By Jacqueline Alemany · The Washington Post (c) 2024
The House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) this week, a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to release the results of a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.
The panel voted this month to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers take their final vote for the year, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. CNN first reported on the panel’s secret vote to release its report.
The committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general. A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, meaning that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.
The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. The Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation shortly thereafter – and days before the committee was expected to meet to vote on the release of the investigation.
Rep. Michael Guest (Mississippi), the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or Trump’s nominee, but Democrats still pushed for its release.
House Republicans successfully quashed a resolution introduced by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote to make the report public and another resolution by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) that asked the panel to preserve all documents investigating Gaetz.
Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges in 2022 trafficking investigation.
But the House Ethics Committee investigation, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.
Gaetz on Wednesday once again denied the charges. “My 30’s were an era of working very hard – and playing hard too,” he wrote on X.
“It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”