Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., told Newsmax Friday that he voted to expel embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., earlier in the day because he's an "embarrassment" who should have resigned months ago.
Kiley appeared on Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show" and defended his vote to expel Santos and censure Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Schiff was censured by the House in a 213-209 vote in July for comments he made several years ago about investigations into former President Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia.
"I voted to censure Adam Schiff," Kiley said, disputing host Salcedo's characterization of his vote. "He caused such grave damage to this country. I would encourage you to go back and watch the hearing with [special counsel] John Durham in which I took Schiff to task in that hearing for all of the lies that he told and how he promoted this hoax that caused enormous damage to our country, and you can go back and watch the coverage of that.
"There was a constitutional issue in one of the prior versions of that earlier resolution, which myself and some very staunch conservatives like [Rep.] Thomas Massie [R-Ky.] worked with the author, [Rep.] Anna Paulina Luna [R-Fla.], to fix. And so we did fix it and then we got a censure vote passed in the House.
"The alternative, if you pass something that's unconstitutional, what does he do, Chris? He goes and gets it thrown out in court and then claims vindication," he said. "Oh look, I did nothing wrong! So that was absolutely the right thing to do to hold him accountable.
"As far as Santos, there's a lengthy ethics report that's come out relating to the crimes that he committed," Kiley continued. "His treasurer has pled guilty and implicated him. The guy should have resigned months ago. I think he's an embarrassment to the institution, and now that that seat is vacant, by the way, Republicans actually have a chance to keep it.
"You have the major elections rating agency, the Cook Political Report, just move that seat up two notches in terms of the chances that Republicans will be able to keep it now that this has happened."
The House voted Friday to expel Santos following an ethics report on his conduct that accused him of converting campaign donations for his own personal use. He is just the sixth member to be expelled in the lower chamber's history. The vote was 311-114.
Kiley said that "it's time to move on" from censuring and expulsions and focus on the things that matter to everyday Americans.
"We've been doing a lot of censuring, a lot of these sort of resolutions that honestly are not addressing the things that are top of mind for Americans right now, which is we need to fix what's going on at the border," he said. "We need to get our economy back on track. We need to deal with crime that's going on in this country, and that's what I'm focused on."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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