Debate over releas­ing Gaetz report reignites despite dropped attor­ney gen­er­al bid with vote this week

Rep. Sean Cas­ten (D‑IL) filed a priv­i­leged res­o­lu­tion to imme­di­ate­ly release the House Ethics Committee’s report into Gaetz, forc­ing a vote on the mat­ter with­in two leg­isla­tive days. Cas­ten pre­vi­ous­ly intro­duced a sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tion last month, but that mea­sure expired over the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day, he said in a press release.

GOP lead­ers could try to shoot down the mea­sure by intro­duc­ing a motion to table, dis­miss­ing it alto­geth­er. But if that fails, it will be vot­ed on by the entire House and only four Repub­li­cans would need to join all Democ­rats in sup­port­ing the mea­sure — a pos­si­bil­i­ty some GOP law­mak­ers said they would con­sid­er.

Repub­li­cans have sought to keep the report under wraps, argu­ing it would be unprece­dent­ed to pub­lish an ethics report about a law­mak­er who has already left office. How­ev­er, in his updat­ed res­o­lu­tion, Cas­ten list­ed four exam­ples of for­mer law­mak­ers whose ethics inves­ti­ga­tions were released even after they resigned.

Those exam­ples include for­mer Reps. Bill Bon­er in 1987, Don Lukens in 1990, Mark Foley in 2006, and Eric Mas­sa in 2011. The lat­ter three inves­ti­ga­tions all involved sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions, sim­i­lar to Gaetz’s inquiry.

“The Com­mit­tee on Ethics has, on many occa­sions, released its reports on for­mer mem­bers,” Cas­ten said in a state­ment. “Resign­ing from Con­gress should not allow Mem­bers to avoid account­abil­i­ty for alle­ga­tions as seri­ous as those faced by Matt Gaetz. With­hold­ing this report from the Amer­i­can peo­ple would impede the dig­ni­ty and integri­ty of the leg­isla­tive pro­ceed­ings of the House.”

Casten’s res­o­lu­tion comes just days before the House Ethics Com­mit­tee is set to recon­vene Thurs­day to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions about pub­lish­ing the Gaetz report, some­thing the pan­el did not come to an agree­ment on last month.

The 10-mem­ber com­mit­tee met for two hours behind closed doors in Novem­ber to vote on the issue, but the pan­el adjourned after fail­ing to reach a con­sen­sus. It is not clear if the report is fin­ished or what work is left to be done, but Demo­c­ra­t­ic rank­ing mem­ber Susan Wild (D‑PA) told reporters last month “that we were in a posi­tion to vote today.”

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The mat­ter of Gaetz’s ethics report came to a head last month when the Flori­da Repub­li­can resigned on Nov. 13 just hours after Trump nom­i­nat­ed him to be his attor­ney gen­er­al. Gaetz lat­er with­drew his name from con­sid­er­a­tion, acknowl­edg­ing he like­ly did not have enough sup­port in the Sen­ate to approve his nom­i­na­tion.

Gaetz has con­tin­ued to deny all wrong­do­ing in the case. The Jus­tice Depart­ment also inves­ti­gat­ed alle­ga­tions of sex traf­fick­ing but did not bring charges.