NEW YORK — Beleaguered Rep. George Santos will not accept appointments from key congressional committees amid ongoing ethics and campaign finance investigations, the Republican told colleagues Tuesday, and his office confirmed.
Santos was recently given seats on the House science and small business committees, but told colleagues at a closed-door Republican conference meeting that he won’t accept them until the issues are resolved, two people said. in the living room.
It was not immediately clear if he made the decision on his own or if other members of his conference influenced him or ordered him to revoke his committee assignments.
A spokesperson said only that it “has been reserved for viewing until campaign and personal financial investigations have been cleared up.”
Santos reportedly spoke with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night. McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The developments come as a new poll shows that even a majority of Santos’s voters want him out of office altogether.
But perhaps most damning is that an overwhelming majority of those who voted for Santos less than 90 days ago now say they would not have done so if they knew the truth.
In all, about 78% of registered voters in New York’s 3rd District want Santos to resign, according to the Newsday/Siena College poll. That includes 89% of Democrats, 72% of independents and 71% of his own Republican voters.
In fact, Siena pollsters divided respondents in 18 different ways, including by age, geography, religion and income, and in each of the 18 demographic segments, at least 70% of respondents wanted Santos to resign.
Only 13% of those surveyed say that Santos should not resign, and only 7% say they have an explicitly favorable opinion of the first-term congressman, whose list of admitted and accused lies and misdeeds has lengthened by the day since last month. .
Of those surveyed who admitted having voted for Santos last November, 63% said they would not have done so if they had known then what they now know about him.
The poll of 653 registered voters in District 3 was conducted January 23-26 and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
