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The last days of George Santos’s tenure as a U.S. congressman were a lot like the first ones.

“Filled with hot air — just like him,” said Kelsey Herbert.

Herbert was standing in front of a 15-foot inflatable George Santos as it soared and tumbled across the National Mall. The effigy looked like a bloated bowling pin dressed for a funeral. Made of vinyl, it cost <a href="http://moveon.org/" target=_blank>MoveOn</a> $2,000, according to Herbert, the progressive group’s campaign director.

Six handlers struggled to control the unwieldy Santos in the biting 15-mph winds. Eventually, when it came time to end the stunt, they tried to deflate the thing by tackling it and shoving its giant, not-very-Santos-looking face into the grass. A few of them slammed their bodies onto the head with a rubbery thwap. “I’m tired of him, get down!” one staffer exclaimed as she jumped onto Santos’s neck and pummeled him with her fists.

Inside the Longworth House Office Building, staffers for the New York Republican tended to the dozens of signs acknowledging people kidnapped in Israel that hung around the door, updating the status of those freed over the weekend from “KIDNAPPED” to “RELEASED.” Vish Burra, a top Santos aide, solemnly pasted photocopies of letters from Yeshiva children on the wall. Some letters were posted twice, increasing the visual impact of the collage. “Dear George A.D. Santos, Thank you so much for your support for Israel” read one.

George A.D. Santos himself was nowhere to be seen.

“We’re playing ‘hide the asset,’” Burra told a woman with bright orange hair who had asked about the congressman’s whereabouts.

The woman, who knew Burra by name, thought this was a good idea.

“George is literally the canary in the DOJ coal mine,” she said.

To recap: The Department of Justice <a href="https://apnews.com/article/george-santos-credit-card-fraud-f723e69a777b02a2e6b87595f45c21ce" target=_blank>has charged the 35-year-old Santos with all manner of fraud</a>: wire fraud, credit card fraud, device fraud, plus “conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States.”

He has pleaded not guilty, and the case is set to go to trial next September, but his colleagues aren’t keen to wait that long before passing judgment on Santos. Earlier this month, the House Ethics Committee released a report that determined Santos had, among other things, spent campaign money on Hermès products, Botox, and OnlyFans, the subscription site known for adult content.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” wrote the committee’s investigators.

“I use cosmetic Botox and filler, that’s not a secret, did anybody ever doubt that?” Santos said in a sit-down with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/us/politics/george-santos-expel-debate.html" target=_blank>reporters</a> Thursday.

Jabin Botsford

Santos had previously called the report’s allegations “slanderous,” but the movement to expel him from Congress had gained steam nonetheless. On Tuesday, shortly after the demise of the Santos balloon on the Mall, Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) introduced a privileged resolution to set the process in motion. By noon on Friday, Congressman Santos would be formally deflated and sent packing by his colleagues, with more than 100 fellow Republicans joining the vote to toss him out of office.

“I think I’d love to not ever talk about George Santos again,” Garcia told a reporter on Tuesday, and then proceeded to talk about Santos a little more.

After all, who doesn’t love to talk about George Santos?

This is the paradox of Santos’s downfall. His <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/13/george-santos-lies/" target=_blank>falsehoods</a> and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/congressman-george-santos-charged-conspiracy-wire-fraud-false-statements-0" target=_blank>alleged crimes</a> have been bold enough to be galling, yet frivolous enough to be funny. Unlike a certain other Republican politician <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/trump-charges-jan-6-classified-documents/" target=_blank>whom the Justice Department recently charged with federal crimes</a>, Santos is not a presidential contender with an army of supporters.

“The fun thing about his story is that he’s not the president,” says Mark Chiusano, who started covering Santos in 2019 for Newsday and published a <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Fabulist/Mark-Chiusano/9781668043677" target=_blank>book</a> on Santos this week titled “The Fabulist.” “He’s not an executive. He is one person among many in Congress. He doesn’t have a ton of power at the moment.”

America may disagree on the political villains of our time, but a mostly powerless political villain is a court jester at best. Santos’s cartoonish face, in a protruding pout or gummy smile, has been immortalized in memes beloved by those on both sides of the aisle. (“My dream House of Representatives is 434 Democrats and George Santos,” a young Democratic staffer <a href="https://x.com/taliaswlcek/status/1726271468185469256?s=20" target=_blank>recently posted</a> to X, formerly Twitter.) “Everyone jokes about me,” Bowen Yang, the resident Santos imitator on “Saturday Night Live,” said in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXfpbfXSG6I" target=_blank>episode</a> of the show last month. “But you all know the truth: You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

Randy Holmes

“The sooner he’s gone, the better,” said actor Nelson Franklin, whose uncanny resemblance to Santos led to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np6xlLW2JqU" target=_blank>recurring bit</a> on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “I won’t be sad I won’t have the gig anymore.”

And yet, if someone ends up casting a Santos movie? “If I’m not considered for it, I’ll be mad.”

It’s a good story, all the better now that it’s ending. Santos’s political career harks back to the quaint idea that “Veep”-like behavior will lead, inevitably, to “West Wing”-style comeuppance.

“If there were one member of Congress that I’d want to read a book or see a movie about, it would be George Santos,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.). “If they could get the facts.”

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) has watched the Santos story unfold from a unique vantage point: He occupies the office next door in the Longworth building. At the beginning of the term, Santos was already a punchline for making up significant parts of his résumé, including a bizarre fib about having been a college volleyball player. Beyer decided to pay his new colleague a visit, in a neighborly way. “I would describe it as being New Testament-y,” Beyer said in an interview this week. “You’re supposed to visit the sick and imprisoned.”

