House Republicans voted on Thursday to block a Democrat-led effort to release a long-awaited Ethics Committee report on allegations against former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.
The House took a step to effectively shut down a resolution from Democrats that would have required the public release of the report. House GOP leaders sidelined the effort by Democrats by setting up a vote to refer the resolution to the committee, a move that blocks the report’s release for now. The outcome of the vote raises the question of whether the findings of the panel’s investigation will ever become public.
Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing, withdrew from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general last month after it became clear he didn’t have the votes in the Senate to win confirmation. The former congressman had faced headwinds on Capitol Hill in his bid to lock down sufficient support, and some Senate Republicans had called for the release of the ethics report as part of the vetting process.
Last month, before Gaetz withdrew, Republicans on the House Ethics Committee voted behind closed doors – and against the will of Democrats on the panel – not to release the results of the investigation at that time.
The vote was 206 to 198. One Republican – Rep. Tom McClintock of California – voted with Democrats.
McClintock said in a statement to CNN that “Louis Brandeis said it best: ‘Sunlight is the best of disinfectants.’ This is a public report, prepared with public funds concerning the public conduct of a public official. Of course the public has a right to see it.”
The Ethics Committee met again Thursday ahead of the House vote, but did not provide any information on whether the report would be released, saying in a statement after the meeting only that it was “continuing to discuss the matter.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he does not think the report should be released because Gaetz is no longer a member of the House, so the ethics panel no longer has jurisdiction. Gaetz, a Florida Republican, resigned from Congress shortly after Trump announced him as his pick for attorney general.
After the vote, Johnson called the ethics report a “moot point” given that Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress.
“I’ll leave it up to the committee to do their business there,” he told reporters.
Democrats used a procedural move to force GOP leadership to hold a vote on the issue.
Rep. Sean Casten, who led the effort to force an initial House vote Thursday, expressed his disappointment after nearly all House Republicans voted to kill it. “Today, the Republicans decided that, I don’t know, it’s like Vegas. What happens in DC stays in DC, I guess,” the Illinois Democrat said.
After that first vote, the House voted on a second, similar Democrat-led resolution seeking to compel the release of the report. It was also blocked.
The Ethics Committee said in June, when it provided an update on the status of the investigation, that it was reviewing 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.” The panel noted in making the announcement that Gaetz has “categorically denied all of the allegations before the committee.”
