Chaos in Congress

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

So, if I'm following, if a certain wing doesn't get its way regarding the debt ceiling, they will pass a bill that has no chance of making it to Biden's desk? I say raise the debt ceiling, let them pass their bonkers bill, and let the Dems use what they protected the rest of us from in their Senate campaigns.

The problem is the provision in the new House rules that allows any one Republican to bring a new vote on the Speakership to the floor: at any point they don't get their way, we'll have a replay of last week's vote and as we saw, as few as four extreme Republicans can force McCarthy out.

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A fun quote from the Post article, after it notes that other items Republicans would defund include "food safety inspections" and "border control" but would continue payments to bondholders: "Democrats are also likely to accuse Republicans of prioritizing payments to U.S. bondholders -- which include Chinese banks -- over American citizens." I am so ready for Democrats to charge Republicans with being pro-communist.

Interesting argument here that merely threatening not to raise the debt ceiling violates the Constitution.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's getting to the point that it hard to tell the difference between the real Santos stories and the spoof ones.

[River]

What was that old adage about being caught with dead girls or live boys? Something about not doing it?

[N.E. Brigand]

Uh... David Corn reports at Mother Jones that "many top donors to George Santos's [unsuccessful] 2020 campaign don't seem to exist." This is the election that Santos lost just over two years ago (for the same seat he won in 2022). Not only the donors but their very addresses appear to be made up.

(Posting here rather than in the 2020 thread because there are no Santos posts there.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

1. George Santos told his Republican colleagues today that in order to minimize distractions, he's withdrawing from his House Committee assignments.

2. The Miami Herald investigated some campaign expenditures that Santos claims to have made last year. Santos "reported meals at a Miami Beach diner. The diner found no record of them. He reported parking at a Miami Beach lot. The city says the dollar amounts would be impossible."

3. Here's an interesting profile of Santos's director of operations, Vish Burra, who just joined Santos's team this month, was apparently mentored by Steve Bannon and worked on Bannon's podcast, and so:

Working on the show gave Burra a front-row seat as Bannon and Rudy Giuliani acquired a laptop that had belonged to then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Burra has said he served as a “navigator” and used past experience as a software professional to make copies of the laptop as Bannon and Giuliani gave the data to reporters and others in an effort to generate stories criticizing the Biden family’s foreign business dealings and Hunter’s substance abuse. In his conversation with TPM, Burra described the episode as “one of my most proudest projects and accomplishments.”

4. A new poll of Santos's district finds that 78% of its residents say he should resign. That includes a majority of Republicans. Josh Marshall adds:

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the poll is the results for what people said when asked how they voted. First, 89% of respondents said they voted, which means a significant percentage are liars. But it gets better. 24% said they voted for George Santos, which again means that a whole lot of them are liars or in denial. (Santos won with 54% of the vote.) 17% say they voted for another candidate. 15% refused to answer. (Who can blame them?) Notably 45% said they voted for Democrat Robert Zimmerman which is almost exactly the percentage of the vote he got. Of the 24% of voters who admitted voting for Santos, 31% say they’d still vote for him even knowing what they know now. 63% say they would not have. (What’s wrong with that 31% of the 24%?)

5. As I've been writing this post, news broke that Santos's campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, has resigned on the day that campaign filings are due to the FEC. Marks had made herself quite scarce recently.

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In other House news:

A. Three Republicans have said they won't vote to strip committee assignments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (Democrat of Minnesota): Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been threatening to do so on the grounds of Omar having made some antisemitic remarks in the past (she has long since apologized for doing so). Four such dissents would keep her on the committees, and there are still some undecided Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican of Florida), who despite his far-right positions and a tendency to use inflammatory rhetoric about Democrats, and either despite or because he has dealt with a number of scandals of his own -- does generally seem to behave rather cordially toward at least some of Democratic colleagues. You may remember that when he unexpectedly announced that he had a previously unknown adopted adult son, a claim which many people did not find credible, he was defended by former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill of California -- who resigned after it emerged that she had had an affair with a campaign staffer -- who said that Gaetz had told her about his son before his existence was made public. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

B. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has blocked two other prominent Democrats, Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both of California, from serving specifically on the Intelligence Committee, where both had sat for years, with Schiff having chaired it for the past four years. The grounds for that expulsion are even more spurious than those being used against Omar. Schiff is being punished for having truthfully said that there was evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and Swalwell is being punished for having once dated someone who turned out to be a Chinese spy. As Marcy Wheeler notes, because the record is that Swalwell, after being informed in 2015 by the FBI that his girlfriend was a Chinese agent, immediately broke off contact with her and provided the FBI information about her, the lesson McCarthy is teaching is that Americans should help the Chinese government undermine FBI invstigations.

C. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, now in her third term, was picked by her fellow Democrats to be the second-ranked Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee (the ranking Democrat is Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland).

[N.E. Brigand]

As noted here, George Santos has a new campaign treasurer and his FEC filings have been submitted. You will not be surprised to learn there are some irregularities, including a reported donation that's more than three times larger than the law allows.

[N.E. Brigand]

This story from ABC is interesting: "Promised green cards, catfishing, threats: How George Santos' ex-boyfriends say they were left feeling trapped, manipulated."

So is this story from ABC: "Veteran who claimed George Santos stole money for his dying dog says FBI has reached out to him."

