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The Upcoming Matt Gaetz Ethics Committee Report
What Gaetz Has Already Acknowledged In a Preemptive Strike
In a bit of a shock, the House Ethics Committee held a secret vote to release the report they compiled on Matt Gaetz while he was a member of Congress. The report would have come out some time ago, but Gaetz abruptly resigned after Donald Trump announced him as his choice for Attorney General, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Gaetz resigned his congressional seat days before the report would have come out, raising concerns the report would never see the light of day.
After Trump announced Gaetz as his pick. The media was flooded with what was already public information about Gaetz’s behavior, most famously for paying women, allegedly for sex, one of them underage at the time of their first encounter.
Two things became clear in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement on Gaetz. It was unlikely Gaetz could get confirmed without Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewing the House report, and Republicans in both the House and Senate didn’t like Gaetz very much. Gaetz collected many enemies in the fight as to who would become the Speaker of the House after the 2020 election and often criticized other Republican officials when they didn’t act Trumpy enough.
Gaetz soon realized he couldn’t get the needed Senate votes without releasing the Ethics Committee report and probably not with it. After a few days on the hot seat, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration and has since taken a job as a television anchor for the little-watched One America News Network (OANN), which is scheduled to debut in January 2025.
Pressure on the House Ethics Committee to release the report died down, and an early vote along Party lines failed. It was just announced that the committee had taken a secret second vote to release the report as soon as they successfully concluded a vote on the budget.
Gaetz was incensed at the announcement and issued a statement in which he simultaneously declared his innocence while acknowledging bad behavior. GAetz claimed he did nothing illegal though should the “smoking” he referred to be smoking marijuana, he would likely be wrong. Here is the text of the Gaetz statement.
