House scuttles push to force release of Gaetz ethics report

WASHINGTON (CN) — The odds grew longer Thursday that a congressional report on Florida Representative Matt Gaetz will see the light of day, after the House voted down a resolution that would force the chamber’s ethics panel to publish its findings.

A vote on the proposed measure, offered by Democratic Illinois Representative Sean Casten, came hours after the House Committee on Ethics once again declined to release its report on allegations that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old.

In a statement, committee leaders acknowledged that lawmakers met to discuss the investigation but said only that they were “continuing to discuss the matter.”

“There will be no further statements other than in accordance with Committee and House Rules,” the statement read.

And the House’s Republican majority canned Casten’s gambit to force the ethics report into the light.

Lawmakers voted 206-198 to recommit his resolution, effectively killing it. A similar resolution offered by Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen, also a Democrat, failed as well.

The status of the Ethics Committee report was thrown into flux last month after Gaetz resigned from Congress following his nomination as attorney general for the second Trump administration. Though his appointment has since fallen through, the Florida congressman has said he will not rejoin the House in January.

With Gaetz no longer in the House, ethics investigators would be limited in their recourse if they found that the allegations against him had any merit. But some lawmakers have pushed the committee to release its findings anyway in the name of transparency.

The panel last month resisted those calls — prompting Casten to offer his proposed resolution, which he formally introduced Monday.

“Given the serious nature of the allegations against Representative Gaetz, a failure of the committee on ethics of the House of Representatives to publicly release its report on its investigation undermines the committee’s credibility and impedes the safety, dignity and integrity of the legislative proceedings of the House,” Casten said on the House floor, reading from his resolution.

The Illinois lawmaker pointed out at the time that the ethics committee has historically published reports on other former members of Congress.

“Resigning from Congress should not allow Members to avoid accountability for allegations as serious as those faced by Matt Gaetz,” Casten wrote Monday in a post on X.

With the Illinois lawmaker’s effort dead in the water and the ethics committee stalled, it appears unlikely that the Gaetz report will be made public through normal channels.

The Florida congressman withdrew from consideration to lead President-elect Trump’s Justice Department in November amid cratering Republican support for his nomination. Gaetz said at the time that he felt his appointment had become a “distraction” for Trump and that he wanted to avoid what he called a “needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”

The lawmaker has denied the allegations against him.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, investigated Gaetz in 2022 over his relationship with Seminole County, Florida-based tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for underage sex trafficking. The agency never brought charges against Gaetz.

President-elect Trump has since named Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as a replacement candidate for the coveted attorney general role.

As controversy still swirls around Gaetz, knives are also out in Washington for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary.

The Fox News host has been on Capitol Hill all week meeting with GOP senators as he navigates allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct, which he has denied. Hegseth has committed to remain in the running for defense secretary, despite reports that the president-elect is considering other candidates such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

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