He expected to find a “beleaguered” Santos, a “depressed and anxious” shell of a man. Instead: “He was charming,” Beyer recalled. “A total con man. Not a care in the world.”

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Beyer, who co-owned automotive dealerships with his brother, said he’d first learned to spot a con man in the car business. Could that be a promising line of work for Santos, after all this is over?

“Well in Virginia, if you’ve had a felony conviction, you can’t get a car salesman license,” Beyer said. “You can get a waiver, but the waiver’s got to be based on some years of good citizenship and things like that.”

He added, “I think, like any good con man, he could be effective at selling whatever he wants.”

Earlier this week, Santos told Brazil’s biggest newspaper, <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2023/11/george-santos-ganha-biografia-as-vesperas-de-sessao-que-pode-cassar-seu-mandato.shtml" target=_blank>Folha de São Paulo</a>, that he plans to write a book. He also indicated that he’d be open to a turn on “Dancing With The Stars,” should the opportunity arise. (Publicists for “Dancing With The Stars,” which has previously drafted such Republican politicos as Rick Perry, Tom DeLay and Sean Spicer, did not respond to a request for comment.)

Or maybe he could be like Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey, the faux European aristocrat who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/04/26/anna-delvey-convinced-manhattans-elite-that-she-was-wealthy-heiress-then-truth-emerged/" target="_blank">conned her way to a lavish lifestyle before being convicted of charges including grand larceny</a>. She later became <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/11/inventing-anna-delvey-sorokin-true-story/" target="_blank">the subject of a Shonda Rhimes series on Netflix</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/09/12/anna-delvey-fashion-week-party/" target="_blank">held an art show</a> for the sketches she’d done during her detention. Maybe she might have some wisdom to share about Santos’s next act?

“At this moment Anna has nothing to share on this topic,” a representative for Delvey wrote via email, “but please feel free to keep in touch in the future.”

Drew Angerer

The “asset” eventually emerged from hiding, and on Thursday morning he summoned reporters for an 8 a.m. news conference. Some of the journalists who showed up in the cold wondered if Santos was going to preempt the push to expel him by resigning.

Absolutely not, as it turned out. The only thing he had to announce was that he’d be introducing a privileged resolution to expel Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor earlier this fall after pulling a fire alarm.

“What a joke,” said Rep. Zachary Nunn (R-Iowa), a fellow freshman, when he passed by the scene.

Someone asked Santos: Why not just resign?

If he were to leave, Santos said, “the bullies” would take his place. He was pointing at the Capitol behind him with his thumb, but a garbage truck was passing by behind him.

Another question: Was anything the congressman wearing bought with campaign funds? Like, his shoes? Which happened to be Ferragamo, a brand where Santos spent $6,000 in campaign funds, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/16/george-santos-report-pdf-house-ethics-committee/" target=_blank>according to the House Ethics Committee report</a>?

The Congressman looked down at his navy loafers. “No, no, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. These are six years old.”

The loafers seemed in pretty good shape ...

“Go on the website! These are six years old.”

That afternoon, Santos was on the House floor for two hours of debate about his fate. The chamber was quiet and mostly empty, with more journalists packed into the gallery than members of Congress on the floor.

Still, a couple colleagues rose to defend him. Clay Higgins (R-La.) compared the expulsion of Santos to the burning of an alleged witch. Regarding the committee report that had outlined Santos’s possible criminal offenses, Higgins said, “It’s troubling to me that a Republican-led Ethics committee would present itself as so judgmental.” Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) also offered a spirited defense of Santos, though it seemed oddly focused on his OnlyFans and Botox expenditures. Santos let out an exasperated laugh, like he was at his own roast.

Raskin approached Santos to ask if he might use some of the Republicans’ allotted time to make a point: If Republicans were voting to expel Santos, Raskin said, he hoped it would also mean they would “immediately abandon Donald Trump” over the charges against him in federal and state court.

“I just don’t see how any Republican in good conscience can vote to expel George Santos, who’s like a Cub Scout engaging in shoplifting, compared to the things that Donald Trump has been doing and continues to do against the republic,” Raskin said after emerging from the chamber.

Raskin never got the chance to make that point. Santos had run out of allotted time.

By 5:30 p.m., Santos had returned to his office. His chief of staff walked down the hallway, pulling a giant dolly carrying three jugs of water, giving the scene a real bunker vibe. His neighbor Beyer walked by.

“Tomorrow’s finally the big day, huh?” he said.

The letters thanking Santos for supporting Israel had started to peel and slip off the wall.

Without much else left to do, Santos granted a brief interview.

“I love this place,” he said. “For me, it’s like a fever dream.”

He recounted a true fact about this upbringing: That he was a poor kid born in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens. “I never even thought it was possible until AOC did it.”

His eyes looked red. Maybe watery. “I’m not emotional,” Santos said, “I’m tired.”

He’d told reporters that it was his wedding anniversary, and that he had dinner reservations with his husband that evening.

But for now, he lurched back into his office. He wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) co-owns car dealerships with his brother. Beyer sold his stake several years ago. The article has been corrected.

Vassar College, BA in American studies

Northwestern University, MS in journalism

Kara Voght is a politics reporter for the Style section at The Washington Post, writing features and profiles that capture the political moment. She grew up in Eastern Connecticut and lives in Washington.

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Excellence in Feature Writing, Society for features Journalism

Brandeis University, B.A. in American Studies

Ben Terris is a writer in The Washington Post's Style section with a focus on national politics.

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Georgetown University, BS in Foreign Service

Georgetown University, JD

Jesús Rodríguez is a political reporter in The Washington Post's Style section, with a focus on features and profiles.

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Highlights from George Santos’s possible last week in Congress

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The last days of George Santos, U.S. congressman