McCarthy says Santos will be seated on committees

Updated: Jan 17, 2023 / 06:50 PM CST

(NewsNation) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday said Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) will be seated on committees even though the embattled freshman lawmaker admitted to embellishing parts of his resume.

Santos will serve on the small business committee, which oversees potential fraud within the PPP program. It’s possible that Santos will serve on another committee, as well, but McCarthy has said that he will not serve on national-security-related committees, according NewsNation affiliate PIX11 in New York City.

McCarthy said last week said Santos should not be on any top House committees — including Appropriations, Ways and Means, Financial Services and Energy and Commerce — but left the door open to seating him on other panels.

Santos has been at the center of a controversy on Capitol Hill following revelations that he fabricated portions of his resume and biography. The freshman congressman admitted to embellishing some details, but has said he has no plans to step down from Congress despite several calls for his resignation — including some from within the GOP.

McCarthy has stopped short of demanding that Santos resign from his seat, arguing that voters in New York’s 3rd congressional district sent him to Washington to serve.

“I try to stick by the Constitution. The voters elected him to serve. If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics, let him move through that,” McCarthy said, adding “he will continue to serve.”

On Monday, however, McCarthy did say he “always had a few questions” about Santos’s resume. The comments followed reports from CNN and The New York Times that said Dan Conston — an McCarthy ally who heads a PAC aligned with the Speaker — expressed concerns about Santos.

Asked about those comments and if he raised concerns about Santos during the campaign, McCarthy pointed to reports that someone working for the New Yorker impersonated the Californian’s chief of staff during his campaigns in 2020 and 2022.

“My staff raised concerns when he had a staff member who impersonated my chief of staff and that individual was let go when Mr. Santos found out about it,” McCarthy said Tuesday.