The news came like rapid fire on Wednesday: It was announced that Donald Trump had chosen Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general, that Gaetz had announced the immediate resignation of his seat in Congress, and that the House had scheduled a vote on Friday on whether to release a potentially scathing report from the House Ethics Committee into Gaetz’s possible bad acts.
Because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress as of yesterday, the Ethics Committee will no longer have jurisdiction over him. So that raised the question of what might happen with the report.
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Majority Whip, issued a statement calling on the Ethics Committee to “preserve and share” the report, for consideration by the Senate for his confirmation hearings.
Durbin wants House Ethics to preserve the Gaetz report pic.twitter.com/ulvYTpuLfv
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) November 14, 2024
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“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report. We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” Durbin wrote on X. “Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.”
Also calling for the release of the report? An attorney for a woman who has accused Gaetz of having sex with her while she was underage.
Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.
— John Clune (@CluneEsq) November 14, 2024
Meanwhile, Politico reported that the idea of nominating Gaetz as attorney general came together just hours before it was announced, and was “hatched” aboard Trump’s plane with Gaetz aboard. The report also said that the plan was agreed to while Susie Wiles, Gaetz’s fellow Floridian and the incoming White House chief of staff, was in a different part of the plane.
