Mace mocked George Santos's 'manufactured' résumé, voted against expelling him, then hired his communications director

On January 8, 2024, Fox News reported that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) had hired Gabrielle Lipsky, the former communications director for expelled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), into the same role in her own office.

The date was conspicuous. Exactly one year earlier, on January 8, 2023, Mace had gone on CBS's Face the Nation and said of Santos:

"It's very clear his entire resume in life was manufactured."

"It's very difficult to work with anyone who cannot be trusted."

A month later she mocked his most infamous lie at a Republican event: "I mean who lies about playing college volleyball? If you're going to lie make it about something big, like you actually won the 2020 presidential election."

Yet when the House voted 311 to 114 to expel Santos on December 1, 2023, the sixth expulsion in House history and the first of a member who had not been convicted of a crime, Mace voted no:

"George Santos is an a--, who, like every other American, deserves the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. Charges are not a conviction. Today's vote was not about accountability, which should have been in the hands of the courts and the people of NY-03. This was about shifting the balance of power in Congress, and I won't play those games."

Lipsky had resigned from Santos's office on November 17, 2023, the day after the House Ethics Committee released a report finding "substantial evidence" that Santos had "blatantly stole[n] from his campaign." Weeks later she went to work for Mace.

The hire landed in the middle of an exodus from Mace's own office. The Daily Beast reported that nine staffers left between November 2023 and early February 2024, among them her chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, legislative director, and the communications director Lipsky replaced. A former Mace aide told reporters it was "a big reason why she's only able to hire former George Santos staffers right now." Neither Mace's office nor Lipsky responded to requests for comment on the hire.

Lipsky stayed on as Mace's spokeswoman into late 2024 before moving to the Senate as a deputy communications director for Sen. Rand Paul. Santos, for his part, pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in August 2024 and was sentenced to 87 months in prison in April 2025; President Trump commuted that sentence in October 2025. By April 2026, with Mace leading a push to expel Rep. Cory Mills, Santos had turned on her, posting that "all former Nancy Mace staffers" should "come forward and shed light on the creature she really is."

Read more: George Santos · Gabrielle Lipsky: the full saga · the earlier dispatches on Mace calling Santos's résumé manufactured and voting against his expulsion

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