Mr. Chair, I yield five minutes to my colleague from New York, Mr. Goldman. Thank you very much, Mr. Santos. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today in support of this resolution to expel Jorge Santos from Congress, as I did in May, when I co-sponsored a similar expulsion resolution [00:00:17] that the sponsors of today's resolution, my colleagues from my Republican colleagues from New York, did not support. Yesterday, the House of Representatives held a vote to expel Representative Jorge Santos, a freshman Republican in the House who is currently facing [00:00:35] criminal federal charges, having to do with a multitude of issues. Allegations that he stole the credit card information of his donors and then charged things on their credit cards. Let's go to graphic to here. The 35 year old New York lawmaker has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing [00:00:53] him of crimes, including laundering funds to pay for his personal expenses, illegally receiving unemployment benefits and, yes, charging donors credit cards without their consent. Now here's Representative Dan Goldman, who made the effort to expel Santos in May. [00:01:10] Here's what he had to say about the effort to basically boot Santos from the house. I agree with everything that my Republican colleagues have said here today, but everything they have said here today was also true in May, [00:01:26] when they voted to protect Jorge Santos. Has there been anything that has changed? Nothing about the numerous lies that Mr. Santos admitted himself to making in order to deceive his voters into electing him? [00:01:43] Nothing about his status as an indicted criminal defendant. Yes, there has been a superseding indictment with more allegations of criminal conduct, but he is still presumed innocent until proven guilty. [00:01:59] As my New York friends relied upon in May, when they voted to protect Jorge Santos from expulsion. While New York Representative Anthony D'esposito, who is a Republican from New York, responded to Goldman expressing why things have changed. [00:02:18] Let's watch. My colleague from New York, Mr. Goldman, when he asked what has changed? Well, what has changed is that there's an additional 13 indictments or 13 charges in an indictment with a campaign treasurer pleading guilty. [00:02:39] What has changed is that when we had discussed this back in May, when he co-sponsored that legislation, I made it very clear that I was in support of it. [00:02:55] But I also know how to count and realized that we did not have two thirds of the house. And perhaps we won't this evening. But what I do know is that the Ethics Committee has been working hard, [00:03:12] as they issued a memo, as I referred to a few minutes ago, reviewing over 170,000 pages of documents, interviewing 40 witnesses, issuing subpoenas. - So things have changed. - Well. [00:03:29] The vote failed big time. So let's take a look at the screenshot of the vote, which will show you that 24 Republicans and 155 Democrats voted yes to expel Jorge Santos from the House. 182 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted no. [00:03:49] Now, listen, at first I was a proponent of expelling him. It was, I think, a knee jerk reaction to the fact that this guy is a liar. He's also I mean, he hasn't been found guilty, hasn't been convicted yet, [00:04:04] but very likely will be convicted of financial crimes like stealing money from his own donors, stealing their credit card information, and charging things on their credit cards. And look, the reason why I say he's likely to be convicted is because he played the same games and ran the same scams in Brazil. [00:04:23] Okay, so this guy is a mess, however. He's running a reelection campaign as we speak. I think he's likely going to get voted out. And I think it's really up to the people in his district to decide. And Jamie Raskin happens to be one of the Democrats who voted against [00:04:40] expelling Jorge Santos from the House. I'm going to give you his statements in just a moment. But first, I want to go to you was what do you think? I don't know what to think, honestly. And because obviously this guy is a joke, he's made a mockery of the entire system. He's not. He's lied and he's exactly. [00:04:58] But he's lied at every single turn about, you know, schools that he went to, jobs that he's held. He even lied about being of Jewish faith like this guy. Just no bones to this guy's lying at the same time, I think it's just quite hilarious that 31 Democrats was like, nah, let him stay. [00:05:16] Come on. He's good. This will be fun. Let he's good at that. - He's good at the office birthday parties. - And I think that. Look, I actually think it's smart for those Democrats to vote no on this. And the reason why, and I think we're kind of seeing it right now with the [00:05:34] investigations into like, Hunter Biden and stuff, where, anyway, it's that once you open that floodgate, the flood will come. And so if they vote to expel a Republican, well, then Republicans are going to turn around and try to expel Democrats. [00:05:51] And it's going to be this endless cycle of trying to get members of each party expelled. And I just think it should be left to the voters to decide. Now, if this were the Senate and we're talking about someone who just got elected and will be in office for another five years, maybe I'm going [00:06:08] to change my mind a little bit. But we're talking about the House of Representatives, where Congress, Congress people have to be reelected every two years. So I want the people in his district to make that decision. I think that's a smarter strategy here. [00:06:23] I hope they don't let us down. We'll see. But here's what Jamie Raskin had to say about his no vote. I'm a Constitution guy. The House has expelled five people in our history, three for joining the Confederacy as traitors to the Union, and two after they were convicted of criminal offenses. [00:06:42] Santos has not been criminally convicted yet of the offenses cited in the resolution, nor has he been found guilty of ethics offenses in the House internal process, which I will say is an indictment of the House ethics internal process, [00:06:58] he continues, though this would be a terrible precedent to set, expelling people who have not been convicted of a crime and without internal due process. If and when Santos is convicted of these serious criminal offenses or ethics charges, I will certainly vote to expel. [00:07:15] Until then, it's a very risky road to go down, and we have to stick by due process and the rule of law. As obvious as the eventual result seems, I can think of 4 or 5 Democratic members the Republicans would like to expel without a conviction or adverse ethics findings. [00:07:35] We can't abandon due process and the rule of law in the House of Representatives. I think that's a principled stand, and I not only accept it, I agree with it. I think that Raskin, along with the other Democrats who voted no, made the right decision. [00:07:52] Yeah, I tend to agree with that as well. Of course. You know, again, when when the Democrats decided to go with Russiagate and contesting essentially contesting the election, Donald Trump took it further [00:08:09] when he legitimately lost and has just not let it go. So we know how these things go. Right. I kind of I kind of agree with not even kind of I definitely agree with Congressman Raskin because like, this is just not worth a road being taken [00:08:27] for a clown like Jorge Santos. Thanks for watching. If you become a member, you get to watch all this ad free. Except for, of course, this ad still hit the join button below.