm then into his own pocket”; accused Rep. LaLota of impropriety while working as the Commissioner of the Suffolk County Board of Elections; and called for an investigation into what Rep. Menendez knew about his father’s alleged crimes.
On Sunday, Santos attacked LaLota on X, formerly Twitter, writing “the clown that represents his own interests in DC admitting he spent a whole year obsessed in kicking me out instead of doing his job to represent you!”
“Replace meathead “LaLoka” with a real member like Zeldin to fight for you,” Santos added.
The New York Republican was booted from his seat on Friday. After two failed attempts to remove him from office over indictments on charges of fraud and identity theft, a scathing report released by the House Ethics Committee in November finally pushed lawmakers over the edge.
The report found evidence that Santos had spent campaign funds on OnlyFans, Botox, Hermes accessories, spa treatments, and Sephora beauty hauls. This combined with the criminal allegations of donor identity theft and credit card fraud — even against other lawmakers — Santos’s fall from grace felt like watching Congress’s very own version of the Anna Sorokin/Delvey scam saga.
Aside from exposing the dirt he has on his former colleagues, Santos will in no way be keeping a low profile now that he’s unemployed. In addition to launching a Cameo, Santos on Sunday agreed to set up an interview with satirical commentator Ziwerekoru “Ziwe” Fumudoh. It promises to be messy, and filled with bombshells.
Santos’ fable-filled, and (allegedly) crime-riddled rise and fall will also be immortalized on the silver screen. TV giant HBO has already purchased the rights to Mark Chiusano’s book The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, and plans to adapt it into a film produced by Veep and Succession’s Frank Rich. From what we know about the film, Santos’ speedrun from anonymity to congressional fibster to disgrace will be stylized as a “Gatsby-esque journey of a man from nowhere who exploited the system, waged war on truth and swindled one of the wealthiest districts in the country to achieve his American Dream.” If HBO finds itself in need of advice, it should feel free to consult Santos himself. After all, he’s a well-known, totally legit Broadway producer.
But upcoming films and talk show appearances will do little to solve the former congressman’s more immediate problems — funding a legal defense against the charges of corruption, wire fraud, and identity theft leveled against him in New York. To address this problem Santos has joined Cameo, an app where users can pay to receive personalized videos from their favorite celebrities. An account for Santos popped up over the weekend with the bio “Former congressional ‘Icon’!💅🏼” For $150 Santos’ fans can theoretically receive a personalized video from the ex-congressman. In his first Cameo, Santos said that while “they can boot me out of Congress but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger-than-life personality, nor my good faith and the absolute pride I have for everything I have for everything I’ve done.”
Santos’ many lies, fabrications, and potentially illegal schemes were so blatant, so needless in quantity, and devoid of quality that the public fascination with his downfall — and their embrace of Santos as an icon of shamelessness — is understandable. What is less forgivable is the extent to which Republicans were willing to tolerate Santos’ clear disregard for both the law and ethical norms in order to keep their narrow hold on power in the House. The GOP repeatedly punted and blocked efforts to hold Santos to account, and party leadership backed him in the final vote for his expulsion even as Republican members of the Ethics Committee endorsed his removal. The most right-wing members of the caucus were infuriated by his ouster, incensed by the notion that there might be consequences for lying to the public.
As it stands, Santos may cash in on his reputation as a charismatic fraudster, and the outcome of his criminal indictments may level more dire penalties for his alleged deceptions, but Santos forfeited his office long before Friday’s expulsion, and his removal was severely overdue.
As SNL succinctly (and musically) put it the night after his expulsion vote — Santos lived his life “like a scandal in the wind …You all got to laugh at me, and I say ‘lucky you.’ My candle burned out long before I could flee to Peru.”
