As Republicans on the Home Ethics Committee are blocking the discharge of the panel’s report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Home Democrat is vowing to pursue an end-around technique in a bid to make the findings public.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-In poor health.) introduced Wednesday that he plans to introduce a procedural movement that might pressure the complete Home to vote on releasing the report, regardless of the objections of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and different Home GOP leaders who management the decrease chamber. The controversy has electrified Capitol Hill since President-elect Trump nominated Gaetz to guide the Justice Division within the second Trump administration.
“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House Ethics Committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Casten mentioned in a press release. “This information must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent.”
The report holds the Ethics Committee’s findings after a years-long investigation into allegations that Gaetz used illicit medicine and had sexual relations with a minor whereas he was a sitting member of Congress — prices he has vehemently denied.
Whereas Gaetz resigned from Congress final week — which ended the investigative a part of the Ethics Committee’s duties — his nomination to be U.S. legal professional common within the second Trump administration has created huge curiosity within the panel’s findings. Even various Senate Republicans say the contents of the report are related to Gaetz’s nomination course of within the higher chamber.
However Johnson and different Republicans have rejected that argument, saying the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction over the Gaetz case ended with Gaetz’s resignation from the Home, and releasing the report after-the-fact would set a foul precedent for a panel recognized for its bipartisan cooperation.
On Wednesday, the members of the Ethics panel met behind closed doorways for roughly two hours to debate the query of whether or not to launch the report. That assembly led to a vote that cut up the events proper down the center: All Republicans voted to maintain the report beneath wraps, whereas all of the Democrats voted for its launch, in line with Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the senior Democrat on the panel.
“There was no consensus,” Wild mentioned afterwards.
Casten’s procedural gambit is a long-shot. With Republicans controlling the Home, GOP lawmakers have the facility to desk the decision — if Johnson can maintain his slim majority collectively.
However Gaetz has made many enemies on each side of the aisle over his eight years on Capitol Hill, together with various GOP lawmakers who’re nonetheless livid that he led the trouble to take away former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from energy final yr. The lingering resentment raises questions on whether or not any of McCarthy’s remaining allies would threat Trump’s ire to cross the aisle and be a part of Democrats in voting to launch the report.
There may be precedent for such a vote. In 1996, the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) launched a decision to pressure a vote on the discharge of an Ethics report surrounding allegations that former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) dedicated monetary crimes for political acquire.
Republicans, who managed the Home on the time, tabled the decision.
