George Santos, assuming that’s his real name, is a classic type, and in another era he’d be selling miracle elixirs out of a horse-drawn wagon or perhaps founding a religion based on his divine revelations. Instead he went to Congress. On Friday the House expelled the indicted New Yorker, but however bad Mr. Santos’s conduct, it’s a worrying precedent for a polarized age.
Mr. Santos faces 23 federal charges, including fraud and identity theft. Yet he has pleaded not guilty, and even politicians get a presumption of innocence. Before Friday’s expulsion, which passed 311-114, only five people in history had been booted by the House. Three were removed in 1861 for serving the Confederacy. The other two, in 1980 and 2002, were convicted of serious crimes.
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