Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) mentioned Friday he’ll “strongly request” that the chamber’s ethics committee not launch its sexual misconduct report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), falsely claiming it’s “not the way we do things” and dismissing issues from each events.
“The rules of the House has always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the ethics committee,” he advised reporters Friday, when requested if it’s within the public’s curiosity to see the report.
Gaetz resigned earlier this week after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to function lawyer basic. His resignation permits Florida to rapidly choose his substitute in time for the following Congress ― and it additionally instantly put a cease to the ethics committee probe.
Regardless of high lawmakers from each events calling for the committee’s report back to be made public anyway, noting that its launch was imminent, Johnson is pushing again.
“That is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set,” Johnson mentioned.
However precedent has already been set for such conditions. The committee has twice launched ethics experiences after or on the identical day a lawmaker has resigned ― as soon as in 1987 and as soon as in 1990.
Johnson argued these precedents don’t depend. “If it’s been broken once or twice, it should not have been,” he mentioned.
Fprmer Republican congressman Charlie Dent, who represented Pennsylvania and 2005 to 2018, mentioned in an ABC Information interview Friday that he’s sure the report will likely be “damning” and that though the committee wouldn’t ordinarily launch a report after a resignation, there’s nothing stopping them.
“I believe precedent would allow them to” launch it, he mentioned.
Conversations between Johnson and Trump in regards to the matter stay underneath wraps. The 2 reportedly met at Mar-a-Lago Thursday night time, in accordance with Punchbowl Information, however on Friday Johnson refused to touch upon that.
“I’m not talking to anybody about what I’ve said to Trump,” he mentioned.
The discharge of the ethics report might make it that a lot more durable for Gaetz to get confirmed. A number of Republican lawmakers have already expressed skepticism about his odds for making it by means of the method given the breadth of the allegations in opposition to him, which vary from sexual misconduct involving a minor and illicit drug use to accepting improper items and searching for to hinder authorities probes into his conduct.
“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) advised HuffPost on Wednesday.
Reese Gorman, a reporter with NOTUS, described a grim response from Johnson when he requested him about blocking the report.
“When I asked Johnson if he would want to know if the top law enforcement officer in the country had sex with a minor or not,” Gorman posted on social media, “he rolled his eyes and didn’t answer the question.”
