Nothing to stop congressman-elect George Santos from taking office after countless fabrications exposed

Nearly all of his resumé has been shown to be a fabrication and there are serious questions about his finances, but there is nothing to stop a newly elected member of Congress from taking office.

Republican George Santos has not yet been sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives, but there are already calls for him to resign.

But without the nearly-unprecedented expulsion vote from two-thirds of Congress, he cannot be removed from office.

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Santos is now being investigated by state and federal authorities over his long list of mistruths about himself.

Yet there is nothing to stop him being sworn in next Tuesday as planned.

In order to be expelled from Congress, two-thirds of his colleagues need to vote for removal.

That has only happened 20 times in history, nearly all of them in 1861 and 1862 in relation to the Civil War.

The Republican caucus has a majority of just a handful of members, and thus far the party leadership has been silent on Santos.

He would also need to be sworn into office before he was expelled, if such a vote was to take place.

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If Santos is expelled or forced to resign, a special election would need to be held in his district, one that was won comfortably by Joe Biden.

And the Democrat who Santos beat, Robert Zimmerman, has been agitating for a rematch.

"George, if that's even your real name, if you're so convinced that (New York's Third Congressional District) voters still trust you - resign & run against me again in a special election," Zimmerman tweeted.

"Face the voters with your real past & answer questions about your criminal history."

Santos was swept into office in a suburban New York district, touting his business credentials and heritage as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors.

It has since been revealed his grandparents were Brazilian Catholics and two Wall Street firms he claimed to work for had no record of him as an employee.

He also lied about being a college graduate, attending a top preparatory school and having a Belgian mother.

There are also suspicions about the nature of his mother's death.

In July 2021 he said the September 11 attacks claimed his mother's life.

Five months later he tweeted that his mother died in 2016.

In another instance, the openly gay man claimed he had "never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade" but only three years earlier, he had been married to a woman.

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There is also an open criminal case in Brazil involving Santos.

He is accused of stealing two cheques from an infirm man in his mother's care.

Santos was charged with embezzlement but has not served any prison time.

But there's more recent financial claims that are more concerning to US investigators.

In 2020, he claimed he had no assets.

In 2022, he claimed to have a net worth of as much as $17 million from a business that does not appear to have any web presence.

He also claimed to have run an animal welfare charity called Friends of Pets United.

But the group was never registered as a charity.

He held at least one fundraiser for an animal rescue charity, but the beneficiary claimed Santos never donated the money.