Senators from both parties demanded Thursday to see a potentially damning House Ethics Committee report on far-right former Rep. Matt Gaetz before deciding whether to confirm him as attorney general.
Gaetz, 42, hastily tendered his resignation late Wednesday, hours after President-elect Donald Trump announced him as the choice to lead the Justice Department.
By leaving Congress, the Florida Republican stopped an investigation by the House Ethics Committee in its tracks, and left the panel’s report — which could include details of sex trafficking allegations and other purported wrongdoing — in limbo.
The panel reportedly was slated to vote on Friday on the question of making the report public. However, with Gaetz out of Congress and no longer subject to the ethics committee’s jurisdiction, precedent dictates that the report would be put on ice.
However, with Gaetz in line to become the top US law enforcement officer, lawmakers and other key figures were demanding an exception be made.
“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” John Clune, a Colorado-based attorney for an individual who has accused Gaetz of misconduct stemming from an incident that took place when the accusant was a minor, wrote on X Thursday.
“We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report,” Clune added. “She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Gaetz has adamantly denied wrongdoing and cited the Justice Department’s decision not to bring charges against him as evidence of his innocence.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and unsuccessfully vied to lead the Senate GOP Conference Wednesday, told reporters Thursday that he “absolutely” wants to see the ethics report on Gaetz.
“I can’t understand any situation under which we would deny ourselves access to full and complete information,” the Texan said. “Part of this is not only to determine fitness for the nominee, it’s also to protect the president.”
Outgoing Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), also demanded the House Ethics Committee “preserve and share their report and all relevant documentation.”
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report. We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” Durbin said in a statement.
“Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States.”
Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters Thursday he had no plans to release the report.
“What happens in Ethics is confidential. We’re going to maintain that confidentiality,” Guest said. “I’ve given my statement yesterday and there’s nothing new that has changed from then until now.”
Unlike other House committees, the Ethics panel is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, meaning it could only take one GOP defection to make the report public.
A spokesperson for Gaetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while a flack for the House Ethics Committee declined to comment.
The ethics committee initially revealed in April 2021 it was looking into an array of allegations against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting bribes or impermissible gifts, misuse of state identification records, and sharing of inappropriate images on the House floor.
That probe was put on pause while the Justice Department investigated Gaetz over his alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl several years earlier — and allegations he paid for her to travel across state lines for sex.
After the DOJ declined to charge Gaetz, the House investigation resumed, with the panel saying in June that despite “difficulty in obtaining relevant information from Representative Gaetz and others,” it had “spoken with more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents in this matter.”
Trump’s nomination of Gaetz, who flew with the president-elect to DC for his post-election visit Wednesday, stunned the Beltway.
In addition to his personal peccadillos, Gaetz roiled many of his Republican colleagues in both chambers of Congress by spearheading the successful mutiny against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last fall.
The Sunshine State congressman faulted McCarthy for bringing up a temporary spending patch to avert a government shutdown, something that has occurred almost a half dozen times since his ouster.
McCarthy, 59, alleged that Gaetz pursued a vendetta against him for not intervening in the ethics probe, something the latter has denied.
“The choices are very good so far, except one,” McCarthy told Bloomberg Wednesday of Trump’s staffing decisions. “Gaetz won’t get confirmed. Everybody knows that.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Thursday that it was “news to me” that the House Ethics Committee could have released its report on Gaetz Friday.
Despite deep-rooted apprehension against Gaetz, some Republicans have signaled that they may cut Trump some slack on the controversial selection.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who has long feuded with the Floridian, told CNN that while “I completely trust President Trump’s decision-making on this one,” Gaetz had to “come to the Senate and sell himself.”
At the time of the McCarthy mutiny, Mullin told the same outlet of Gaetz: “We all saw videos he was showing us on the House floor of girls he slept with and brag how he would crush ED medicine so he could go all night.”
Gaetz’s nomination is widely seen among Trump allies as a test of Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune’s (R-SD) willingness to allow recess appointments to the cabinet.
Thune, 63, is assumed by Trump insiders to be disinclined to push through Gaetz’s nomination and conceivably could flex his legislative power by deciding not to go along with a plan to appoint administration officials during a congressional recess.
“We’ll see if he’s smart or just a pushover. Hopefully a pushover!” one source close to Trump who favors Gaetz’s nomination told The Post of Thune.
But another source close to the Trump transition noted that a recess appointment to the cabinet might be politically impractical.
“If they could do that, they would have done it under Biden to get some of his nominees through. Why didn’t they?” the source questioned.
Then-President Barack Obama in 2012 recess-appointed three Democrats to the National Labor Relations Board, resulting in a court fight and a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that found that the Senate itself must declare itself to be in recess for such an appointment.
Retiring President Biden did not use recess appointments to the cabinet even though he’s had a Democratic Senate for the past two years, notably choosing instead to allow Julie Su to remain acting labor secretary rather than try to appoint her by fiat.
But if Gaetz is opposed by a majority of senators, it’s unclear if the body can block a recess if Thune attempts to declare one to appease Trump.
Congressional sources told The Post that it’s likely a matter for the Senate’s parliamentarian to study and issue a decision upon, likely based on arcane rules that few understand.
A longtime Democratic congressional aide also noted that such a move would “really green-light Dems to do [the same thing] when they return to power.
“The pendulum swings.”
