George Santos filed an amended financial disclosure form with the FEC on Tuesday, and within minutes reporters and electoral law experts were noticing some pretty glaring issues.
For starters, there’s two loans — for $500,000 and $125,000 — that are no longer identified as coming from Mr Santos’s personal funds, as they had been previously.
And then there’s the oddly high number of donations just under the $200 limit - an occurrence that immediately raised questions about their legitimacy.
Meanwhile, GOP leader Mr McCarthy is clearly tiring of questions about one of his caucus’s newest members. At a press conference on Tuesday the speaker contended that the congressman will be ousted if the House Ethics Committee finds that he broke the law, while snapping at reporters who suggested he should do more as House leader.
“If for some way when we go through Ethics and he has broken the law, then we will remove him,” he said.
“The American public in his district voted for him. He has a responsibility to uphold what they voted for, to work and have their voice here, but at any time, if it rises to a legal level, we will deal with it then.”
His comments come as Mr Santos said he was “saddened” to learn that fellow GOP member John Kennedy called him “nutty as a fruitcake” and a “bunny boiler” – a reference to Glenn Close’s unhinged, psychotic character in the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction.
