Whether Matt Gaetz serves as US attorney general during President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration depends on several factors, including what senators make of a House committee investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by the former US House Representative from Florida.
The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet on November 20, when it could decide whether to release a bipartisan report on the allegations against Gaetz.
Ahead of Senate confirmation hearings, senators, including some Republicans, have urged the House panel to release the report. Gaetz resigned from Congress on November 13.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he does not want the committee’s report released because doing so would set a “terrible precedent”.
Has the House committee released reports about nonmembers of Congress? Who decides whether to release the report? Here are answers to those questions and more.
What is the House Ethics Committee?
The House in 1965 created the Standards of Official Conduct Committee, now called the House Committee on Ethics, or the House Ethics Committee. It polices House members’ adherence to the chamber rules and applicable laws.
Unique among House committees, it has a membership equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, currently five lawmakers from each party. Because one party cannot dictate the panel’s actions on its own, any decision carries bipartisan weight.
Why did the Justice Department and the House investigate Gaetz?
In late 2020, when Trump was president and Bill Barr was attorney general, the Justice Department began investigating allegations that Gaetz was involved in sex trafficking a 17-year old girl.
The investigation intensified when Gaetz was tied to Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector who pleaded guilty in 2021 to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking.
Greenberg had admitted to paying women for sex; he also admitted paying a minor for sex and introducing her to other men. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
In a plea deal, Greenberg gave investigators information about Gaetz, and prosecutors started to look at whether Gaetz was involved in the sex trafficking scheme.
The department also investigated other Gaetz associates, and private trips he took to the Bahamas and New York in 2018 and 2019. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the investigations into him politically motivated.
In February 2023, the Justice Department told Gaetz’s lawyers they were closing the investigation without recommending charges, partly because prosecutors struggled over whether a jury would consider the witnesses, including Greenberg, credible.
On a parallel track, the House Ethics Committee began investigating Gaetz in 2021 over his purported involvement in the sex trafficking scheme and other accusations of sexual misconduct.
The committee initially deferred to the Justice Department before expanding its probe to examine accusations that Gaetz used illicit drugs, obstructed investigations into his conduct and accepted improper gifts.
As the committee plans to meet on Wednesday to discuss releasing the report, Joel Leppard, a lawyer representing two women involved in the accusations against Gaetz, told ABC News that both women told committee investigators Gaetz paid them for sex multiple times.
Leppard told ABC News that one of his clients also saw Gaetz having sex with a third woman – who was then 17 years old – at a house party in Florida in 2017.
Would releasing the report break precedent?
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Johnson called releasing the report “a Pandora’s box”, saying there is a “very important protocol and tradition” that the committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to nonmembers.
In some cases, when the committee has announced an investigation but a lawmaker resigns within days, the panel acted no further. In 2011, Anthony Weiner, a Democratic congressman from New York City, resigned after the committee launched a preliminary investigation into sexting allegations but closed the inquiry when Weiner stepped down.
In 2017, the panel opened an inquiry into allegations that Trent Franks, the representative from Arizona, offered a female staff member $5m to bear his child, but the inquiry closed when he resigned.
Despite such examples, “there is no precedent barring the release of a report on a former member,” said Donald Wolfensberger, a congressional scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a House Rules Committee former staff director.
In 1987, Representative Bill Boner from Tennessee resigned after winning a race for Nashville mayor. Despite his departure, the House committee released an initial staff report about its investigation into allegations of improper spending and bribes.
In its report, the committee said it “has not generally issued reports” following a resignation, retirement or re-election defeat, but it added that there were “a number of issues” in Boner’s case that “warrant public disclosure”.
In 1990, the committee released a report one day after the resignation of Ohio Republican Congressman Buz Lukens, who had been convicted of charges related to paying an underaged girl $40 for sex.
The committee had been investigating other allegations of improprieties by Lukens with House employees. Although the committee ended its active investigation when Lukens resigned, it voted to release a case summary.
Some investigations even started after lawmakers’ resignations.
In 2006, the committee opened an investigation into former Representative Mark Foley from Florida, after he had left the House, and then released a report. Foley was accused of sending sexually suggestive messages to House pages, who are high school students.
And in 2011, the committee voted to reauthorise a lapsed investigation into former Democratic Congressman from New York Eric Massa, who had resigned in 2010 after allegations of groping his staff.
Who decides to release the report? What is Johnson’s role?
Johnson said on State of the Union that “the speaker does not have the authority to stop the release of a report by the Ethics Committee”.
Rather, it is up to the committee itself. After the committee approves the report, the chairman files it, “unless the committee directs otherwise,” Wolfensberger said.
Some Republican senators have called for the House panel to release the report. The House is an independent body, so it does not have to bend to the Senate’s will. But such calls could publicly pressure the Ethics Committee to release it.
If the Senate doesn’t confirm Gaetz, what are his options?
If the Senate doesn’t confirm Gaetz through its normal process, Trump could install him as a “recess appointment”. The president can make such appointments when Congress is in recess for at least 10 days. However, the recess appointment would be good only until the end of the congressional session, which typically occurs at year’s end.
If Gaetz’s attorney general nomination fizzles, Gaetz could return to the House. Although he has resigned from the current Congress, Gaetz won re-election to the next Congress and would be eligible to serve if he wishes, as long as he decides to do so before the new House is sworn in on January 3.
Trump could also appoint Gaetz to another executive branch job that requires no Senate confirmation.
Gaetz also could run for Florida governor, a seat that will open in 2026, when Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will be term-limited out of office. Political analysts have long considered Gaetz a leading contender for the seat.
