A potentially bombshell report into allegations that Matt Gaetz used drugs and had sex with a 17-year-old should never be published, Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday–hours after he partied with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
The long-running investigation by the House Ethics Committee has reportedly heard the 17-year-old testify that Gaetz had sex with her when she was in high school–a revelation which would make his path to being confirmed as Trump’s attorney general even more difficult.
But Johnson said publishing the report would be “terrible,” in his first public statement on it.
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“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters on Friday, one day after attending a ritzy Mar-a-Lago gala with the president-elect.
The Ethics Committee investigation followed a two-year probe by the Justice Department–which Trump wants Gaetz to lead–into whether Gaetz violated sex-trafficking laws in connection with allegations that the Florida congressman had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing, and the DOJ investigation ended with no federal charges.
Trump World on Friday suggested that Gaetz’s experience positions him well to fight against “lawfare.”
Before news broke of Gaetz’s nomination and resignation on Wednesday, the committee was set to meet at the end of the week and vote on whether to release its report on the matter. The committee’s chair postponed the meeting on Friday.
While it is rare for the Committee to release a report after a member resigns, it is not unprecedented. Almost four decades ago, the Committee released its report on Rep. William Boner (D-TN) after he had already relinquished his office.
The chief counsel of the ethics panel, Tom Rust, declined comment on whether the report will see the light of day.
Johnson’s statement marks a reversal from just two days ago. Asked on Wednesday whether the Committee would go ahead with the release, even though it no longer had jurisdiction over Gaetz, Johnson declined to weigh in.
“The Speaker of the House is not involved in that, can’t be involved in that,” he said. “So, I’m not really the person to answer that question.”
But that was before Johnson joined Trump at his Florida resort on Thursday night. It’s unclear whether the two discussed the probe while rubbing shoulders there. Johnson himself told reporters he would not reveal what he and the president-elect talked about.
Several other Republican members of Congress, especially senators who will vet Gaetz, said they want to see the report.
“I think it would be helpful,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said, echoing calls by her colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
“We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. He also called on the House Ethics Committee to release the report.
“Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent,” Durbin said.
