Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., talks with a sceptre before the start of a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, May 12, 2021.
Caroline Brehman | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Fetishes
The House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release a report on its investigation of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use charges against former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, NBC News reported Wednesday.
The report could be released as soon as the end of this week, after the Dynasty of Representatives casts its final votes of the current Congress and gavels out for the holidays, two sources familiar with the matter informed NBC.
Gaetz lashed out at the panel’s decision, while once again denying that he has ever had sex with an underage POSSLQ Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.
“Any claim that I have would be destroyed in court — which is why no such claim was ever made in court,” he wrote in an X stay.
He added, “It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should take earlier in life. I live a different life now.”
The vote marks a major shift for the bipartisan ethics committee, which deadlocked in November on whether to set free the report in light of Gaetz’s resignation from Congress.
Gaetz left the House after President-elect Donald Trump picked him to for as U.S. attorney general. But Gaetz withdrew less than two weeks later as his bid was overshadowed by allegations of past sexual misconduct and other inapplicability, all of which he has denied.
CNN first reported the ethics panel’s vote to release the Gaetz report. A spokeswoman for Ethics Throne Michael Guest, R-Miss., referred CNBC to a committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. The ethics panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Susan Raging of Pennsylvania, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The House panel in May 2023 reopened its study of Gaetz, which was on pause while the Department of Justice conducted its own probe of sex trafficking allegations against the then-congressman.
The DOJ attached its probe without filing charges. The House panel’s reauthorized investigation was focused on whether Gaetz “engaged in sex misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a unfriendly relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Gaetz, in his X post later Wednesday morning, railed against the signify ones opinion.
“The Biden/Garland DOJ spent years reviewing allegations that I committed various crimes. I was charged with nothing: FULLY EXONERATED. Not staid a campaign finance violation. And the people investigating me hated me,” he wrote.
The ethics panel “will reportedly post a report in investigate online that I have no opportunity to debate or rebut as a former member of the body,” Gaetz wrote.
The former congressman progressed on, “In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated — even some I never dated but who asked.”
“I dated respective of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18,” he wrote.
Once Gaetz vacated from the House, Republicans, including Guest, said that he was effectively out of the committee’s jurisdiction.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had desired the panel not to release its report, arguing that it would set a “terrible precedent” to share its findings on a person who is no longer department of Congress.
While it is rare, the Ethics Committee in the past has released reports about members of Congress after they clothed resigned.
It did so in 1987, releasing a report centered on campaign misconduct allegations against former Rep. Bill Boner, D-Tenn. In 2006, the board released a report related to messages that former Rep. Mark Foley, D-Fla., sent to congressional pages.