WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he will “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee not release the results of its investigation into ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz, rebuffing senators who are demanding access now that Gaetz is President-elect Donald Trump ‘s nominee for attorney general.
“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 told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Johnson’s comments were a reversal from Wednesday, when he suggested a hands-off approach to the Gaetz report. The “Speaker of the House is not involved in that and can’t be involved in that,” he previously said of the Ethics committee.
The bipartisan Ethics panel is under enormous pressure as it weighs what to do about its years-long probe into allegations against Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday after Trump announced him as his nominee for attorney general.
It is standard practice for the Ethics Committee to end investigations when members of Congress depart on the grounds that they lack jurisdiction to continue.
Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and said last year that the Justice Department’s separate investigation against him into sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls ended with no federal charges.
“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.”
But Republican and Democratic senators alike on the Judiciary Committee that would review Gaetz’s attorney general nomination have called for the report to be made available to them.
“I think it’s going to be material in the proceedings,” said Sen. Thomas Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said, “I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”
However, the chairman of the Ethics panel, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., says he doesn’t know if the committee could provide the report to the Senate: “That is something that staff is looking into and trying to provide some guidance to members.”
When asked if he would at least discuss the report with members of the upper chamber, Guest said “that is a decision for the committee as a whole to take up at some point.”
Trump’s attorney general is expected to oversee radical changes to the Justice Department, which has been the target of Trump’s ire over two criminal cases alleging he tried to overturn the 2020 election and mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump says he is the victim of politically motivated prosecutions.
In a statement Wednesday announcing his pick, Trump said Gaetz would root out “systemic corruption” at the Justice Department and return the department “to its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution.”
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