House rejects Dem effort to release Gaetz report
The House of Representatives rejected a bid by Democrats to force the release of an ethics report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Thursday evening. It was shot down before a final vote, however, on a margin of 206 to 198.
WASHINGTON – The House has shut down Democrats’ efforts to release the long-awaited ethics report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz on Thursday.
The nearly party-line votes came after Democrats had been pressing for the findings to be published even though the Florida Republican left Congress and withdrew as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., was the sole Republican to support the effort.
Most Republicans have argued that any congressional probe into Gaetz ended when he resigned from the House. Speaker Mike Johnson also requested that the committee not publish its report, saying it would be a terrible precedent to set.
While ethics reports have previously been released after a member’s resignation, it is extremely rare.
Shortly before the votes took place, Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., who introduced one of the bills to force the release, said that if Republicans reject the release, they will have “succeeded in sweeping credible allegations of sexual misconduct under the rug.” Gaetz has repeatedly denied the claims.
FILE – Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) talks to reporters outside of the U.S. Capitol Building on Oct. 02, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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What is the report about?
The report regards the federal sex trafficking investigation that began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.
Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 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 in late 2022 to 11 years in prison.
Federal investigators scrutinized a trip that Gaetz took to the Bahamas with a group of women and a doctor who donated to his campaign, and whether the women were paid or received gifts to have sex with the men, according to people familiar with the matter who were not allowed to publicly discuss the investigation. Prosecutors also investigated whether Gaetz and his associates tried to secure government jobs for some of the women, and scrutinized Gaetz’s connections to the medical marijuana sector, including whether his associates sought to influence legislation Gaetz sponsored, the people have said.
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