House Ethics Committee won’t release Gaetz report for now

UPDATE (Nov. 21, 2024, 12:46 p.m. ET): Matt Gaetz announced Thursday that he is withdrawing his name from consideration for U.S. attorney general.

The House Ethics Committee announced that it has not reached a decision on whether to release its report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz for now, after a Wednesday meeting in which the panel’s members voted on whether to make its findings public.

Committee chair Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., told reporters after the meeting that there was “no agreement” to release the report on the committee’s investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use against Gaetz. (Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.)

Later on, however, Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the committee, took issue with Guest’s characterization of the panel’s discussion.

“He has implied that there was an agreement of the committee not to disclose the report,” Wild told reporters. “That is an untrue — to the extent that that suggests that the committee was in agreement or that we had a consensus on that, that was inaccurate.”

She also suggested that the vote on whether to release the report fell along party lines. “In order to move something affirmatively forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side,” she said, “That did not happen in today’s vote.”

The report has been the subject of debate since President-elect Donald Trump announced last week that he’d picked Gaetz for U.S. attorney general. Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress the day of that announcement, effectively ending the committee’s jurisdiction over him.

There is precedent for releasing ethics reports after a lawmaker has resigned from Congress. But the House Ethics Committee is facing immense pressure from Gaetz’s allies, including Trump himself, not to release its report. Still, senators on both sides of the aisle have expressed an interest in seeing the report in advance of Gaetz’s confirmation hearing.

Wild said the committee has agreed to reconvene on Dec. 5 to continue to discuss the matter.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

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