House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended his decision to urge the House Ethics Committee to withhold its report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next Attorney General.
[Note: The Committee has been investigating allegations against Gaetz that he paid for sex, used illicit drugs, and had sex with a 17-year-old — allegations which Gaetz strenuously denies.]
While speaking to the press (see below), Johnson employed a familiar MAGA tactic to defend his decision to suppress the report, warning that if the House and its Committee — “with its vast resources and unlimited power” — can investigate and release a report about Gaetz, they could do the same to “private citizens.”
Essentially claiming that by shielding Gaetz from the ethics investigation results he was protecting all Americans, Johnson echoed President-elect Trump’s frequent claim that “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you.”
“I don’t think we want to go down that road,” Johnson said.
Speaker Johnson defends his decision calling on House Ethics to withhold report on Matt Gaetz. Says past situations where panel has released reports on former members is not the same. “We are in a different era,” he told us pic.twitter.com/NjvN1RIQJu
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 19, 2024
Gaetz resigned from the House last week, so he is now a private citizen. Johnson said “the House Ethics Committee has jurisdiction over members of Congress, not private citizens, not someone who’s left the institution. And I think that’s a really important perimeter for us to maintain.”
Johnson claimed that using the House resources to review and release the Gaetz report is “virtually unprecedented, I think, and a breach of protocol, and has dangerous implications down the road.”
When reminded by CNN’s Manu Raju, “But it’s been done before,” Johnson replied, “There may have been a breach of that in the past…if they did it, they probably should not have.”
Johnson said: “I don’t want to open a Pandora’s Box — if there was a breach of this in the past, so be it.”
Note: For more than a year, House committees led by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) used “vast resources and unlimited power” to investigate a private citizen named Hunter Biden.
Jordan, no stranger to ethics controversy himself, agreed with Johnson’s decision to bury the Gaetz report.
Johnson says neither Trump nor his advisers have urged him to block the release of the report pic.twitter.com/jRDTZBkELN
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 19, 2024
Jordan added that he supports Gaetz as the AG nominee and wants “someone at the Justice Department who can tell us… who put cocaine at the White House instead of all the other stuff they seem to be focused on.”
Johnson also told CNN that, despite proclaiming his desire to block the report soon after a meeting with the President-elect, the Speaker had not discussed his decision with Trump or his advisors. Johnson said of Trump, “He respects the House and its perimeters.”
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