Republicans block release of ethics report on Gaetz

WASHINGTON — House Republicans voted Wednesday to block the release of an Ethics Committee report about sexual misconduct and illicit drug use allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, setting up a possible constitutional clash between the House and the Senate.

Senators in both parties have clamored to see the bipartisan conclusions of the panel’s yearslong investigation into Gaetz’s conduct as part of their vetting of presidential nominees, who normally require Senate confirmation.

But since Trump named Gaetz last week as his choice to head the Justice Department, House Republicans have been reluctant to make the report public. And following an hourslong meeting on Capitol Hill of the secretive ethics panel Wednesday, Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat, said the committee had voted along party lines to not make its findings public.

In a statement on behalf of the five Democrats on the evenly divided panel, Wild said that “in order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side.” She noted that the panel often takes bipartisan votes. But, she said, “that did not happen in today’s vote.”

In fact, the five Republicans on the committee all voted together against releasing the report, and all Democrats voted to release it, according to a person familiar with the meeting who insisted on anonymity to discuss the confidential session.

Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., who chairs the committee, declined to comment on the session, saying only: “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.”

Wild then made her separate statement, apparently in an attempt to make it clear that Democrats had not gone along with the decision to bury the report.

Speaker Mike Johnson pressured the committee last week not to release its findings on Gaetz, arguing that it would constitute a “terrible breach of protocol” to do so after a member had resigned, putting him beyond the panel’s jurisdiction. He also privately urged Guest not to make the findings public.

Guest told reporters earlier Wednesday that the report was not yet finished, the main argument that Republicans had made during the closed-door session for why it should not be released, according to the person familiar with the meeting. But the panel had been set to vote last Friday on whether to release it.

That meeting was scrapped after Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress following Trump’s announcement naming him as the pick for attorney general.

Wild said the panel would meet again Dec. 5 to discuss the matter further.

In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike have demanded to see the report as part of the confirmation process. Some Republican lawmakers, like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, have suggested that the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Justice Department nominees, could subpoena the House committee if it did not willingly hand over the file.

On Wednesday evening, Reps. Sean Casten, D-Ill., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., each moved to compel a vote of the full House on the matter. House GOP leadership will have two legislative days to conduct the vote — either Thursday, before the Thanksgiving recess begins, or Dec. 3, when lawmakers return.

The drama unfolded as Gaetz accompanied Vice President-elect JD Vance across the Capitol meeting with Republican senators to win their support for his confirmation. Many senators in both parties have expressed concern over the choice of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department.

In addition to his ethical and legal challenges, Gaetz has a long record of gleefully disparaging some Republican senators whose votes he now needs to be confirmed. For instance, he has referred to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader, as “dangerous” and coined the nickname “McFailure” for him. But on Wednesday, he was working to shore up support with Republican skeptics, including Cornyn and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Since the spring of 2021, the ethics panel had been investigating Gaetz over an array of allegations, including that he had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted gifts that violated House rules.

The congressional panel’s investigation paused while the Justice Department carried out a related investigation of Gaetz’s conduct, including allegations involving sex trafficking and sex with a minor. In February, the Justice Department decided not to bring charges against Gaetz after concluding it could not make a strong enough case in court. Once the Justice Department inquiry ended, the Ethics Committee resumed its work.

The panel interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. The committee said in June that it was continuing to investigate the allegations that Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.

On Wednesday, Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote to Christopher Wray, the FBI director, requesting “the complete evidentiary file” on Gaetz, including from a Justice Department investigation and the Ethics Committee inquiry, a letter reported earlier by Politico.

Gaetz has denounced the ethics inquiry as a “political payback exercise” and suggested it was arranged by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his bitter rival whose ouster he orchestrated last year.

In a public letter from September, Gaetz called the Ethics Committee’s work “uncomfortably nosy” and complained that it involved questions about details of his sexual activity.

“The lawful, consensual sexual activities of adults are not the business of Congress,” he wrote.

He noted he had already been investigated by the Justice Department, which opted not to pursue the case.

“The very people who have lied to the Ethics Committee were also lying to them,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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