• kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Let it be know that if you take office while actively committing fraud, embezzlement, and lying through your teeth about nearly every single detail of your life and accomplishments, the rest of Congress will ONLY let that slide for 11 months! You’ve been warned!

  • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Mike Johnson said “I personally have real reservations about doing this [expulsion], I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that.” Yes, let’s NOT set a precedent of holding politicians accountable for lies, fraud, and theft!

    It should be pretty easy to find the list of everyone else who voted not to expel, so we know who is pro-corruption.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Congress did an internal investigation and determined he likely broke the law. There you go.

        This is just like any other workplace.

        • rhythmicotter@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          The bar for losing your job as a congress person or any public servant for corruption should be way lower than the bar for being sent to prison.

      • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He said this well after the Ethics Committee released its findings. Santos was effectively shown to be guilty.

        In the previous attempts at expulsion, a lot of people voted against simply because the report wasn’t out yet. It would have set a dangerous precedent to vote to expel someone without proof of wrongdoing.

      • hglman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He literally was just convicted in a trial by his peers. His explosion is exactly the basis for common law including many of the points of the magna carta.

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    including stealing money from his campaign, deceiving donors about how contributions would be used

    I bet this was the real reason he was expelled. Congressmen rely on donations for their grift, and their donors were no doubt asking if they supported his practice.

    • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t even think that deceiving donors was the line. I think it was exactly what he bought. OnlyFans? Scandalous. Botox for a man? Shameful. If he’d bought guns and an F350, or just Venmo’d a high school student, he’d still a congressman.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Friendly reminder that OnlyFans talking about banning porn on their platform was just a cover to distract from the news story about them allowing users hosting child porn, prostitution and other illegal material to get away with warnings, so long as their accounts were profitable.

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Because it’s illegal to solicit prostitution in most countries. The other common illegal content was scat. That was the point of the exposé, to highlight that they were allowing illegal users making illegal content on their platform to get away with warnings - I mean, how can you merely warn someone who is underage that they should stop posting underage content?!

            • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Fair enough, though it does still seem a bit odd to list prostitution in particular. Whats the joke? If you fuck while recording it it aint prostitution.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. It’s like Bernie Madoff. Bernie was doing the same thing as everyone else in 2008, but his clients were all rich folks. He went to jail. The hilarious thing is that Donald Trump was interviewed about Bernie and even Donnie had to admit that it was mostly victimless, because everyone Madoff had stolen from could afford the loses.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Bernie is an interesting case. As part of his guilty plea, he admitted that from around 1990 onward, basically every transaction in his company was fraudulent. The actual start was probably at the beginning of his company in the '70s.

        What makes that interesting is that his clients weren’t just rich, but experienced. They knew how to smell out a con. He was able to keep his claims just plausible enough that they didn’t notice for decades.

        A lot of Ponzi schemes will claim 300% or 5000% percent returns in a year. Experienced investors know that’s bullshit; maybe you can get lucky in one or two trades, but it’s never sustainable. The SP500 will tend to give you returns of 8% or so in the long run (with plenty of year to year variation), and it’s hard to beat that while accounting for transaction costs. Bernie was claiming 15-20%, which is good, but not crazy.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          imho, they all knew it was a scam, but they all figured that they were the insiders and only the rubes were getting fleeced.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Bernie was doing the same thing as everyone else in 2008, but his clients were all rich folks.

        CITATION NEEDED

        Lots of companies were using legal but sketchy as hell financial instruments and over inflating safety on investments where lots of people lost lots of money. Bernie was different. He was creating fraudulent statements saying you had money in your account with him for years and only paying out with what other new investors put in; classic Ponzi scheme.

        What other large Ponzi schemes at the time are you saying were occurring?

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Pffft, big whoop, he’ll go back to being CEO of Goldman-Sachs and owner of the Denver Broncos, this is barely a speedbump.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      **Took them long enough. But the bad thing about this is that it was at all.necessary. A criminal should not join the house, and if found out should immediately resign on his own. But he stuck to the seat and it took ages to get rid of him.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sorry, as a Jew, I’m not really seeing the comedy in a guy pretending to be descended from Holocaust victims and then passing it off as a joke.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Are you seriously saying that I support Israel’s genocide because I’m a Jew?

            I’m not an Israeli, I’m an American. I have no interest in Israel at all. You do know that not all Jews are Israelis, right?

      • pheet@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Either you are not american or you are the type who thinks burning this to the ground is always somehow the easier and better way to fix things.

          • orcrist@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            And yet no, they really aren’t. The criminal charges are not something most of his contemporaries are facing.

          • mriormro@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, every day I lose more and more hope in our citizens.

