If Santos is expelled, it'll be more punishment than an 1850s lawmaker got for nearly beating a rival to death with a cane

• Rep. George Santos risks being ousted from Congress this week.
• Indicted on federal charges and with a damning ethics report to boot, he said he expects to go.
• By comparison, a lawmaker who attacked a rival in a racist frenzy in 1856 was not kicked out.

Rep. George Santos is facing a vote on Friday he accepts is likely to lead to him being ousted.

This would make him just the sixth person in history to be expelled from Congress, and the first not to have been convicted by a court.

Perhaps the most striking examples of a lawmaker who faced expulsion and survived was a 19th-century Congressman who nearly killed a rival in the Senate chamber.

That lawmaker was Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from antebellum South Carolina. He gained infamy assaulting the abolitionist Republican Senator Charles Sumner in 1856.

Brooks beat Sumner on the floor of the US Senate with a cane, a response to Sumner making an anti-slavery speech that disparaged one of Brooks's relatives.

The attack was so severe that Sumner nearly died. He was unable to return to work for some three years, and had lifelong disabilities.

The House tried to oust Brooks using a motion to expel — the same process Santos is facing. But the motion failing, falling short of the necessary two-thirds majority in the House.

Brooks resigned his seat, leaving it up to his constituents to judge whether he should still be in Congress.

They voted him back in a special election.

The Economist noted that the majority of successful expulsions took place before the Civil War.

Since then, only two lawmakers have been expelled from Congress — one for taking bribes and another after being convicted on federal corruption charges.

Santos, who is no longer seeking re-election, is yet to be convicted of a crime and is set to go on trial next September.

This follows a federal indictment on charges that include money laundering, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud.

According to the damning House Ethics Committee's report on Santos, he spent campaign cash on designer clothes, OnlyFans, and Botox.

"I know I'm going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor," he said on Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces.

He said he would consider his ousting a "badge of honor."