He lied, for example, about attaining a bachelor’s degree from Baruch College and an MBA from New York University, when in fact he had not graduated from any college. He lied about working for major banks like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as a journalist for a Brazilian media outlet, and as a Broadway musical producer, when in fact he mostly worked as a call center representative. He misrepresented at best his purported Jewish ancestry to prospective donors and his constituents; he falsely said his maternal grandparents had survived the Holocaust when they did not even live in Europe at the time. I could go on and on and on.
The American people are well within their rights to vote for fabulists and con artists if they so choose. Donald Trump’s political career is built on that right. But Santos’s constituents did not have sufficient knowledge to make such a choice. The Republican Party failed to do basic due diligence before putting him forth as a candidate. The Democratic Party failed to conduct proper opposition research on him in either of his congressional runs. American journalists, with some notable exceptions, failed to properly investigate Santos’s background until after it was too late. The net effect of all these lies and failures is that through no fault of its own New York’s 3rd congressional district elected a person who didn’t really exist.
Those democratic concerns are also offset by the upcoming election. Expulsion, unlike impeachment, does not permanently disqualify someone from future office. If the voters of Santos’s district disagree with Congress’s decision to expel him, they are free to re-elect him to the House next fall. This time, at least, they will actually know who and what they are voting for.