Ethics Committee report stays under wraps

If former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has any skeletons in the closet, then they must stay where they are for now.

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to send back to the House Ethics Committee a pair of key resolutions. If the House had approved the resolutions, they would have forced the committee to release the findings of its longstanding investigation into allegations of misconduct that have followed Gaetz since 2021.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., originally planned to vote to release the report. But, on Thursday evening, he voted with all the other House Republicans to send the matter back to committee. When asked why he changed his mind, Van Orden said he had reflected on the matter more deeply.

“Matt Gaetz isn’t a member of Congress anymore,” he told WORLD. “Congress has zero jurisdiction over Matt Gaetz.”

Like Van Orden, many Republicans contend that the committee’s power doesn’t extend to a private person. I asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., about the merit of that precedent, especially if it meant Gaetz’s past must remain in the dark.

Guest pointed to a need for consistency. “I’m going to continue to abide by what has been the precedent that has been historically followed. That’s why I feel strongly in the position that I’ve taken,” he said.

A former Seminole County, Fla. tax official who had associated politically with Gaetz was convicted in May 2021 of a shocking list of federal charges. Joel Micah Greenberg pleaded guilty to charges of sexually trafficking a minor, falsifying identification, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud, among other offenses. He received a sentence of 11 years in prison.

After Attorney General Bill Barr launched an initial investigation into Gaetz in late 2020, the DOJ ultimately recommended not pressing charges against the Florida lawmaker. But concerns about his ties to Greenburg eventually prompted the House Ethics Committee to launch its own probe.

Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., who sponsored one of the two rejected House resolutions, thinks that Republicans are more interested in protecting one of their own than releasing findings of the investigation.

“The Committee was prepared to [release the report] in July. When Matt Gaetz resigned all of a sudden, the report is ‘incomplete.’ You’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical,” Casten said, referring to delays from when the committee was originally going to release its findings. “It behooves us if we care about the rule of law. If there’s no crime, fine. Right? But clearly the allegations were serious enough for Matt Gaetz to resign from Congress over it. What is he scared of?”

Gaetz resigned his seat, effectively immediately, when President-elect Donald Trump nominated him for attorney general on Nov. 13. He later withdrew from consideration for the attorney general post and declined to return to Congress.

Casten’s resolution would have called on the House of Representatives to “immediately release the latest draft of its report and a summary of its findings to the public,” including accompanying documentation. That resolution failed with just one Republican voting in favor of it: Rep. Tom McClintock of California.

Casten wasn’t the only member who submitted a motion that demanded the release of the report. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced a separate resolution. His would have compelled the chamber to “publicly release the committee’s report, including any associated findings, recommendations, and proposed disciplinary actions, as discussed by the committee.” Republicans in the chamber voted unanimously against Cohen’s resolution.

Early on Thursday, the Ethics Committee released a statement on the investigation.

“The committee is continuing to discuss the matter,” the news release said. “There will be no further statements other than in accordance with committee and House rules.”