The House Ethics Committee is often slow to act, but once it does, watch out, a governance expert warned Monday. Now that George Santos is an official target, his days in Congress may well be numbered — and it may be wise for him to quit while he still has the power to do so under his own steam, the lawyer added.
Historical precedents, along with the “severity and breadth of the allegations against Santos,” suggest this “might be the beginning of the end” for the New York lawmaker, attorney Norm Eisen and Colby Galliher wrote in a CNN op ed. Eisen is a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, and Galliher is a senior research analyst at the think tank.
The committee announced last week in a statement that it’s investigating allegations against Santos of “unlawful activity” in his campaign, failure to disclose required information, violating federal conflict-of-interest laws, “and/or engaging in sexual misconduct toward an individual seeking employment in his congressional office.”
Santos quickly noted that he is “fully cooperating” with the investigation and would make no further comment about it. He’s resisting calls to resign in the wake of a cascade of his outrageous lies about his parentage, education, work experience, wealth and questionable business practices.
But lawmakers in the past have stepped down rather than be ground up in an Ethics Committee probe, noted Eisen and Galliher. One was former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who quit when the panel launched a probe after the congressman tweeted a raunchy photo of himself and then admitted to exchanging lewd messages and photos with a number of women.
“Resignation ends the committee’s jurisdiction, and so concludes these politically painful inquisitions,” the men pointed out in the op-ed, indicating that quitting could be Santos’ savviest move just now.
Whatever he opts to do, Santos has already achieved a notable accomplishment, the op ed snidely added: He has united a “sizable chunk of Congress [to] elicit bipartisan condemnation.”
The House Ethics Committee, divided evenly among Democrats and Republicans, voted unanimously to investigate Santos.
Check out the complete op ed at this link,
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