Members of the House Ethics Committee met behind closed doors Wednesday but did not reach an agreement on whether to publicly release a report detailing their sweeping investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Several Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have said they want to review the House report on the yearslong investigation into Gaetz, R-Fla., before a Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for him next year. The Ethics Committee had examined allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, gave special favors to people with whom he had personal relationships and obstructed the House probe.
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Gaetz has denied the allegations.
The bipartisan Ethics Committee — led by Reps. Michael Guest, R-Miss., and Susan Wild, D-Pa. — met in private for a little over two hours Wednesday. Most members left without speaking to reporters, but Guest said there was “no agreement” about releasing the report while declining to provide further details.
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Wild later told reporters that the committee did take a vote on releasing the report but that there was “no consensus,” meaning there was not a simple majority on the vote. She announced the committee will reconvene Dec. 5 to “further consider this matter.”
The full House may now need to vote on whether to force the Ethics Committee to release its report. After the committee ended its meeting without resolution, two Democrats, Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Sean Casten of Illinois, introduced privileged resolutions on the House floor, each of which would require a vote within two legislative days.
Cohen’s resolution says the Ethics Committee should “preserve all documents and investigative material related to any review of Matthew Lewis Gaetz.” The resolution also would “make public the committee’s report regarding the alleged violations of the house code of conduct or of a law, rule, regulation or other standard conduct” by Gaetz.
If either Democrat's resolution is ruled privileged by the speaker, the Republican majority will have to take it up, but it could vote to table, or kill, it rather than hold a direct vote on releasing the report. A majority of the House would need to vote in favor to force the release of the report.
House Democrats similarly tried to put pressure on the Ethics Committee in September 1996, pressing it to release a report from an outside counsel about its investigation of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. But the House rejected the resolution in a vote on the floor.
The vote could happen as soon as Thursday, the last day the House is scheduled to be in Washington until after Thanksgiving.
Speaker Johnson opposes releasing report
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a close Trump ally, has argued against releasing the report, pointing out that the Ethics Committee has jurisdiction only over sitting members. Gaetz resigned from office last week after Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department.
“I’ve made very clear that it’s an important guardrail for our institution that we not use the House Ethics Committee to investigate and report on persons who are not members of this body,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “Matt Gaetz is not a member of the body anymore.”
Heading into Wednesday’s meeting, Guest told reporters the Gaetz report was not complete, though he did not make it clear how much work was left to do.
Asked how the committee could release a report that is not finished, Guest replied, “That is something that we will be talking about today, and that’s another reason I have some reservations about releasing any unfinished work product.”
He said the report “has not gone through the review process.”
The Ethics Committee has investigated Gaetz on and off over the past three years. It has interviewed two women who testified that Gaetz paid them for sex at a small party in Florida, where prostitution is illegal, an attorney for the women, Joel Leppard, told NBC News this week. One of the women also testified that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a friend who was 17 years old at the time, said Leppard, though she does not believe Gaetz knew the friend's age at the time.
Leppard added that his clients want the House report to be made public. “They want the American people to know the truth and that they are speaking the truth,” he said.
The Trump transition team has called the allegations “baseless,” pointing out that the Justice Department had closed out its related yearslong investigation without charging Gaetz with a crime.
Gaetz meets with senators and the VP-elect
Despite the House drama, Trump's team is pushing full steam ahead with Gaetz's nomination. Trump said Tuesday he is not reconsidering naming Gaetz to be his attorney general, despite reservations from Republican senators who will oversee his confirmation once he is officially nominated. Trump has been "heavily working the phones" to build support for Gaetz, a transition official said.
And Vice President-elect JD Vance was in the Capitol on Wednesday shepherding Gaetz to meetings with GOP senators, including senior Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other members of the committee, like Mike Lee, R-Utah, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Cornyn said he told Gaetz "that there are not going to be any secrets here" on the allegations against him.
"Everything’s eventually going to come out. And so I frankly said, 'Transparency is a good thing,'" Cornyn told reporters.
Gaetz also met with Senate Majority Leader-elect John Thune, R-S.D., according to the senator's spokesperson.
Gaetz appears to have won at least one yes vote as his meetings on the Hill continue: Blackburn posted on X shortly after her time with Gaetz that she had a “great” meeting and that she looks “forward to a speedy confirmation for our next Attorney General.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who is not on the Judiciary Committee, met with Trump on Tuesday and told NBC News that Trump wants Gaetz confirmed but that "I didn’t feel like there was a full-court press of any type."
Still, he added, Trump is serious about Gaetz.
"This isn’t a diversion of some sort or distraction from other controversial picks," he said.
Cramer said he is "not worried" about seeing the House Ethics Committee report because the Senate Judiciary Committee will get the information it needs about Gaetz one way or another, but he said, "The easy thing to do and the appropriate thing to do would be for them to release it."
"Nobody should be surprised that Matt Gaetz is a maverick, that he is strong, that he has — some people might even say reckless at times, but that is what Donald Trump wanted and what he wants is what he campaigned on. He’s fulfilling that promise," Cramer said.
After a full day of meetings in the Senate, Gaetz returned to the House on Wednesday night and told reporters that senators have been "supportive" and that they have promised him "a fair process."
"So it's a great day," he said.
Gaetz added that he had not been following the Ethics Committee's deliberations. "I've been focused on what we got to do to reform the Department of Justice. I have been meeting with senators. I haven't been paying much attention to that," he said.
Wild, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said this week that the House report should “absolutely” be released to the public and that it should be sent to the Senate at the very least. She argued that there is precedent for the panel to publish reports after members of Congress have resigned.
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It happened in the case of Rep. Bill Boner, D-Tenn., who resigned Oct. 5, 1987, to become mayor of Nashville. The Ethics Committee released an initial staff report the following December examining allegations that Boner misused campaign funds, failed to disclose gifts and accepted bribes. The report did not make any recommendations to the full committee.
“In the committee’s view, the general policy against issuing reports in cases such as here involved is outweighed by the responsibility of the Committee to fully inform the public regarding the status and results of its efforts up to the date of Representative Boner’s departure from Congress,” the Ethics Committee said at the time.
Three years later, the committee released a short staff report immediately after Rep. Buz Lukens, R-Ohio, resigned as he faced allegations by a congressional employee that he had made unwanted and offensive sexual advances.
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