House Speaker Mike Johnson “strongly” requested Friday that a House Ethics Committee report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct and other wrongdoing against now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz not be released, two days after the far-right ex-congressman was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next attorney general.
“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson (R-La.) told Politico. “I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Senate Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed interest in vetting Gaetz (R-Fla.) to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer by reviewing evidence gathered during the Ethics Committee probe, which has proceeded off and on for more than three years..
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin on Thursday asked the Ethics Committee to “preserve and share their report.“
Durbin (D-Ill.) said the “sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions” about what was in the report — and House Republicans “cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”
“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 and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent,” the 79-year-old posted on X.
“I think that there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” agreed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a high-ranking member of the Judiciary panel.
The 10-member House ethics panel had been scheduled to meet Friday for a vote on whether to release the full report — but that session was postponed.
“What happens in Ethics is confidential,” Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) had told reporters on Thursday, seemingly closing the door on the prospect. “We’re going to maintain that confidentiality.”
Gaetz, 42, resigned hours after President-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination Wednesday, effectively ending the House-led inquiry.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has repeatedly claimed that Gaetz got seven other Republicans to oust him last year from office because he hadn’t shut down the ethics probe.
“[The] person who raised the issue, he‘s got an ethics complaint about paying, sleeping with a 17-year-old,” McCarthy had told CNN during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The Justice Department had three years ago looked into sex trafficking accusations leveled at the lawmaker, but closed the investigation without bringing charges.
At least one witness in that probe, however, was subpoenaed and testified before the House Ethics Committee last summer, ABC News reported Thursday, alleging that Gaetz had sex with her when she as a 17-year-old high school student.
“These allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress,” Gaetz had responded in a statement to The Post. “This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.”
Other witnesses previously testified to the ethics panel that they had been paid to attend parties — with Gaetz and his friend, ex-Seminole County tax commissioner Joel Greenberg — where sex and drug use took place, sources told ABC News.
Greenberg pleaded guilty to federal charges, including sex trafficking a minor, in May 2021.
He confessed to recruiting women for commercial sex acts and paying them more than $70,000 from 2016 to 2018.
One of those women was the same one who claimed to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz slept with her as a minor.
“Lies were Weaponized to try to destroy me. These lies resulted in prosecution, conviction, and prison,” Gaetz posted on X Friday morning. “For the liars, not me. I focused on the truth and doing my job.”
The top attorney for the House Ethics Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is precedent for releasing an ethics report after a member has left Congress. In December 1987, the panel put out an unfinished rundown of its investigation into Rep. Bill Boner (D-Tenn.), who had resigned two months earlier to run for Nashville mayor, over his relationship with a government contractor.