The last time we checked in on New York’s truth-challenged Representative George Santos, he had narrowly escaped a vote to expel him from the House. Despite a mounting list of federal charges against him, most of the Republicans in the House wanted to wait and let the Ethics Committee make the call after they finished their investigation. That plan mostly went up in flames last night when the committee finally released an advanced copy of its report to Santos and the committee chairman issued a statement about it. (The full report will be released to the public later.) The bottom line is that the Ethics Committee will not urge the removal of Santos from office, but they are also not recommending he be kept, either. They will simply turn over all of their findings and let the rest of the GOP make up their own minds, so the ball appears to be back in the Speaker’s court. (ABC News)

The House Ethics Committee will not recommend any punishment for embattled New York Republican Rep. George Santos in a public report it plans to release later this week after a monthslong investigation, Chairman Michael Guest said Wednesday.

Instead, the panel will release its evidence and details of its work for members to review and make their own conclusion about whether Santos should be removed from Congress, Guest, a Mississippi Republican, said.

An investigative subcommittee has contacted at least 40 witnesses, reviewed 170,000 pages of documents and authorized more than three dozen subpoenas as part of its investigation into whether Santos “engaged in unlawful activity” in his 2022 House campaign.

This is a puzzling decision in some ways. This investigation has been dragging on for months. The committee reviewed tens of thousands of documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses. The evidence against Santos was obviously compelling enough for the court to bring a boatload of charges against him. How did they manage to fail to come to a conclusion?

Chairman Michael Guest said that they did what they were able to do in the available time. But to reach a conclusion and make an official recommendation about possible expulsion would have required “a much longer process.” Perhaps they are being overly hesitant out of an abundance of caution. Or maybe they’re just trying to pass a hot potato. Either way, it will now fall to the new Speaker to make the call as to whether a vote will be held.

That’s probably not a task that Mike Johnson is looking forward to. Santos is clearly an ongoing embarrassment to the Party and he provides an easy target for the Democrats to criticize the GOP. But at the same time, Johnson is only hanging on to the majority by a slender handful of votes and Santos has been a reliable vote with the leadership. If he had ever gone off the ranch and started voting with the Freedom Caucus, he would probably already be back home.

The Speaker does have another option available now, however, thanks to the Ethics Committee. Having already stated that they would wait and allow the committee to decide the matter, the GOP leadership could conclude that they haven’t been given enough to go on to make a decision. They could launch their own review of the thousands of documents and witness testimony that the Ethics Committee collected. It would be an obvious dog and pony show, but it would buy them more time before having to give Santos the boot and keep his vote in their pocket for a while longer.

Going that path would carry an awful stench, however, and the Democrats would jump all over them for it. It’s probably better to just bite the bullet and schedule an expulsion vote after the Thanksgiving break. As long as they don’t “lose” any more members between now and next November they should at least be able to retain the majority. All of this news must have had some sort of impact on George Santos, however. After the report was released he announced that he won’t be running for reelection after all.