Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that an explosive report on attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz should be kept secret.
Hours after returning from meeting with President-elect Trump in Florida, Johnson called on the Republican-led panel to not release the ethics report, which ABC News sources allege includes an interview with a young woman who said Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 and a high school student.
“I’m going to request, strongly request, that the Ethics Committee not issue the report,” Johnson told reporters.
The GOP leader and Trump ally said the House should stick with its policy that probes end when a lawmaker leaves Congress, as Gaetz did when he resigned on Wednesday.
“The rules of the House has always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the ethics committee,” Johnson said.
On rare occasions, ethics reports have been released soon after a lawmaker stepped down but Johnson said those were mistakes.
Making the report public “would open Pandora’s box,” Johnson said. He added: “If it’s been broken once or twice, it should not have been.”
Gaetz, 42, is an unusual case because Trump has tapped him to be the next attorney general.
Senators on both sides of the aisle have said they want to see the House Ethics Committee report on Gaetz.
The Florida lawmaker abruptly resigned his House seat on Wednesday as Trump nominated him for attorney general, a move that seemed designed to prevent the panel from releasing the report.
The bipartisan ethics panel was set to meet Friday to vote on potentially releasing the Gaetz report. The meeting was postponed until an undetermined future date, said Rep. Michael Guest (R-Mississippi), the panel’s chairman.
Gaetz was the subject of a federal investigation into drug use and sex with paid female escorts, at least one of which was a minor.
He denied the allegations and the feds never charged him, likely because of questions about the reliability of potential witnesses against him.
The ethics panel looked into many of the same issues and compiled what lawmakers describe as a damaging account of Gaetz’s alleged misconduct and his refusal to cooperate.
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