Former Rep. George Santos announces his candidacy in East End congressional district

George Santos, the disgraced former congressman expelled from the House of Representatives in December, last night announced he will challenge Rep. Nick LaLota for the Republican nomination in the First Congressional District.

Santos made the announcement in a social media post during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. He was seated on the House floor during the joint session of Congress last night, exercising his floor access privilege as a former representative. 

Santos filed a statement of candidacy form with the Federal Election Commission yesterday.

Elected in 2022 to represent NY-03, Santos was expelled from the House in a two-thirds bipartisan vote on Dec. 1, after a House Ethics Committee report found there was “substantial evidence” Santos had violated federal criminal laws, stole from his campaign and deceived donors to obtain contributions he used for his personal benefit.

Santos is taking aim at one of the first Republicans in Congress to call for his resignation. LaLota, who was also elected in 2022, called on Santos to step down less than two weeks after they both took office last January. LaLota voted in support of referring Santos to the House Ethics Committee and later cosponsored a resolution to expel him from the House.

In a post on the social media platform X announcing his run at LaLota, Santos last night called NY-01 representative a “RINO” and “an empty suit” who is “willing to risk the future of our majority and the future of this country for his own political gain.” 

LaLota quickly fired back. “To raise the standard in Congress, and to hold a pathological liar who stole an election accountable, I led the charge to expel George Santos,” he posted on X within an hour of Santos’ announcement. “If finishing the job requires beating him in a primary, count me in.” 

New York’s primary election is scheduled to take place June 25.

Santos is facing 23 federal felony charges, brought last year in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, including conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission, falsifying records and making false statements in a House Disclosure Report. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His criminal trial is scheduled for September.

The 35-year-old former congressman, who lives in Queens, represented NY-03, a district that takes in parts of Queens and Nassau counties. It was his second run for the seat. Santos had challenged the Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi in 2020, but lost by a wide margin. Two years later, the seat was vacated by Tom Suozzi, who decided to run for governor rather than seek re-election to Congress. Santos, who was unopposed for the Republican nomination, defeated Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman by 8 points in November 2022.

Though a local newspaper, The North Shore Leader, called Santos out for claims he made about past employment and personal wealth and his campaign finance disclosures. In an editorial endorsing Zimmerman, the paper called Santos “bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy” and “most likely just a fabulist—a fake.” 

Santos’ candidacy faced little scrutiny from major news media until after the election, when reports began to surface that many of his claims about his biography were false. The New York Times reported that Santos “had misled, exaggerated to or lied to voters about much of his life, including his education; his career; his check fraud case in Brazil; his animal charity; being a landlord; the 2020 election results; and his ties to the Holocaust and Judaism, the Sept. 11 attacks and the Pulse nightclub shooting.” The Times published a summary of Santos’ “Lies, Charges and Questions Left” on the day of his expulsion.