By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that a congressional ethics panel should not issue a report containing allegations of sexual misconduct against President-elect Donald Trump’s Matt Gaetz as U.S. attorney general. are investigated.
Lawmakers from both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee have said they want to see the House Ethics Committee’s unreleased report on Gaetz as part of a Senate confirmation process for Cabinet nominees that would begin next year with public hearings.
“I’m going to urge the ethics committee not to release the report because that’s not the way we do things in the House of Representatives,” Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.
Gaetz, 42, who denies any wrongdoing, resigned from Congress on Wednesday, ending the ethics investigation two days before the committee was expected to release the document.
The former congressman faced a nearly three-year Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations involving a 17-year-old girl. His office said prosecutors told him in 2023 that he would not be charged.
Johnson said he planned to urge House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest not to provide the Gaetz report to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The rules of the House of Representatives have always been that a former member is outside the jurisdiction of the ethics committee,” said Johnson, who returned Friday morning from a meeting with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida .
“I think it is a terrible violation of protocol, tradition and spirit of the rule,” he added. “I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Johnson’s position marks a reversal from Wednesday, when he told reporters that as speaker he could not be involved in the decision whether to release the report.
Gaetz is among a series of nominees Trump tapped this week who don’t have the resumes normally seen in candidates for high-level administrative jobs.
He would have to be confirmed by the Senate — where Republicans will have a majority of at least 52 of the 100 seats — to get the post, and several Republicans have so far expressed skepticism about the choice.
(Reporting by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Matthew Lewis)
