The House Ethics Committee voted to not release its incomplete report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who recently resigned from Congress after President-elect Donald Trump announced plans to nominate him as Attorney General.
Despite calls to release the report, the committee remains divided, with some members pushing for the release of the document and others arguing against going against the precedent that such reports should only be released for those who are still members of Congress.
“There is not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters following a roughly two-hour meeting.
The panel, which met behind closed doors, took multiple votes, a source familiar with the situation told The Hill, including one to release the report as-is, which failed, another to publish just the exhibits associated with the report, which also failed, and a third to formally “complete” the report, which passed in a bipartisan fashion.
The development caps off a week of speculation regarding the committee’s work, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pushing for its publication, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) vigorously advocating for it to remain a secret, and Trump’s team charging ahead with the selection of Gaetz despite the drama.
The committee is scheduled to meet again on Dec. 5 “to further consider this matter,” according to Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the top Democrat on the panel.
Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) confirmed that “a vote was taken” and noted that “this committee is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans” which would mean that “somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side” if the report is going to be released.
Wild took a shot at Guest, saying he “betrayed the process by disclosing our deliberations within moments after walking out of the committee.”
“The answer to the question of whether I have engaged in sexual activity with any individual under the age of 18 is unequivocally NO,” Gaetz said in a letter to the Ethics Committee.
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Gaetz claims that that Joel Greenberg, who is serving 11 years for sex trafficking and fraud, among other things, was concocting “false smears” to reduce his prison sentence. Greenberg struck a deal with the DOJ to provide information against Gaetz in exchange for the feds dropping 27 of his 33 criminal charges, yet federal prosecutors still recommended against filing charges against Gaetz due to problems with Greenberg’s credibility.
Chris Dorworth, who Greenberg alleged hosted parties at which guests indulged in illicit drugs and open sexual acts, also said Greenberg was lying:
They are total and absolute lies. I am not speculating about this. I passed 3 polygraphs administered by a retired FBI special agent polygraph administrator of 35 years to counter the total and complete bullshit these people flagrantly made up. @mattgaetz did not do this. https://t.co/tR256xXW88
— Chris Dorworth (@ChrisDorworth) November 19, 2024
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) who argued that releasing the report “would open a Pandora’s box and break a long-standing rule of the panel to not publish information on former members of Congress.”
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) urged his Senate colleagues not to join in on the “lynch mob” and to “go back to a time-tested process, receive relevant information, and give the nominee a chance to make their case as to why they should be confirmed.”
Others referred to historical precedents when the Ethics Committee published information on former members in 1987 and 2011.