[N.E. Brigand]

Three Republicans have said they won't vote to strip committee assignments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (Democrat of Minnesota): Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been threatening to do so on the grounds of Omar having made some antisemitic remarks in the past (she has long since apologized for doing so). Four such dissents would keep her on the committees, and there are still some undecided Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican of Florida), who despite his far-right positions and a tendency to use inflammatory rhetoric about Democrats, and either despite or because he has dealt with a number of scandals of his own -- does generally seem to behave rather cordially toward at least some of Democratic colleagues. You may remember that when he unexpectedly announced that he had a previously unknown adopted adult son, a claim which many people did not find credible, he was defended by former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill of California -- who resigned after it emerged that she had had an affair with a campaign staffer -- who said that Gaetz had told her about his son before his existence was made public. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

The House voted 218-211 to removed Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee. It was a straight party-line vote except that one Republican voted present.

[N.E. Brigand]

Three Republicans have said they won't vote to strip committee assignments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (Democrat of Minnesota): Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been threatening to do so on the grounds of Omar having made some antisemitic remarks in the past (she has long since apologized for doing so). Four such dissents would keep her on the committees, and there are still some undecided Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican of Florida), who despite his far-right positions and a tendency to use inflammatory rhetoric about Democrats, and either despite or because he has dealt with a number of scandals of his own -- does generally seem to behave rather cordially toward at least some of Democratic colleagues. You may remember that when he unexpectedly announced that he had a previously unknown adopted adult son, a claim which many people did not find credible, he was defended by former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill of California -- who resigned after it emerged that she had had an affair with a campaign staffer -- who said that Gaetz had told her about his son before his existence was made public. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

The House voted 218-211 to removed Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee. It was a straight party-line vote except that one Republican voted present.

Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas says that he voted for Ilhan Omar's removal as revenge for Democrats having stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona from committees during the previous term. Both of them had made comments far worse than anything Omar ever said. Greene was removed from all committees in February 2021 by a vote of 230-199, with the majority including eleven Republicans, after it was found she had claimed that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were staged false flag operations -- the kind of thing that resulted in a billion-dollar judgement against Alex Jones. Only two Republicans (both now out of Congress) joined Democrats when Gosar was censured and then removed from committees in October 2021 after he shared an animated video in which he attacked President Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword.

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently this will be relevant soon: the District of Columbia permits one-party consent, so while it's certainly a betrayal of trust, as Rep. Geroge Santos says, to surreptitiously record a conversation, for example, while you're being interviewed for a job in their office, it's not a crime.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Relevant why?

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently this will be relevant soon: the District of Columbia permits one-party consent, so while it's certainly a betrayal of trust, as Rep. Geroge Santos says, to surreptitiously record a conversation, for example, while you're being interviewed for a job in their office, it's not a crime.

Relevant why?

This hadn't been published yet when I posted, but Santos had told another press outlet that it was coming:

"Leaked Audio And Staff Dispute Show Chaos Inside George Santos’ Office" (Talking Points Memo)

But really there's not all that much to it, although Santos does warn the clandestine recorder (who himself seems like a fairly dubious character) that "recording in this building is a federal crime." This part is probably the most notable bit:

“I’ve made bad judgment calls, and I’m reaping the consequences of those bad judgment calls,” Santos said.

“I’ve obviously fucked up and lied to him, like I lied to everyone else,” Santos later added, apparently referring to Lovett, the chief of staff. “And he still forgave me and gave me a second shot, unlike some other people.”

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is ultimately what is going to bring Santos down.

Prospective staffer files complaint accusing George Santos of sexual harassment

The headline says "sexual harassment" but that is a sexual assault as well.

[N.E. Brigand]

The would-be staffer said there were no other witnesses to what Santos (allegedly) did, and so: "It's simply going to be his word against mine."

In any trial of George Santos or Donald Trump in which they were to make the mistake of testifying, how much time could prosecutors devote to demonstrating their lack of credibility? Donald Trump is documented as having told something like 10,000 public lies just during his presidency. It would surely take a year or more to present each of his known falsehoods to a jury. Would there come a point at which the judge would just instruct the jury that they're allowed to assume anything Trump testifies to is untrue?

Santos by comparison is still early in his pathological career, so I'm sure prosecutors could demonstrate his inability to tell the truth in less than a month.

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Edited to add: for those who haven't followed the links: the man who has filed the complaints against Rep. Santos is Derek Myers, the same man who recorded the conversation with Santos in which his job offer was rescinded.

[N.E. Brigand]

George Santos shared a campaign treasurer with Lee Zeldin, the Republican who unsuccessfully ran to unseat New York's governor, Kathy Hochul.

As has been previously noted, a suspiciously large number of Santos's campaign expenditures were reported in the amount of $199.99, which is one cent short of the level for which a receipt is required.

CNN reported today that Zeldin's campaign filings similarly show "21 payments on a single day of exactly $199.99 each."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Santos' constituents.

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. George Santos and Sen. Mitt Romney had a verbal altercation last night. David Corn has some fun with that news:

[N.E. Brigand]

"George Santos was charged with theft in 2017 case tied to Amish dog breeders. The New York congressman had the charge dismissed and his record expunged after claiming his checkbook was stolen."

"Just days after $15,125 in checks were made out for 'puppies,' according to the memo lines, Santos held an adoption event at a Staten Island pet store with his animal rescue charity Friends of Pets United, according to the store’s Instagram account and a person who attended the event."

New York police "served him with an extradition warrant related to the Pennsylvania theft charge" in late 2019. He got a lawyer friend to write up an explanation about the stolen checkbooks -- that laywer says she now believes Santos was lying to her -- and then Santos went to Pennsylvania, where he apparently told prosecutors that he worked for the SEC. One way or another, his record was expunged in November 2021.