Thirty-one Democrats voted not to expel the Republican lawmaker George Santos from the US House of Representatives because he has not been convicted of any crime and to eject him would set a dangerous precedent for Republicans to expel their ideological opponents, a leading congressman said.
“For me this was an easy call,” said Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a law professor and influential progressive who sat on the January 6 committee and was lead manager in Donald Trump’s impeachment for inciting the attack on Congress.
Santos “hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, and he has not been convicted of anything in our ethics process”, Raskin told Mother Jones.
“The history is very telling. We’ve expelled five people in the history of the US House of Representatives. Three of them were Confederate traitors and the other two had other federal criminal convictions.”
James A Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, was the last House member to be expelled, in 2002 and after being convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit bribery, obstruction of justice and racketeering. After seven years in jail, he attempted to run for re-election.
Raskin continued: “For us to take the step of expelling someone who had not been convicted of anything would be a really dangerous manoeuvre, especially with the Republicans in control of the House.”
Santos was elected in New York last year but his résumé unravelled (he admitted “embellishing” it) as picaresque and allegedly criminal behaviour came to light.
Pleading not guilty, he now faces 23 federal criminal charges, including laundering funds to pay for personal expenses, illegally receiving unemployment benefits and charging donors’ credit cards without consent.
He has said he intends to run for re-election next year, shortly after his trial, as one of a number of New York Republicans seeking to fend off Democratic challenges. Members of the Republican New York delegation brought the expulsion resolution that failed on Wednesday.
Beholden to a narrow majority, Republican leaders have refused to move significantly against Santos, referring him instead to the House ethics committee.
On Wednesday, a resolution to censure Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and as the only Palestinian American in Congress outspoken on the Israel-Hamas war, also fell short.
Raskin said: “I can think of five Democratic members they would love to expel. For example, they’ve been accusing Rashida Tlaib about events in Israel, and regardless of where you stand on any of that, they would say, ‘Well, she’s not been convicted of anything, but neither was George Santos. And we think she lied about something at least as important as what you lied about. We want to expel her.’”
The motion to censure Tlaib, for alleged antisemitism, was sponsored by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican. Democrats dropped a motion to censure Taylor Greene.
Raskin said: “The point is, if we don’t stand by due process, and the rule of law, at that point we’re just in the realm of politics and emotion. There is no standard for expulsion under House rules or the constitution.”
Raskin’s interviewer, David Corn, asked if there should be a standard for expulsion, given the House and Senate ethics committees “historically have not been models of investigative vigor”.
Raskin said: “I think that there is an implicit standard and the implicit standard is that if someone is convicted of a crime, at that point, they basically set themselves or against civil society, and they don’t belong in Congress.”
