George Santos charged with defrauding campaign donors

seayakin said:

There is not a way to recall him. My understanding is the only way is to remove him is based on a 2/3 vote from the house which would be presumably based on ethics violations and or criminal charges.

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It would take a constituional admendment to allow a House member to be recalled.

dudalb said:

It would take a constituional admendment to allow a House member to be recalled.

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Right. But he can be impeached and removed from office. And the Speaker can make him persona non grata.

acbytesla said:

Right. But he can be impeached and removed from office. And the Speaker can make him persona non grata.

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No, impeachment is a different process for different officials. The House can expel him by two-thirds vote.

dudalb said:

....
And forgive if I think this was a democract alot of people here would be a lot more forgiving.

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Why would you think that? What Democrat has ever behaved like this? Democrats have been forced out of office for much less.

Bob001 said:

Why would you think that? What Democrat has ever behaved like this? Democrats have been forced out of office for much less.

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Because I think some people here have huge political blinders on, frankly.
Look, I think Santos is scum and should resign,and it speakes very badly for the GOP House leadership that they have embraced him, but something tells me if the Dems were in the same situation..holding on to a majority by the skin of their teeth....they would be more forgiving.

Bob001 said:

No, impeachment is a different process for different officials. The House can expel him by two-thirds vote.

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Correct. My mistake. It doesn't require a trial in the Senate.

dudalb said:

Because I think some people here have huge political blinders on, frankly.
Look, I think Santos is scum and should resign,and it speakes very badly for the GOP House leadership that they have embraced him, but something tells me if the Dems were in the same situation..holding on to a majority by the skin of their teeth....they would be more forgiving.

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That may be probable. Still it doesn't address the fraud which should be grounds for dismissal.

If Santos was a Democrat, the GOP would be baying for his blood and his head on a pike on the Capitol steps.

In this video it's more clear this is Santos in drag at a drag show: Twitter thread with the video (You don't need to be logged in.)

Halfway through this very short clip the person in question comes up the stairs and that's where he looks the most like Santos. Scroll down to see a scar on his face pointed out that matches his current image. And I don't have a link to it but apparently he admitted it was him years ago when it wasn't an issue.

Mind you the issue here isn't that he dressed in drag. The issue is how the GOP feels about drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community.

Norman Alexander said:

If Santos was a Democrat, the GOP would be baying for his blood and his head on a pike on the Capitol steps.

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I would hope that under current circumstances the Democratic Party wouldn't have backed this guy and/or he would have lost in the primary.

Pixel42 said:

But if someone gets any other job by lying about their qualifications on their resume and their employer subsequently discovers it they are promptly fired. Why should this job be treated differently?

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In a representative democracy, it's OK for you to cheat voters. It's the art of the deal: They give you the power to decide on their behalf. You just have to see to it that you get elected, no matter how many lies it takes and how many empty promises to the voters you have to make. Once elected, you are free to 'represent' them for the rest of the term they elected you for.

"elected officials are not required to fulfill promises made before their election and are able to promote their own self-interests once elected.

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In fact, the representatives are not even required to be who they say they are. They can lie about almost everything. In the USA, for some weird reason, if you run for president, it seems to be a requirement that you are actually born in the USA, but apart from that ...

The empirical research shows that representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes, to the detriment of the population at large.

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And that is obviously how it is meant to be in a representative democracy. Campaign contributions, lobbyism, PACs help to make sure that the 1% get to make all real decisions, while the voters are being misdirected with the war on Xmas, drag shows or similar stuff.

There are an awful lot of ought to's and high ideals in representative democracy, but its purpose is to set the power to make decisions free from voters:

it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

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In other words, if he doesn't screw you, he isn't doing his job. That's how he serves you!

So George Santos should not sacrifice his judgement to the opinion of his voters. It wouldn't be a proper democracy if he did. The voters, on the other hand, should respect his mature judgement and his enlightened conscience and leave him alone and let him decide on their behalf. After all, they voted for him, i.e. they deposited their influence on state affairs in his hands, they gave him the power to make decisions according to his own unbiassed opinion for the next four (or how long it may be) years.
And that's the beauty of being a voter: There's one born every minute even if they only get to vote every four years.

Being a representative just isn't a job like any other job, which, I assume, is the reason why dudalb is so forgiving and asking us to consider how other representatives would have behaved, which is setting the bar pretty low.

All quotations from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

dudalb said:

I agree, and I think he should resign, but I am just reluctant to overule the voters except in out and out criminal or other extreme cases. So far, I don't see that here.
That might change if more evidence about his misuse of campaing funds comes out.
And forgive if I think this was a democract alot of people here would be a lot more forgiving.

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Hell, no! If a Dem did this, I'd be saying the same thing: resign, you lying SOB!

But when you and those people view this story, you don't consider who sacked that vet and made him and his dog homeless, do you?! It's the kind of story that you would find next to a perseverance porn story: How did they end up in conditions where they could be exploited by guys like Trump or Santos is not really a question that concerns us much.

Do you expect him to resign just because you say so?

I've compared several photos of Santos to the much clearer one provided by Ziprhead. It's definitely Santos; the nose and teeth are identical.

I don't care if he drag queens all day and all night. It's his lies that concern me. They're not exaggerations or embellishments; they are egregious and mind-numbingly numerous and are indicative of someone with a severe case of pathological or compulsive lying. THAT is not something we can handwave away in a member of Congress...or in the White House.

dann said:

Do you expect him to resign just because you say so?

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What kind of silly question is that?

dann said:

But when you and those people view this story, you don't consider who sacked that vet and made him and his dog homeless, do you?! It's the kind of story that you would find next to a perseverance porn story: How did they end up in conditions where they could be exploited by guys like Trump or Santos is not really a question that concerns us much.

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Wow. Can you strawman this any more than that? Santos' stealing the money has zero to do with why or how the vet became homeless.

Suddenly said:

He's not George Santos? I mean, at that point maybe you have something.

That he lied about everything about himself isn't that. Even if he defrauded his donors that's a criminal issue. Unseating a member of Congress is deeply anti-democratic, and doing so based on appraisal of conduct prior to being in congress is a terrible idea for a whole slew of reasons.

The whole "did not allow the voters to know who he was" doesn't really play when the local paper is telling people who he was.

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Fraudsters deceive people all the time. They don't get a pass because "the people should have known better". They go to jail! The people they conned do not go to jail. They are called victims.

If I applied for any job and it was immediately discovered that I'd lied about my education, my arrest record, and/or my experience, I would be fired immediately. And if I wasn't I definitely could be.

I think we need to start holding the people running the country to at least that standard. Do you?

Stacyhs said:

What kind of silly question is that?

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Saying. Handwaving. Empty gestures. It's his right to be a member of Congress. He was elected, and that's what electing is all about.