              • mriormro@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                congress is a full of utter scum. they just expelled poorer and less successful guy - seriously qui bono?
                im not not the only one who thinks that - congress approval is at 15 %

                This isn’t a fucking wrestling show. What happens in there has very real, very deep ramifications for everyday working people out here. Your contempt isn’t protest or positive political action and only serves to minimize the effort, blood, sweat, and tears of people putting in the hard work to organize and mobilize in order to help their constituents and communities. If you don’t like how things are then either get out there and fucking do the work to help us change it for the better or sit the fuck down and stop trying to be an irl 4chan edgelord.

          • pheet@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            This guy, given his proven baseline morals, would’ve become one of the worst in terms of corruption.

              • pheet@sopuli.xyz
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                11 months ago

                My point is how much he lied about himself, misled his own voters, I don’t see how he would’ve been less corrupt given a bit time. I’m pretty sure it generally holds that a new comer is less corrupt than when he/she is an old timer.

  • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    311 to 114
    The house has a Republican majority, you really have to fuck up for them to break the 11th commandment.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Funny story about Reagan and the ‘11th Commandment.’

      Back in the day, a group of Dem women approached their GOP counterparts with a story about Nestle’s Africa operations. Basically, Nestle was tricking poor women by giving away free formula to new mothers. The supply lasted until the mothers stopped lactating, then they had to pay full price. This meant that the babies were not getting enough food at the time they needed good nutrition the most.

      The GOP women wanted the Party to stand up to Nestle, but Reagan talked thme down, and explained that conservatives shouldn’t shaft one another.

      Later on, Reagan attacked President Ford for sticking by the treaty that returned the Panama Canal. There was no way Ford could renege on the treaty, but it made Reagan look like a tough guy.

      • TrumpetX@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Ohh, that news story in “For All Mankind” makes a lot more sense. Alternate timeline, we didn’t give it back.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          It was the 1980s version of ‘The War On Christmas.’ The treaty had been signed decades before, and handing over the Canal meant nothing strategically. WW3 wasn’t going to be decided by a big naval battle. It was pure grandstanding, but Ronnie managed to orchestrate it to perfection

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “It almost would have been a dereliction of my duty if I did not support this,” Guest said Friday. “I did what I felt was right from a personal point of view.”

    It absolutely would have been yet another dereliction of your duty.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    311 to 114… And they only needed 290 to bounce him. +21 more than necessary!

    Apparently we CAN work together!

    • kboy101222@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Scott (VA) and Williams (GA) voted Nay

      Green (TX) and Jackson (IL) voted present. Couldn’t give you a reason though

      Jackson Lee (TX) and Phillips (MN) were not voting for some reason as well as AOC who I suspect didn’t vote since she’s also a NY member

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s probably time to check those closets for some skeletons. AOC at least makes a little sense, not wanting to make it seem personal, but I would have rather she ran up the score.

          • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            She’s become a bit of an establishment Republic recently, the thing she’d rally against. The defense is that you need to play their game to get anything done. Ok, but if she’s playing their game, she’s already lost.

      • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Jackson Lee (TX) and Phillips (MN) were not voting for some reason as well as AOC who I suspect didn’t vote since she’s also a NY member

        Out of NY’s 26 Representatives in Congress 22 voted to oust Santos and 3 (including Santos himself) voted to keep him in. AOC was the only NY Representative who chose not to vote. I wonder why she abstained.

        Source

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The House on Friday voted to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from Congress — an action the chamber had taken only five times in U.S. history and not for more than 20 years — in response to an array of alleged crimes and ethical lapses that came to light after the freshman lawmaker was found to have fabricated key parts of his biography.

    The vote followed the release two weeks ago of a 56-page Ethics Committee report that accused Santos of an array of misconduct — including stealing money from his campaign, deceiving donors about how contributions would be used, creating fictitious loans and engaging in fraudulent business dealings.

    Santos, the report alleges, spent hefty sums on personal enrichment, including visits to spas and casinos, shopping trips to high-end stores and payments to a subscription site that contains adult content.

    A defiant Santos has long denied wrongdoing and resisted calls to resign, claiming at a news conference Thursday that fellow House members were “bullying” him and that the Ethics Committee report was incomplete and “littered with hyperbole.”

    During House debate Thursday over the resolution, Guest defended the work and report of the panel, saying investigators spent eight months reviewing 172,000 pages of documents and interviewing 40 witnesses.

    During long-winded remarks on X Spaces last week, Santos — despite saying he would not step down from office — said he no longer wanted to work with “a bunch of hypocrites” in Congress, whom he accused of committing infractions more severe than his, including being “more worried about getting drunk every night” with lobbyists.


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