House Speaker Mike Johnson wants Ethics panel to keep Matt Gaetz report secret

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House Speaker Mike Johnson wants Ethics panel to keep Matt Gaetz report secret

Washington — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he would “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee withhold a potentially damaging report on its investigation into whether former Rep. Matt Gaetz engaged in ******* misconduct, illicit ***** use and bribery. 

Gaetz resigned from Congress on Wednesday after President-elect Donald Trump announced he intended to nominate the Florida *********** as attorney general. The timing came days before a House panel was set to vote on releasing a report on the allegations against Gaetz. The House Ethics Committee planned to take its vote Friday but canceled late Thursday. 

Gaetz was also the subject of a previous Justice Department investigation that sought to determine if he violated **** trafficking and obstruction of justice laws. No charges were filed, and Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing. 

“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee,” Johnson, a Louisiana ***********, told reporters. 

Johnson said releasing the report would set a “terrible precedent” and “open up Pandora’s box.” 

“I believe it is very important to maintain the house’s tradition of not issuing ethics reports on people who are no longer members of Congress,” he said. “The House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction is over sitting members of Congress. That’s an important rule.” 

Democratic Sen. ***** Durbin of Illinois, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called on the House panel to share the report and “all relevant documentation” on Gaetz with his committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee is responsible for conducting confirmation hearings for the attorney general nominee.

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the ********* people. Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next attorney general of the ******* States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.”

*********** Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also said he wants to see the report. GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota isn’t on the Judiciary Committee but said in an interview on CNN, “We should be able to get a hold of [the report], and we should have access to it one way or another, based on the way we do all of these nominations.”

Jaala Brown

contributed to this report.

Caitlin Yilek

Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.

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