House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Saturday that he plans to tee up a formal vote on the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, calling it a “necessary step.”

“We’re being stonewalled by the White House, because they’re preventing at least two to three DOJ witnesses from coming forward, a former White House counsel, the national archives … the White House has withheld thousands of pages of evidence,” Johnson said in an interview on Fox News.

“I think it’s something we have to do at this juncture,” Johnson added.

The speaker’s comments came after several Republicans predicted Friday that a vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry would come before the House breaks for December recess.

The Biden administration has argued that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate since it has not yet been formalized by a House vote. Such a vote is not technically required, but has been used in the past to legitimize the process.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday called the House vote to expel former Rep. George Santos a “regrettable day,” lamenting what he viewed as an affront to due process principles and the rule of law.

The House voted Friday to expel Santos 311-114, with 105 GOP members joining Democrats to oust their fellow Republican.

“We allowed [House Republicans] to have a vote of conscience,” said Johnson in an interview with Fox News. Johnson opposed Santos’ expulsion.

Santos’ tenure in Congress has been scandal-ridden: He initially told bold-faced lies about his education and resume. A recent House Ethics Committee report found substantial evidence that Santos used his House campaign for his own personal benefit, misusing funds and misleading donors. He now faces a 23-count federal indictment that accuses him of stealing the identities of campaign donors and using their credit cards in unauthorized charges.

However, Johnson noted, Santos has not yet been convicted on any of these charges.

“Our party believes in the rule of law and due process,” he said, arguing that expelling Santos was in conflict with Republican values.

Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik said during the joint interview that members who supported Santos’ expulsion had expressed concerns over the Ethics committee report’s findings. She dismissed questions about the dent in the already slim Republican majority and expressed optimism that the seat would be filled by another Republican.

“We saw a red wave on Long Island at the local level, so we’re very optimistic that we’ll have a strong candidate to join our Republican majority in February or March,” Stefanik said.

Sen. John Fetterman argued Friday that the successful expulsion of George Santos from the House should make clear that Sen. Bob Menendez, who is facing his own legal troubles, should not remain in his Senate seat.

Fetterman (D-Pa.) said on ABC’s “The View” Friday morning that he was “not surprised” Santos (R-N.Y.) was removed from Congress, but noted that “the more important picture is is that we have a colleague in the Senate that actually did much more sinister kinds of things.”

“Senator Menendez needs to go, and if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?” Fetterman asked. “He has the right for his day in court and all that but he doesn’t have the right to have those kinds of votes and things that — that’s not a right. And I think we need to make that kind of decision to send him out.”

Menendez “is really a senator for Egypt, not New Jersey,” Fetterman added.

In a statement to POLITICO, Menendez said “Mr. Fetterman appears to think he’s judge, jury, and executioner. The junior Senator from Pennsylvania seems to be more interested in clickbait than justice.”

“He cannot say he stands for core constitutional principles of due process and the presumption of innocence when he is actively working to undermine my rights. I’m confident when all the facts are presented, I will be exonerated and the Senator will have to eat his words,” Menendez continued.

Fetterman has previously called for the New Jersey Democrat’s resignation and said that he’d be open to backing Menendez’s expulsion, given his refusal to step down. Fetterman’s remarks Friday came after a bipartisan vote to expel Santos after a damning House Ethics Committee report accused the first-term lawmaker of misusing campaign funds.

Menendez was first indicted along with his wife on federal bribery and extortion charges in September for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible and home mortgage payments in exchange for using the senator’s position to benefit the businesspeople and the government of Egypt between 2018 and 2022. In October, federal prosecutors accused him of secretly acting as an agent of the government of Egypt, while serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The senator has pleaded not guiltyto all charges.

Although other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, including New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, have also issued calls for Menendez’s resignation over the allegations, Fetterman has repeatedly raised his objections.

In October, Fetterman tweeted “would it be awkward to attend a classified briefing on Israel when you’ve been accused of being a foreign agent for, let’s say, a country like Egypt. Asking for a friend,” in a clear dig at Menendez. In November, Fetterman introduced a resolution that would strip senators indicted on offenses such as mishandling classified information or being a foreign agent of their committee assignments and other privileges.

George Santos’ eviction from Congress on Friday kicks off a special election that could be an early indicator of which party has the upper hand in the battle for the House next year.

