While there are loud voices calling for the release of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s ethics report, there is a larger consensus among GOP members that a report allegedly containing testimony about Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old needs to remain private.
It might seem like pertinent information about a nominee for the nation’s highest law enforcement position, but Republicans are arguing that it comes down to one word: precedent.
“I would hate to break the precedent of the integrity of the Ethics Committee for the U.S. House of Representatives,” Rep. Mark Alford told NOTUS. “I think we should play out the course, let the Senate do its job and let the chips fall where they may.”
Gaetz resigned from the House after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to be attorney general. The timing worked out perfectly for Gaetz; the Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing a report on its investigation into Gaetz allegedly sex trafficking a minor and participating in illicit drug use.
But now that Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress, that report remains in limbo.
Some members want it released. Others say it should remain private now that Gaetz is no longer a member and the Ethics Committee no longer has jurisdiction over him. Releasing the report, these members say, would establish a new precedent and disincentivize members from working with the Ethics Committee.
While the Ethics Committee usually doesn’t issue reports on former members — even when they take years to compose — there actually is some precedent for releasing findings about a former member. Back in 1987, two months after former Rep. Bill Boner resigned, the Ethics Committee released a report on the Tennessee Democrat and his relationship with a government contractor. In 1990, on the same day Rep. Buz Lukens resigned from the House, the Ethics Committee released its report on the Ohio Republican paying a 16-year-old girl for sex.
Still, Republicans argue the Gaetz situation is different — and unworthy of making the ethics report public.
So resolute is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that the Gaetz report shouldn’t be made public that she called for the release of every report ever filed against Republicans to the committee, including “the one I filed,” if Republicans choose to “rip apart our own” nominees.
“Put it ALL out there for the American people to see,” she wrote in a post on X. “All your sexual harassment and assault claims that were secretly settled paying off victims with tax payer money.”
Other Republicans were less steadfast in their support of Gaetz. But plenty still wanted to defer to some version of precedence.
“I don’t know what the rules say about releasing that kind of thing,” Rep. Nancy Mace said, declining to say whether or not she supports or opposes the report being released.
“I generally think what we’ve done in the past should be the guide for what we do in the future, unless the circumstance is substantially different,” Rep. Dusty Johnson said. “I just don’t know enough of the history.”
When informed there were multiple instances where the Ethics Committee had released its report, Johnson responded with a question: “How many times have they not?”
There doesn’t seem to be much concern over the prospect of the attorney general being compromised if an unreleased ethics report is hanging over his head.
“No, I think that the people that are within the Department of Justice are more concerned about the rooting out of the injustices that they have committed, more so than the American people are concerned about something that may have been dredged up, that may or may not exist,” Rep. Matt Rosendale — a Gaetz ally — said when asked if he was concerned that Gaetz could be a compromised attorney general.
“He’s not a member of Congress, so I don’t even know that there is a report,” House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Lisa McClain told NOTUS. “There may be, I don’t know, but, I think everyone should get a fair shot.”
McClain continued that she served on House Armed Services with Gaetz. “He’s brilliant. He’s got a brilliant mind, and I think everyone should have a fair shot,” she said. “It’s up to the Senate.”
Rep. Tim Burchett pointed to the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges in its sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz as a comfort as he vies to lead the agency.
“I think that the Biden Justice Department hates Matt Gaetz’s guts,” Burchett said. “He went after them because they weaponized everything. Matt exposed all that, and yet, that Justice Department chose not to go after Matt Gaetz. They threw the case out. So I would think that that’s a pretty good indicator.”
Rep. Michael Cloud similarly brushed off the allegations against Gaetz, citing the Justice Department decision.
“The FBI was led by someone who was not a big fan of Matt Gaetz and said, ‘There’s nothing to see here,’” Cloud told NOTUS on Tuesday.
Even fierce critics of Gaetz said he deserved an even shake during the confirmation process.
“It’s obvious I got a personal beef with the cat, right? But this is not ‘show friends,’ it’s ‘show business,’” Rep. Derrick Van Orden told NOTUS.
Van Orden said Gaetz ought not to be disqualified based solely on the allegations against him.
“It doesn’t matter if I got a personal beef with Matt Gaetz — and it would just be silly for me to pretend like I don’t — but Matt Gaetz is, first and foremost, an American citizen, and he deserves due process,” Van Orden said. “If the rumors are true, then that needs to be referred to an actual law enforcement agency, and that’s it.”
The committee is set to meet on Wednesday when they could hold a vote on whether or not to release the report on Gaetz. All it would take is one Republican to cross party lines and vote for its release if Democrats vote to make the report public.
Rep. Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the Ethics panel, told reporters on Monday that she believes there will be “a unanimous Democratic consensus that it should be released.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, on the other hand, is treading into unprecedented territory of his own, seeming to pressure Ethics Chairman Michael Guest to keep the report private.
Johnson has already publicly weighed in on the matter, and Guest told Politico that he and the speaker spoke over the weekend about the question, though Guest said his conversation with Johnson wouldn’t influence the committee’s decision.
No matter that, in a legal setting, trying to influence a judge’s decision could constitute obstruction of justice, Johnson is essentially doing what former Speaker Kevin McCarthy would not do: try to silence the committee.
McCarthy has said he lost his job because Gaetz was upset that he didn’t stop the ethics investigation.
Meanwhile, Guest has repeatedly said he believes the report should stay private and not be released, even as senators like John Cornyn say the Judiciary Committee “absolutely” wants to see the report.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS. Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.