Rep. George Santos, the scandal-ridden Republican congressman who was caught lying about significant swaths of his backstory, signaled early on Saturday that he intends to serve out his term representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Santos released a statement shortly after 2am on Saturday after he and the other members of the House of Representatives were sworn into the 118th Congress, following gridlock over the Speaker’s gavel.

The gay New York Republican has admitted to lying about having worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as the colleges he claimed to have attended. He is also accused of falsely claiming his grandparents were Jewish Holocaust survivors, and was married to a woman until shortly before he filed to run for Congress for the first time in 2020.

Both state and federal investigations have been opened into whether his questionable accounts led to any laws being broken.

But nevertheless, Santos said his work on Capitol Hill is ‘not about [his] personal life’ and called on Americans and fellow lawmakers to ‘put political differences aside.’ 

Later that same day, protesters lined up outside of Santos’ Queens, New York office to demand he be locked up and no longer represent their urban/suburban district.

‘I am committed to serving the people of New York’s 3rd Congressional District and finding solutions to solve tough problems,’ Santos said.

‘The work begins today, and I am determined to work with both Republicans and Democrats and support sound policy that will provide funding for local law enforcement, and reducing inflation.’

He continued, ‘Now is the time to put political differences aside, stop the finger pointing, and start delivering results.’

‘The work of Congress is not about my personal life, this is about delivering results for my constituents, finding bipartisan solutions, and reversing abysmal policies that have caused some of the worst inflation and crime in our nation’s history.’

Just hours after he was sworn into Congress, Santos’ Long Island constituents took to the streets of Queens to once again demand he stepped down from office. 

They screamed: ‘Lock him up!’ – a line originally used by former President Donald Trump in reference to Hillary Clinton‘s email scandal. 

‘It’s insane that he still has a job right now,’ one of the protesters told journalist Oliya Scootercaster. ‘He completely made up everything on his resume and he tried to excuse himself by saying everyone does that, but people like about lie about knowing excel when they only kind of know excel, you don’t lie about your family dying in the Holocaust or 9/11. 

‘That is so immoral.’ 

Among the protesters were Robert Zimmerman, his Democratic opponent, Assemblyman Edward Braunstein, and activist Jody Kass Finkel. 

‘My only focus and my only agenda is building a bipartisan coalition to remove George Santos from office. He is fraud and a danger to both our country and the citizens for our congressional district — if he name is actually George Santos,’ Zimmerman told the New York Post. 

Protesters took turns speaking at the rally and many times they were caught chanting as a group: ‘We deserve better!’ and ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ 

One protester accused Santos of ‘weaponizing’ the Jewish religion. 

To trivialize the million of lives lost to the Holocaust for personal political gain is disgusting,’ the man said. 

One of the biggest lies he made was that his mother died during 9/11. Now his former roommate Gregory Morey-Parker, who rented a room from Santos in Jackson Heights dismissed Santos claims. 

He said: ‘I’m fully confident that I would have known if Fatima was in 9/11. I am sure she would have brought [being in 9/11] up.’ 

Santos mother Fatima died in 2016 from cancer. 

Morey-Parker lived with the family in Queens and said he grew quite close to Fatima. While living with them, Santos went by the name Anthony Devolder. 

While living with the family, he said he experience Santos lying several times, including when he claimed his family owned a house on Nantucket and would often times say he bought a bottle of liquor for them to share when Fatima had actually bought it, he said, according to Patch. 

‘Santos had delusions of grandeur,’ he said. ‘Fatima would just roll her eyes and say: “Anthony and his stories.” His mother was just very not happy with him and his ridiculous lifestyle that he was portraying.’ 

George Santos could now face expulsion from the House of Representatives after a Democratic lawmaker took the step seeking to punish the freshman congressman after it was revealed he is a habitual liar.

Representative Robert Garcia introduced a resolution Thursday to make Santos only the sixth-ever member of the House to be expelled from Congress.

Specifically, Garcia says that Santos should not be privy to classified information he might come across as a congressman after it was proven that he cannot be trusted.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he hasn’t yet made up his mind whether he will support Garcia’s resolution, according to Punchbowl News.

‘I haven’t taken a position on the resolution and I haven’t read the resolution,’ Jeffries said.

He did, however, call Santos ‘a complete and utter and total fraud.’

A flurry of reports over the last few months, after Santos was elected to New York’s 3rd congressional district, reveal that he lied about several aspects of himself from his career resume, to his education, to his family’s ethnic background.

Garcia, who is gay, said Santos has caused ‘disgust’ within the LGBTQ community who feel he has represented them in a negative light.

‘The final straw was being given access to classified information,’ the California congressman told C-SPAN at the Capitol on Thursday. ‘You’re literally giving someone who’s a fraud and a liar access to America’s secrets.’ 

The expulsion prospect would likely include an investigation resulting in a referral for expulsion from the panel to the full chamber.

Democrats have levied increasing calls for action to be taken against Santos – and Republicans are starting to follow suit for the New York GOP lawmaker.

Expulsion is the most severe sanction Congress can levy on a member in the House or Senate.

Only five representatives have ever been successfully expelled from the House: Representatives John Clark and John Reid of Missouri; Henry Burnett of Kentucky; Michael Myers of Pennsylvania; and James Traficant of Ohio.

Clark, Reid and Burnett were expelled for taking up arms against the U.S. government in 1861. The next expulsion wasn’t until nearly 120 years later, when Myers was booted from the House by colleagues for taking bribes in an FBI operation. He was later sentenced to three years in prison.

Most recently, Traficant was expelled from the lower chamber in 2002 after he was convicted of ten felony counts, including accepting bribes, filing fraudulent tax returns, racketeering and forcing congressional staff to carry out chores at his Ohio farm and his houseboat in Washington, D.C.

He was released from prison in 2009 after serving a seven-year sentence.

Expulsion is really the only tool to remove a lawmaker from office without their constituents voting them out of their position.

Historically, the removal involves disloyalty to the U.S. or a violation of criminal law.

Before the step of expulsion is taken, there are two lesser actions either chamber can take to express disapproval of a member or their actions, including a reprimand and a censure.

While only five members of the House have been removed, 15 senators have been expelled from the upper chamber in U.S. history.

The disciplinary process for an expulsion or censure begins with a resolution referred to an appropriate committee. In the case of Santos this would likely be in the hands of the House Ethics Committee.