The race will play out on Long Island, the site of Democrats’ most excruciating 2022 faceplant and the place where Republicans effectively weaponized rising crime rates. The outcome could portend Democratic strength in 2024 — or signal that Republicans’ ascendance there is not a fluke and that the pall of Santos won’t threaten their gains. Democrats, at least, are expected to pour tens of millions into efforts to win back the seat and earn redemption.

“It’s going to be the spotlight that everyone is looking at,” said Rep. Greg Meeks, who as Queens Democratic Party chair will help choose a nominee. “We were surprised when we lost the seat in the first place.”

Party bosses have already begun vetting prospective candidates, and they will select their respective nominees ahead of a special election that is expected in February. Democrats appear likely to select Tom Suozzi, the district’s former incumbent who retired from Congress in 2022 to run an unsuccessful primary campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul. Armed with name ID in a prohibitively expensive media market, he would be a formidable candidate.

The shortlist for the GOP nominee includes Mike Sapraicone, a retired NYPD detective, and Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian-born veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, according to people familiar with the selection process granted anonymity to disclose internal party deliberations. Sapraicone has a long background as a cop and has some ability to self-fund, while Pilip has a compelling personal story that’s especially timely given the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine.

“All eyes are going to be on New York, District Three,” said Sapraicone, who said he has urged Nassau County GOP Chair Joe Cairo to select him. “The chairman knows he needs to win this election and how important it is to the United States, to the Republican Party.”

The midterms in New York last year were a Democratic nightmare, a rare dark spot in an election cycle where the party overperformed. Had Democrats held onto more seats in the blue state of New York, they might have defied the odds and kept their House majority. Losing Santos’ seat was particularly galling because President Joe Biden carried the district by nearly 9 points in 2020.

Republicans tore through Long Island, picking up Santos’s seat and that of Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and cementing total control of the congressional districts there. Three more GOP candidates captured Democratic-leaning territory upstate. All ran heavily on crime-themed messaging.

Democrats spent much of the off-year sifting through what went wrong, especially on Long Island, where Republicans yoked their opponents to the unpopular Hochul and rising crime rates. The special election will offer a chance to test their findings. Party leaders have been working through messaging on abortion, crime and an unpopular cap on local and state tax deductions.

“There have been many, many conversations and autopsies and therapy sessions,” said retired Rep. Steve Israel, a former House campaign chair who once represented a version of Santos’ district. “The one thing that’s clear is that Long Island has, up to now, been disappointing to Democrats, and it’s going to be hard to win back the House without reversing that.”

The party’s midterm post-mortem looked at areas for improvement. Part of it critiqued voter turnout in diverse communities in the district, according to Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.).

Meeks, who also participated in the autopsy, said that Democrats may have focused too much on issues of national significance like abortion rights at the expense of local issues, including the state and local tax deduction (SALT) and rising crime.

“That was what we led with because we knew how significant and important it was and it still is,” Meeks said. “But we’ve also got to emphasize on top of that, what the basic local issues are.”

Some of the 2022 baggage will be gone next year. Hochul may have been a drag on Democrats in 2022, when she was running against former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), who represented Long Island in Congress and offered down-ballot coattails. But it will be hard for Republicans to yoke Suozzi to her — assuming he is the nominee — after he challenged her last cycle.

And in Congress, Suozzi cut a more moderate profile and had been part of a group of House Democrats who had pushed hard to include a repeal of the SALT deduction cap in their party-line social spending package.

“I’m with Tom Suozzi. We like Tom Suozzi,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), who called him a “law and order candidate.”

The New York districts have also been of particular interest to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his team. Top Democrats have vowed to dedicate considerable resources toward recapturing the Biden-won districts there, some of which are in Jeffries’ own backyard. House Majority PAC, a Democratic group with ties to Jeffries, is also closely watching the race.

“House Majority PAC plans to play a significant role in the NY-03 special election, and we will do whatever it takes to flip this district blue,” the group’s president, Mike Smith, said in a statement.

None of the likely GOP candidates have Suozzi’s name ID — a priceless commodity in the prohibitively expensive New York media market.

In a statement, the National Republican Congressional Committee said it would be “monitoring the district closely in concert with state and county parties” but made no overt commitment to spend. Savannah Viar, a spokesperson for the committee, slammed Democrats’ attempts to gerrymander the state.

