House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the House Ethics report examining allegations of sex trafficking, sexual misconduct and illicit drug use by now former Rep. Matt Gaetz should not be released to the public.
“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,” Johnson said, according to Politico. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee,” Johnson added. “And so I don’t think that’s relevant.”
The House Ethics Committee was scheduled to meet Friday but that meeting has been postponed.
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he would nominate Gaetz to be attorney general. Gaetz announced his resignation from Congress shortly after.
Senate Republicans who will consider Gaetz’s nomination next year are demanding access to the report.
“I don’t want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee told reporters.
When asked if that means he wants to see the ethics report, he replied: “Absolutely.“
“I’m not going to speculate what the report shows, but that would certainly be a concern,” Cornyn said of evidence of sexual misconduct or illicit drug use.
