On Dec. 21, 2023, the United States House of Representatives voted 311-114 to expel Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress. Doing so was the first time a member had been expelled without a prior conviction of a crime since the Civil War.
While Santos eventually would plead guilty to identity theft and wire fraud and be sent to prison, his conviction was not necessary for his expulsion because Congress makes its own rules on how it treats it members. Article I, Section V, Clause II of the Constitution states, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.”
Fortunately, not many members of Congress have been expelled, but there have been some. In the House, there have only been six. Three of them — Reps. John Bullock Clark, D-Mo.; John W. Reid, D-Mo.; and Henry C. Burnett, D-Va. — were expelled during the Civil War. All three were elected to Union states but left to join the Confederacy. In 1980, Michael Myers was expelled after he escaped from a mental hospital and went on a killing spree. Wait, wrong Myers. Michael J. Myers, D-Penn., was expelled in 1980 after he was arrested in an FBI sting for accepting bribes. In 2002, James A. Traficant, D-Ohio, was expelled after being convicted of bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion. Finally, there was Santos in 2023. Six in 250 years is actually not that bad. The Senate, however, more than doubled that number.
While the Senate has expelled 15 senators, the number is a bit deceiving. Fourteen were expelled during the Civil War for supporting the Confederacy: Sens. James M. Mason, D-Va.; Robert M.T. Hunter, D-Va.; Thomas L. Clingman, D-N.C.; Thomas Bragg, D-N.C.; James Chesnut Jr., D-S.C.; Alfred O.P. Nicholson, D-Tenn.; William K. Sebastian, D-Ark.; Charles B. Mitchel, D-Ark.; John Hemphill, D-Texas; Louis T. Wigfall, D-Texas; John C. Breckinridge, D-Ky.; Trusten Polk, D-Mo.; Waldo P. Johnson, D-Mo.; and Jesse D. Bright, D-Ind. Ten of the names make sense as their states eventually seceded from the Union. Three of them, however — Breckenridge, Polk, and Johnson — were from Union states but left to serve the Confederacy. The most interesting of the group is Jesse Bright from Indiana.
Although he was a senior Democrat from a Northern state who served as president pro tempore when the Civil War began, Bright still strongly supported slavery.
On Aug. 17, 1861, Texan Thomas Lincoln was arrested trying to cross into the Confederacy with weapons and a letter from Bright to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The letter read, “Allow me to introduce to your acquaintance my friend, Thomas B. Lincoln of Texas. He visits your capital mainly to dispose of what he regards a great improvement in fire-arms. I recommend him to your favorable consideration as a gentleman of the first respectability, and reliable in every respect.”
When the Senate reconvened the following December, a resolution was passed to expel Bright. The five-man Judiciary Committee met and agreed with the charges. Senate debates were headed by Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican, who hated Bright. After a heated debate before a now Republican-controlled Senate, Bright made his closing remarks, gathered his belongings and left the chamber knowing he had lost. He was expelled by a vote of 32-14.
The only non-Civil War expulsion from the Senate occurred during John Adams’ administration. William Blount was appointed Governor of Tennessee by George Washington, and when Tennessee gained statehood, he was its first senator.
Falling into financial difficulties from land speculation, Blount hatched a scheme where Natives and British soldiers would attack Spanish Florida and Louisiana with hopes of claiming new land. When his plan was discovered, Adams himself wrote a letter to Congress asking them to use their powers to expel Blount. The Senate complied with a vote of 25-1, making Blount the first person expelled from Congress.
While expulsion is the extreme, this clause also allows Congress to “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour.” The two types of punishments used are censures for the Senate and censures and reprimands (a lesser censure) for the House. These are formal public rebukes, but while disciplinary actions, they do not remove the member from office or revoke their rights and privileges.
The Senate has only censured nine, the first in 1811 of Massachusetts Federalist Timothy Pickering for reading confidential material in open session, and the last in 1990 of David Durenberger, R-Minn., for unethical conduct relating to reimbursement of Senate expenses and acceptance of outside payments and gifts.
The House has had 23 censures and 10 reprimands. The first was in 1831 of Ohio National Republican William Stanbery for insulting the Speaker of the House, and the last was in 2025 of Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Trump’s joint session address. The most famous censure was in 1954 of Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., for his role in the Red Scare.
When our founders created Congress, they knew the body needed a way to police itself, so they borrowed the idea from Parliament. Yet, unlike Parliament, which only needs a majority to expel members, our founders wanted to protect the people’s choice of representatives by requiring a two-thirds vote. It is clear the protection worked, maybe too well. Outside of the Civil War, only four members of Congress have been expelled in its 236-year history, which honestly is probably not enough.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.
