Matt Gaetz probe in focus as House Ethics panel expected to meet
By Bo Erickson and Katharine Jackson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House Ethics Committee is expected to meet behind closed doors Wednesday as some Senate Republicans call for it to share the findings of its probe into allegations of sexual misconduct involving Donald Trump’s attorney general pick Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz, 42, resigned his House of Representatives seat last week, hours after President-elect Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department, a move that raised questions in Congress as to the future of the panel’s investigation into allegations that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl.
Gaetz is also expected to return to Capitol Hill for meetings with lawmakers, Republican Senator John Kennedy told reporters.
The Justice Department that Trump wants Gaetz to lead conducted its own three-year investigation into allegations of sex trafficking by the then-lawmaker, which produced no criminal charges, and also brought two criminal cases against Trump after he left office in 2021, neither of which went to trial.
Both Gaetz and Trump deny all wrongdoing, and Trump has described the four criminal cases he faced as politically motivated attempts to stop him from returning to power.
It will be up to the U.S. Senate, which Republicans will control by a margin of at least 52-48 next year, to determine whether to confirm Gaetz, who has never worked in the department or served as a prosecutor at any level of government.
He is one of a growing list of Trump nominees who lack the resumes typically seen in Cabinet heads and who in some cases hold grudges against the agencies they have been tapped to run.
A handful of Senate Republicans have either called on the House panel to share the findings of its investigation into Gaetz, or expressed skepticism of his qualifications. A hardline Republican, Gaetz helped orchestrate the ouster of Republican Kevin McCarthy as House speaker last year, a move that threw the chamber into chaos for weeks.
Undeterred, Trump has begun calling Republican senators to underline his commitment to Gaetz, according to a Republican donor with knowledge of Trump’s actions, who was granted anonymity to discuss intra-party tensions.
Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat who served on past Ethics Committee lineups, said Gaetz’s situation — a former member of Congress in line for one of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government — is an argument in favor of releasing the report.
“He’s not just gone. He’s now been nominated for a very important position in this country, which is the chief legal officer, if you will, of the country,” Phillips said. “It would seem bizarre and incongruent with any ethical principle to not release it.”
Hardline Republican Representative Lauren Boebert dismissed the concerns, saying, “Y’all need to give it up on the ethics report, it’s been dismissed by the DOJ, Matt Gaetz will be our new attorney general.”
(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Katharine Jackson, additional reporting by Moira Warburton and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)