For Republicans, the race provides a real chance for them to continue their dominance on Long Island. Local elections in 2023 were a resounding success for them. They won control of the Long Beach City Council, the North Hempstead Town Board and the Suffolk County executive.

“Republicans control pretty much every bit of government from the city line all the way to Montauk,” said D’Esposito, who flipped a Democratic seat on Long Island last fall. “It’s clearly no fluke. Nassau County is a bright shade of red.”

But playing in a special election comes at a heavy price for Republicans. They will need to defend several New York districts in fall 2024, and any spending in the special election reduces the funds available later that year.

Plus, voters could hold Republicans responsible for Santos’ laundry list of alleged crimes and falsehoods.

“It makes it tougher,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the NRCC, conceded of Santos’ legacy, though he cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from a special election held months before November.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

‘Woman beater’: Santos attacks Rep. Max Miller ahead of expulsion

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‘I no longer have to answer a single question’: Santos reacts after expulsion

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George Santos became the sixth person to be expelled from the House on Friday after the New York Republican’s fellow lawmakers successfully voted him out.

The first-term congressmember had been embroiled in controversy before he even set foot in the U.S. Capitol. Last month, the House Ethics Committee released a report stating they’d found “substantial evidence” supporting federal prosecutors’ charges against him, which include allegations of identity theft, making charges on donors’ credit cards without their authorization and submitting false campaign reports.

Santos continued to publicly defend himself up until just hours before the vote. Here’s a look at how he spent his last (approximately) 24 hours in Congress:

Santos refuses to resign in Thursday morning press conference

Early Thursday morning, Santos held a press conference in front of the Capitol and remained defiant that he would not resign from Congress.

Santos declined to comment on the allegations against him, which also include that he used campaign funds for Botox, lavish trips to Atlantic City and OnlyFans. At the press conference, Santos said House members were “bullying” him by trying to expel him from Congress.

“The reality of it is it’s all theater. It’s theater for the cameras, it’s theater for the microphones, it’s theater for the American people at the expense of the American people because no real work’s getting done,” Santos said.

At the press conference, Santos told reporters that he planned to introduce a resolution to expel Rep. Jamaal Bowman because the New York Democrat pulled a fire alarm in a congressional office building in September during government funding bill talks. Bowman has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

“No one in Congress, or anywhere in America, takes soon-to-be former Congressman George Santos seriously,” Bowman responded in a statement.

Santos argues with Miller on the House floor

Ahead of the House debate Thursday on the resolution to expel Santos, the New York Republican told his colleagues that he supported the move to hold the vote.

Later on, Santos got into a heated floor discussion with Rep. Max Miller, who called Santos a “crook.” Santos referenced past allegations of alleged abuse in a relationship by Miller, calling the Ohio lawmaker a “woman beater.” Miller has forcefully denied those allegations, suing the woman for defamation but voluntarily dropping the lawsuit earlier this year.

On the floor, Santos followed up on his word and introduced a resolution to expel Bowman from Congress.

Santos on Fox Friday morning: ‘I’ve accepted the fate’

Hours before the Friday morning vote, Santos said in a Fox News appearance that he believes the House has the votes to expel him and that he’s “accepted the fate.”

“I believe that if God’s will to keep me, I will stay, if it is his will to leave, and I will leave and do so graciously,” Santos said.

Santos also said the vote to expel him “sets a dangerous new precedent for the future and it’s the demise of this body eventually.”

Santos ahead of vote: ‘If I knew the future, I’d play the lotto’

Following his Fox appearance, Santos was confronted in a House building hallway by a reporter who asked him if Friday would be his last day in Congress.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. If I knew, I’d play the lotto. If I knew the future, I’d play the lotto today. I’d be a lot more productive,” Santos said.

Santos didn’t have a message to his fellow New York Republicans who have called him a “liar” or “fraudster” but suggested that reporters should look into those lawmakers’ pasts instead.

Santos quickly exits the Hill after expulsion vote

Santos was voted out of the House with 311 members voting yes, 114 members voting no and two members voting present. 105 Republicans voted to expel the New York Republican.

“As unofficially already no longer a member of Congress, I no longer have to answer a single question,” Santos said as reporters followed him out of the building after the vote. “That is the one thing that I’m going to take forever.”

Santos then jumped into a Jaguar SUV that headed off Capitol grounds.