Matt Gaetz may be gone from the House and out of contention to be the next attorney general, but the effort to release an Ethics Committee report on allegations that Gaetz had sex with a minor is alive and well.
Democratic Rep. Sean Casten reintroduced a resolution on Tuesday that, if successful, would force the Ethics Committee to release the Gaetz report.
Casten first introduced the resolution at the end of November, with the legislation expiring over the Thanksgiving recess. The new resolution, which is due for a vote on the same day that the Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet on releasing the report, adds several examples of the House releasing ethics reports — on both Democrats and Republicans — after lawmakers had already resigned from their positions.
“We need to go and vote, not hide behind an Ethics Committee, not hide behind some fear of acting as a check on an executive branch,” Casten told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
Two legislative days after a privileged resolution is introduced, the House speaker must either refer it to committee — essentially killing the resolution — or bring it to a vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has been steadfast in saying that the House Ethics Committee should not release the report, even going so far as to make his preferences known to the Ethics Committee chairman.
On Thursday, the Ethics Committee will, once again, meet on releasing the Gaetz report. To make the report public, a majority of committee members need to sign off, meaning at least one Republican would need to join all of the Democrats on the committee to vote for the report’s release.
The Ethics Committee last voted on the report in November, with Republicans voting to block its release. At the time, Gaetz was still President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice. But one day after the Ethics Committee met, Gaetz announced he was taking himself out of consideration. His confirmation was expected to fail in the Senate, after several Republican senators publicly and privately said they would not vote for him.
Regardless of Gaetz’s decision, Casten argued that the whole House should act on the report rather than rely on the judgment of Ethics Committee Republicans.
“What I think we all are keenly aware of is that the Ethics Committee was prepared to release this report in July, they were then prepared to release this report in November, and then said, ‘Well, we need to do some more work, and we’re going to release it in December,’” Casten said.
“I’d respectfully say to the Ethics Committee that Charlie Brown is not going after the football again,” Casten said. “It’s time to call the question.”
Casten said that whether or not Gaetz would be attorney general has nothing to do with the release of the report.
“Whether he wants to go into public office, whether he wants to go be a Boy Scout troop leader, whether he wants to work at a local nonprofit, I would want to know that information about somebody that was out there,” Casten said.
In his resolution, Casten pointed to four instances when the Ethics Committee released reports of members who had already resigned: former Democratic Rep. Bill Bonner in 1987, Republican Rep. Don Lukens in 1990, Republican Rep. Mark Foley in 2006 and Democratic Rep. Eric Massa in 2011.
In the instance of Massa, the House voted 402-1 for the Ethics Committee to continue investigating Massa following his resignation amid allegations that he had improper physical contact with four aides.
Casten said he has kept House leadership “in the loop” of his actions but isn’t working with them directly.
While Casten’s resolution will force some action, without sufficient support from Republicans, it’s still going nowhere. What his resolution will do, however, is call more attention to GOP efforts to sweep the report under the rug and let Gaetz move on without the taxpayer-funded investigation ever being made public.
“We’re talking about sex with a child, allegedly,” Casten said. “We can’t expect this institution to be taken seriously if we say you can do that here, actions which would be the end of your career and possible jail time in any other line of work. We’re going to hold ourselves differently here and still claim to be a country that defends equal treatment under the law.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.