Mike Johnson denies consulting with Trump on Matt Gaetz ethics report
Speaker Mike Johnson defended his call for the House Ethics Committee to withhold the release of its report on the investigation into Matt Gaetz and allegations that the former congressman engaged in sex crimes.
Johnson appeared across the DC news circuit on Sunday as he continues to ride the waves propelling his ascent in MAGAworld; his interviews with two networks came just hours after the GOP House leader was seen alongside Donald Trumpat the UFC championship at Madison Square Garden.
On Sunday, the speaker faced expected questions about the former and soon-to-be-president’s most controversial Cabinet nomination: Matt Gaetz, the one-congressman from Florida, who was picked to be Trump’s attorney general. Gaetz was once investigated by the same Justice Department he now seeks to lead for allegedly having sex with an underage girl; he has strongly denied the allegations.
A House Ethics Committee report was due out this past week detailing the committee’s own separate investigation into the congressman. Reports indicated that a woman testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz have sex with a minor.
But Gaetz resigned two days before it was supposed to be released, ending the committee’s technical jurisdiction to investigate him. The reason? His surprise nomination to the post of attorney general, which reportedly occurred after Gaetz convinced the president-elect to pick him during a flight on Trump’s plane.
Johnson said on Sunday that he hadn’t spoken with Trump about the report, and that his stated opposition to its release (despite calls from numerous GOP senators for the committee to put it out) had not been requested by the president-elect.
"The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report. Not once,” Johnson said on CNN’s State of the Union.
He went on to claim that there was a “very important” tradition to maintain whereupon the Ethics panel does not investigate or release reports about non-members. His position comes as members of his own party’s Senate caucus are pushing the committee to release the report in order for them to make accurate judgements during the ex-congressman’s confirmation process.
Republicans in the upper chamber, wary of the likelihood that a staffer on the committee could leak the report to the press, are not looking forward to an ugly, party-splitting vote on Gaetz’s confirmation. The release of a report supporting all or some of the allegations the former congressman has faced over the years could make GOP opposition in the Senate an easier pill to swallow — or force Trump to pull the nomination altogether.
But news reports indicate that the former president is dead set on getting Gaetz, a through-and-through loyalist who has expressed a willingness to buck all norms, tradition and protocol, through the Senate.
“He is not going to back off. He’s all in,” a Trumpworld source told CNN of the former president’s thinking.
The House speaker, unlike his incoming Senate counterpart John Thune, has become somewhat of a staple of the president-elect’s inner circle. In recent days, Johnson has made multiple in-person appearances with Trump at non-political events, and he’s seemingly forged a much closer alliance to Trump than his predecessor Kevin McCarthy did.
It’s a move that will likely work to Johnson’s advantage as he pressed ahead to seek reelection as House speaker in January. He won unanimously on the GOP conference’s secret ballot this past week, though members in the room told The Independent afterwards that he could still face defections between now and the final vote.
“I’m sure…yeah, I think there will be some opposition,” Rep Anna Paulina Luna said in a press gaggle while leaving the meeting.
“[I]t’s a big game of trust, and there’s not a lot of trust in Washington,” added Paulina Luna. “So hopefully, though, everyone can unify behind the President’s agenda.”