Rep. Marc Molinaro, whose district includes Binghamton, voted with a House supermajority Friday to expel Rep. George Santos — who represents Long Island’s Nassau County — from Congress. Santos is the sixth person ousted from the House of Representatives, the first in over 20 years.

The vote follows the House Ethics Committee’s Nov. 16 report, which adopted an investigative subcommittee’s findings that there was “substantial evidence” that Santos intentionally misled the Federal Elections Commission with false or incomplete reports, used campaign funds for personal purchases and willfully violated ethics laws. With a two-thirds supermajority required for the expulsion of a member, the vote was 311 in favor to 114 opposed, with two voting present and eight absent.

Today’s vote, the third since May, was loudly supported by a group of New York congressmen, including Molinaro and Reps. Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Brandon Williams and Nick Langworthy. Outside Congress, Santos faces a litany of federal charges, including wire fraud, falsifying records and making “materially false statements” to the FEC, aggravated identity theft, access devices fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to the House of Representatives.

“I voted to expel [Santos] not only because he is a fraud and a liar, but because he stole campaign donations to personally benefit,” Molinaro wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “He should not serve in the House of Representatives.”

The resolution was introduced by Rep. Michael Guest, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the Ethics Committee, the day after the report’s publication.

Molinaro’s support for expulsion extends back to the earliest days of his tenure before he took office. In January, after multiple news outlets reported on Santos’s largely falsified background [HYPERLINK https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html], Molinaro called Santos “dishonest” in a statement to the Ithaca Voice, casting doubt on Santos’s ability to represent his district.

“My future former colleague is divorced from reality,” Molinaro said on the House floor. “He has manufactured his entire life to defraud the voters of his district and on his choice, for a member of Congress.”

Santos was elected in 2022 in a wave year for New York Republicans. Soon after, questions began swirling over Santos’s background, leading to the ethics investigation, which began in May. The Ethics Committee, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, said that Santos’s conduct “[warranted] public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office and has brought severe discredit upon the House,” in a press release.

As the House debated the resolution yesterday, a defiant Santos defended himself on the floor, arguing the vote would set a harmful precedent, as every member priorly expelled was either convicted of a crime or had joined the confederacy. He previously announced that he would not seek reelection.

“To hell with this place,” Santos said after the vote succeeded.

With Santos’s expulsion, Republicans, who possess 221 seats to Democrats’ 213. His office, returned to the control of the House clerk, will require a special election to fill, which New York state Gov. Kathy Hochul must call within 10 days. Tom Suozzi, who Santos succeeded after the former ran for governor, has already declared his campaign for his old seat.