Speaker Johnson says Gaetz ethics report should not be released, rebuffing senators

[November 16, 2024]  By FARNOUSH AMIRI

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he will “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee not release the results of its investigation into ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz, rebuffing senators who are demanding access now that Gaetz is President-elect Donald Trump 's nominee for attorney general.

Johnson’s intervention is highly unusual, as the Ethics panel has traditionally operated independently. His move seems certain to add the growing furor on Capitol Hill over Gaetz’s nomination to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

"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 told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

Ethics reports have previously been released after a member's resignation, though it is extremely rare.

Johnson's comments were a reversal from Wednesday, when he suggested a hands-off approach to the Gaetz report. The "Speaker of the House is not involved in that and can’t be involved in that,” he previously said of the Ethics committee.

The bipartisan Ethics panel is under enormous pressure as it weighs what to do about its years-long probe into sexual misconduct and other allegations against Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday after Trump announced him as his nominee for attorney general.

It is standard practice for the Ethics Committee to end investigations when members of Congress depart on the grounds that they lack jurisdiction to continue. But the circumstances with Gaetz are hardly standard, given his potential role in Trump's Cabinet. Senators saying the panel's material must see the light of day so that they can fully vet his nomination.

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”

Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and said last year that the Justice Department’s separate investigation against him into sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls ended with no federal charges.

“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics committee,” Johnson added. “And so I don’t think that’s relevant.”

But Republican and Democratic senators alike on the Judiciary Committee that would review Gaetz’s attorney general nomination have called for the report to be made available to them.

Matt Gaetz talks before President-elect Donald Trump speaks during an America First Policy Institute gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“I think it’s going to be material in the proceedings,” said Sen. Thomas Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said, “I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”

However, the chairman of the Ethics panel, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., says he doesn’t know if the committee could provide the report to the Senate: “That is something that staff is looking into and trying to provide some guidance to members."

When asked if he would at least discuss the report with members of the upper chamber, Guest said "that is a decision for the committee as a whole to take up at some point.”

Trump’s attorney general is expected to oversee radical changes to the Justice Department, which has been the target of Trump’s ire over two criminal cases it brought accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump, who cast himself as the victim of politically motivated prosecutions, vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail to carry out retribution against his political enemies if returned to the White House.

In a statement Wednesday announcing his pick, Trump said Gaetz would root out “systemic corruption” at the Justice Department and return the department “to its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution.”

The federal sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term and focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.

Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men. The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced in late 2022 to 11 years in prison.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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