Santos becomes first House member to be expelled from chamber in more than two decades

Rep. George Santos leaves the U.S. Capitol after the House voted to expel him from Congress on December 1, in Washington, DC. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP

GOP Rep. George Santos has become the sixth member to be expelled from the US House, and is the first member to be ousted in more than two decades.

Of the only five members who have been expelled previously, three were expelled for fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Santos – the New York Republican with problems telling the truth and who is under federal indictment for fraud, money laundering, theft and stealing donors’ identities – becomes just the third federally elected lawmaker since the Civil War to be kicked out of the House by his peers.

The only other expelled representatives since the Civil War had already been found guilty in federal court and still refused to resign.

Michael “Ozzie” Myers, a Pennsylvania Democrat, was expelled from the House in 1980 after he was convicted as part of an infamous FBI investigation known as ABSCAM, in which he and other lawmakers were caught up in a sting operation taking bribes to help a fictional Arab sheikh.

Most of the other lawmakers embroiled in ABSCAM ultimately resigned. Myers was expelled in the time between his conviction and his sentencing in 1980.

He’s actually back in jail at the moment; Myers, now 80, was sentenced to 30 months in prison last year for taking bribes in a ballot-stuffing scheme in Democratic primaries dating back to 2014.

The other House member to be expelled since the Civil War, James Traficant Jr., an Ohio Democrat, was removed from office after being convicted in a bribery and racketeering scandal in 2002. Traficant tried to mount an independent campaign for his seat from his prison cell, but it did not go well. He died in 2014 after a tractor accident on a family farm.