Rep. Matt Gaetz resigned from his House seat hours after Donald Trump announced he would nominate the Florida congressman to serve as attorney general.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Gaetz would resign effective immediately.
The resignation comes as the House Ethics Committee was investigating Gaetz for alleged sex trafficking of a minor. Now with his resignation, the committee will immediately cease their investigation and no report will be released.
Given the slim margin in the House, Johnson said Gaetz told him the resignation would give Republicans an opportunity to run a special election to fill the seat quickly.
“I think out of deference to us, he issued his resignation letter effective immediately, of Congress. That caught us by surprise a little bit. But I asked him what the reasoning was, and he said, ‘Well, you can’t have too many absences,’” Johnson said.
Under Florida law there’s “about an eight-week period to select and fill in a vacancy,” and Johnson hoped that Gov. Ron DeSantis would start the clock in order to get the seat filled before Jan. 3.
The FBI previously investigated Gaetz for allegedly paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl. Federal prosecutors did not charge Gaetz, but he has since been under investigation in the House.
“It is true that the House Ethics Committee, with a former member of Congress, would have no further jurisdiction over that person ... so that would not be unprecedented,” Johnson said when asked about the timing of the resignation in regard to the ethics investigation. “But as far as the timing of the release of the report, the speaker of the House is not involved in that.”
Senators met the news of the Gaetz nomination with shock, and there were doubts he would be able to get through a Senate confirmation process.
Gaetz did not respond to a request for comment.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS. Oriana González, a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this story.