United States: The U.S. House Ethics Committee reportedly will convene in a closed session on Wednesday as some Senate Republicans demand that it release its report on an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct related to President Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz.
A Controversial Nomination
Gaetz, 42, quit from the House of Representatives the previous week; hours after president-elect Trump nominated him to serve as the Attorney-General, leading to debates in the DoJ as to the future of the committee probing intimate allegations that Gaetz paid for intercourse with a minor, a 17-year-old girl, as reported by Reuters.
Gaetz is also likely to come back to Capitol Hill to meet with the legislators, Republican Senator John Kennedy said to the media.
The Justice Department that Trump wants Gaetz to lead conducted its own three-year investigation into allegations of sex trafficking by the then-lawmaker, which resulted in no criminal charges and also brought two criminal cases against Trump in 2021, none of which was taken to trial.
Gaetz and Trump do not admit to any wrongdoing, while Trump has said that the four criminal cases against him were tried in order to prevent him from coming back into office.
Divided Opinions in the Senate
However, the decision will go to the US Senate, where Republicans will have a majority of 52 to 48 next year to decide whether to approve Gaetz, who has no experience in the department and has never been a prosecutor.
He is one of many Trump nominees who does not have the type of experience that a Cabinet head traditionally possesses and who, in some instances, has animosity toward the agency to which he has been appointed.
Several Senate Republicans have either demanded that the House panel reveal the details of investigating Gaetz or questioned his credentials. A staunch Republican, Gaetz played the role of a broker during the removal of Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker last year, an event that saw the House chamber in disarray for several weeks.
Nonetheless, Trump has started dialing Republican senators to emphasize his support for Gaetz, according to a Republican donor familiar with Trump’s activities and the party discord.
Former member of Congress and a representative of Democratic Party Dean Phillips who has served in previous lineups of the Ethics Committee supported the idea claiming that if ever a man who use to be in line for one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government, namely, accompanying the president on his trips, Gaetz would be screaming that the report should be released, as reported by Reuters.
Support and Pushback
“He’s not just gone. He’s now been nominated for a very important position in this country, which is the chief legal officer, if you will, of the country,” Phillips said. “It would seem bizarre and incongruent with any ethical principle to not release it.”
Republican firebrand Lauren Boebert downplayed those concerns, stating, “Y’all need to give it up on the ethics report; it has been dismissed by the DOJ; Matt Gaetz will be our new attorney general.”