WASHINGTON (AP) — Matt Gaetz may be done with the House of Representatives, but his former colleagues aren’t done with him.
Lawmakers are expected to decide Thursday the fate of the House of Representatives’ long-awaited ethics report on sexual misconduct allegations against Gaetz, with many pushing for its release even as the Florida Republican has left Congress and resigned as a candidate for Donald Trump’s attorney general. . Gaetz denies the allegations.
The bipartisan committee planned to vote in the afternoon on whether to make the findings of their yearlong investigation public. If they decide against this disclosure, Democrats are poised to force votes in the House of Representatives requiring the committee to publish the full report.
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It is the culmination of weeks of pressure on the committee’s five Republicans and five Democrats, who work mostly in secret to investigate allegations of misconduct against lawmakers.
The status of the Gaetz investigation became an open question last month when he abruptly resigned from Congress following Trump’s announcement that he wanted his ally in the Cabinet. It is standard practice for the committee to end investigations when members of Congress leave, but the circumstances surrounding Gaetz were unusual given his potential role in the new administration.
Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., the committee chairman, said Wednesday that there is no longer the same urgency to release the report since Gaetz has left Congress and stepped aside as Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Justice. to lead justice. Guest said he will not vote to make the report public.
“I have been steadfast in that. He is no longer a member. He will no longer be confirmed by the Senate because he has withdrawn his nomination as attorney general,” Guest said. “But I only have one vote out of ten. I have no control over the rest of the committee. We have nine other members who can continue to think about this issue.”
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and said last year that the separate Justice Department investigation against him into sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls ended without federal charges.
His former political ally Joel Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as a tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted in 2021 as part of a plea deal with prosecutors that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men . The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in late 2022.
