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After numerous reports of alleged impropriety, the House Ethics Committee recently completed an investigation of Matt Gaetz, who until last week was a U.S. representative from Florida.
The committee’s report has not been made public and many Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, are working to keep it that way. Johnson and others have argued that the report’s finding should remain secret because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress. Despite winning re-election on Nov. 5, Gaetz resigned his seat on Wednesday.
The next day, president-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Gaetz to be the nation’s attorney general.
The House Ethics Committee report should be made public. At minimum, senators, who have a constitutionally mandated role in assessing the fitness of a president’s cabinet nominees as part of their confirmation process, must see the ethics report on Gaetz.
Some Republican senators, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins, agree.
“As part of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation process for attorney general, I believe senators should be able to review the House Ethics Committee’s report and any related evidence as part of the Senate’s constitutional advice and consent process,” Collins said in a statement to the Bangor Daily News editorial board on Monday.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters on Thursday that his panel should have access to the findings of the House Ethics Committee investigation of Gaetz, The Hill reported.
Cornyn said if the House panel found evidence of a crime, “it would certainly be relevant.”
“I’m not going to speculate what the report shows, but that would certainly be a concern,” he said.
Trump’s choice of Gaetz to be the nation’s attorney general strains credulity on many levels.
He is in no way qualified for the job. His legal career was brief and his law license was temporarily suspended by the Florida bar for failing to pay required fees.
Beyond his utter lack of qualifications, Gaetz appears to lack the ethics and integrity to head our Department of Justice.
As a member of the House, he was derided by his colleagues for his immaturity and alleged improper behavior. The House Ethics report can provide senators valuable insight regarding questions of his behavior.
The House Ethics Committee had been long been investigating allegations that Gaetz had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz was alleged to be involved in the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. The woman, now in her 20s, sat for hours of testimony before the committee.
The Ethics Committee inquiry, which began in 2021, also looked into claims that Gaetz misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, among other transgressions, the New York Times reported.
Gaetz has long denied the allegations, saying they are part of an effort by ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to smear him. The Justice Department last year ended an investigation into the sex trafficking allegations without bringing charges.
Still, with Gaetz chosen by Trump to be one of the country’s top law enforcement officials, the American public, but especially our U.S. senators, need to know what the House Ethics investigation found. They need to know whether any of the allegations were substantiated.
Further, taking steps to hide the investigation’s results would diminish the testimony given by the alleged sex trafficking victim and other women, who were subpoenaed to appear before the committee. Sharing details of their reported interactions with Gaetz was no easy task and their testimony should not be buried or diminished.
Gaetz’s nomination appears to have come together very quickly and surprised even some in Trump’s inner circle. Some lawmakers don’t believe that he will be confirmed by the Senate to head the Department of Justice. This has led to speculation that Gaetz resigned from the House to stop the ethics investigation and to keep its report hidden.
Allowing this to happen would be a miscarriage of justice and set a terrible precedent that lawmakers can escape the consequences from alleged misbehavior by resigning their seat.
Regardless of Gaetz’s motivation for leaving the House, he is now Trump’s attorney general nominee. The senators who are being asked to confirm him, and the American people, need to know whether the House Ethics Committee found that he violated ethical rules and standards, and perhaps even the law.