George Santos hid in his office from constituents petitioning him to resign

Out gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) hid in his district office behind a police barricade on Wednesday as he refused to meet with a “mob” of 25 local constituents who brought a petition calling on him to resign.

Santos has reportedly started spending on his 2024 reelection campaign despite previously promising not to run. Meanwhile, top Republicans hope he gets the boot, lest he doom the party’s chances in the 2024 election.

Related:

Did George Santos marry a woman to help her get US citizenship?

The House Ethic Committee is being asked to investigate Santos’s marriage to a Brazilian woman.

The group of constituents assembled outside of his office in Douglaston, Queens holding signs that said “Enough lies. Expel Santos now,” and “Make NY3 Santos free.” (Santos represents New York’s Third Congressional District.) The group called for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to hold a vote to remove Santos.

“At the end of the day, George Santos is nothing more than a pariah,” said one constituent recorded by WABC-TV. “He has no credibility with his GOP colleagues and he has no credibility with any representatives in the House. How is he going to fight for me and everything I need as his constituent?”

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A member of Santos’s staff turned the group away, saying that Santos was in the building but wouldn’t speak to a “mob,” The Independent reported.

“It’s incredibly cowardly to hide behind his staff. It’s part of his job to meet with us,” Emily Raphael, one of the constituents, said. “He’s trying to paint us as some wild-eyed protesters. You could not find a less threatening group of people if you tried.” She said the group was “mostly PTA moms.”

In a statement, Concerned Residents of NY03 wrote, “We question the motives of the national GOP in allowing Santos to run, in seating him, and in not moving rapidly to oust him. The timeline shows that Speaker McCarthy and Rep. Stefanik knew a year before the election that Santos was a fraud, and had at least five months to replace him with a credible candidate.”

So far, McCarthy has refused to hold a vote to remove Santos, saying that Santos may face an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. “If Ethics finds something, we’ll take action,” McCarthy said earlier this month.

In a letter sent to Santos, the Federal Election Commission said that the congressman had already “accepted contributions and/or made expenditures in support of [his] 2024 candidacy.” These financial actions have occurred even though he said he wouldn’t run for re-election, WABC-TV reported last month.

Senior Republicans in D.C. and New York have begun organizing to prevent Santos from running as his district’s candidate in 2024, CNN reported. They worry that Santos’ presence on a ballot could harm the electoral chances of other Republicans running for hotly contested seats.

“George Santos will not be on any ticket in 2024,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY), a congressional freshman.

“I am confident that George Santos will not be on any ticket come 2024,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) added. “I am confident that we’ll do everything in our power to make sure we have the right candidate, the honest candidate, the truthful candidate, and the one who was honest about his entire being.”

However, congressional Republicans also told the aforementioned news outlet that they don’t want Santos to resign early because, if he does, it would trigger a special election in his district that could cause his seat to be won by a Democrat, further shaving away at the Republicans’ already-slim majority in the U.S. House.

Santos has admitted to lying to “everyone” about his largely fabricated personal history. He has admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and living at a fake address in his congressional district.

He has provided no additional proof to back up claims that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, that he attended Horace-Mann college preparatory school, and that he is legally married to the man he currently refers to as his husband. He also claimed his Jewish grandparents fled Nazi persecution in Ukraine, but genealogical records showed that his grandparents were born in Brazil. Santos has since claimed that he’s not Jewish, but rather “Jew-ish.”

While Santos recently claimed that he’s all done telling lies, it seems like the Department of Justice has opened “an active criminal investigation” into the congressman’s campaign finances. Santos recently stepped down from his congressional committee assignments over worries that he’ll be a “distraction.”