By FARNOUSH AMIRI
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he will “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee not release the results of its investigation into ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz, rebuffing senators who are demanding access now that Gaetz is President-elect Donald Trump ‘s nominee for attorney general.
Johnson’s intervention is highly unusual, as the Ethics panel has traditionally operated independently. His move seems certain to add the growing furor on Capitol Hill over Gaetz’s nomination to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
“I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Ethics reports have previously been released after a member’s resignation, though it is extremely rare.
Johnson’s comments were a reversal from Wednesday, when he suggested a hands-off approach to the Gaetz report. The “Speaker of the House is not involved in that and can’t be involved in that,” he previously said of the Ethics committee.
The bipartisan Ethics panel is under enormous pressure as it weighs what to do about its years-long probe into sexual misconduct and other allegations against Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday after Trump announced him as his nominee for attorney general.
It is standard practice for the Ethics Committee to end investigations when members of Congress depart on the grounds that they lack jurisdiction to continue. But the circumstances with Gaetz are hardly standard, given his potential role in Trump’s Cabinet. Senators saying the panel’s material must see the light of day so that they can fully vet his nomination.
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Sen. Dick Durbin,…
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