Congress
How Matt Gaetz poisoned the House Ethics Committee
Scandal-ridden former Rep. Matt Gaetz is gone from Congress, but the wounds he inflicted on the House Ethics Committee that investigated him remain fresh.
After the longest delay in recent history, the panel finally recruited enough members to perform its grim mandate of governing fellow lawmakers’ conduct in the 119th Congress. And they’ll have their work cut out for them: The committee is still regrouping from its crisis late last year over whether to break with recent precedent and release the results of an investigation into their former Florida GOP colleague, who was being considered for attorney general.
The Ethics Committee rarely releases findings of investigations into lawmakers who resign before those investigations can conclude. Gaetz tested that practice, with lawmakers on both sides arguing the information was critical for senators to review in advance of his confirmation hearings.
Gaetz ended up withdrawing from consideration, but it doesn’t stop disagreements over how to proceed within the notoriously private committee from spilling out into the open, with finger pointing over the source of leaks potentially coming from inside the panel’s ranks. Democrats accused some Republicans of trying to shield Gaetz from scrutiny over allegations of illicit drug use and paying a minor for sex.
The Ethics Committee is never a coveted assignment, which means party leaders will inevitably have a difficult time finding members to reconstitute the panel, said one GOP lawmaker granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“Nobody ever wants to sit on the committee,” the lawmaker said in an interview.
But the Gaetz episode has contributed to conditions from which the Ethics Committee could struggle to fully recover, former members said in interviews. It could plunge the panel into further dysfunction as the committee prepares in the coming weeks to ramp up after a monthslong delay and a pileup of potential cases.
“It is a monster cloud,” former Rep. Mike Conaway, who served as Ethics Committee chair from 2013-2015, said of the allegations of leaks in the previous Congress that could plague the panel’s current membership.
House Republican leaders tapped GOP Rep. Michael Guest of Missouri to return as committee chair, joining repeat Reps. John Rutherford (R-Fla.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) and Glenn Ivey (D-Md.).
New Republican members assigned to the Ethics Committee will be Reps. Nathaniel Moran of Texas and Ashley Hinson of Iowa. Democratic leadership tapped Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas to join the committee, and selected Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of California as the new ranking member.
Among their first items of business might be resuming an investigation held over from the previous Congress into Rep. Cory Mills, a Florida Republican who drew attention last month over allegations of assault by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
Paramount to the committee’s integrity on all matters is its strict code of confidentiality: Members agree never to speak in any capacity about its pending business, on or off the record. After the events surrounding Gaetz, however, it’s not clear that confidentiality is still guaranteed.
A flurry of news reports late last year revealed how members of the Ethics Committee were fighting over how to handle the Gaetz situation — insider information that spilled out into the public domain. Finger-pointing abounded as to who was leaking the private details, including the fact that there was a split secret vote on whether to release the Gaetz report.
These events also obliterated the longstanding presumption of nonpartisanship inside the committee, which is the only panel evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Guest called the report’s release a “dangerous departure with potentially catastrophic consequences.” Speaker Mike Johnson had said he did not want the report to be public.
In a further divide, as the Ethics Committee deliberated on next steps, Democrats were making procedural moves to force a vote on the House floor to release the report on Gaetz. Rep. Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat leading that effort, recently called the Ethics Committee “a speed bump on the road to hell [Johnson] is driving himself on.”
“Everything’s become so partisan, and if [the committee] hasn’t become actually partisan, there’s suspicions of partisanship regardless of what people do or say,” said former Rep. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who served on the Ethics Committee from 2011-2013, in an interview. “It undermines any decision the committee makes.”
Yarmuth added, “If you attack the credibility of the Ethics Committee, then nobody fears the Ethics Committee … I think you’d want to be afraid of running afoul of the Ethics Committee.”
Former Rep. Gregg Harper, a Mississippi Republican who served on the panel alongside Yarmuth, in the private sector now represents lawmakers who have cases pending before the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan entity tasked with vetting outside complaints against lawmakers before sending them to the formal committee.
He said the decision to release the report on Gaetz after he had already left Congress undermined one of the key motivators of the Ethics Committee: Pushing bad acting lawmakers out of office. After all, Gaetz’s decision to resign from the House following his nomination to be attorney general by then-President-elect Donald Trump was widely seen as an effort to avoid the release of a damning report into his alleged misconduct that could foil his chances for confirmation.
“It’s always been understood, ‘hey, if you’re in a mess, you leave — get out of there, don’t come back,’” Harper said in an interview. “The reality is sometimes a member needs to leave … one motivation to leave is, ‘Okay, I can put this behind me, and there won’t be anything else that I’ll to deal with, maybe, in the press.’”
Harper and Yarmuth both recalled the discomfort they experienced when leadership drafted them into serving on the Ethics Committee. Harper said his colleagues asked if then-Speaker John Boehner was “mad at you about something?” Yarmuth said he was approached on the House floor by Rep. Maxine Waters, during the committee’s investigation into her dealings with a bank in which her husband had a financial interest.
“How can you do this?” Yarmuth said Waters would repeatedly plead with him on the floor.
In a sign that leaders of the reconstituted Ethics Committee are for the time being adhering to the rules, a spokesperson for DeSauliner referred comment for this story to the panel’s staff director — whose job it is to interface with the media — citing confidentiality policies. The staff director, in turn, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Guest also referred press inquiries to the staff director.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who was the chair of the Ethics Committee from 2009-2011 — during which time she oversaw the investigation that culminated in a rare censure of a fellow member of her own party, the late-Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, for tax violations — said she wasn’t sure where the panel would go from here.
“It’s very difficult,” she conceded, when asked about the future of the panel in the wake of the Gaetz report. “But they operate with discretion, so we really don’t know the details.”
Todd Blanche took a major step toward confirmation as attorney general Tuesday after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 on party lines to advance his nomination, likely setting up a final vote within days.
His nomination, at risk of being withdrawn just last week, now appears to be on a glide path toward approval. Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since April, but President Donald Trump has been intent on installing his former personal lawyer permanently.
Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said ahead of the vote that Cornyn and Tillis’ concerns about the fund “and the IRS settlement were shared by many, including this senator.” He added that the changes Blanche made “put this issue to bed once and for all.”
Democrats lambasted the deal Cornyn and Tillis struck, saying it would not meaningfully bind Trump from eventually resurrecting the payout fund and using his to enrich his political allies, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“To state the obvious, Mr. Blanche’s statement on the slush fund and the IRS immunity agreement are not signed by the parties to the settlement agreement and are therefore unenforceable,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel. “The parties could still sue to enforce the agreement and the cop-beaters fund can easily be revived with a new order from the Department of Justice 15 minutes after Mr. Blanche is confirmed as attorney general.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said he “loves the state of Texas” but said the deal Cornyn agreed to is “all hat and no cattle.”
Booker, who is a vegan, asked, “Where’s the beef?”
Outside of the committee, there are a few GOP senators who could pose a hurdle in confirming Blanche, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. John Curtis of Utah and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Murkowski called the written elimination of the payout fund a “pretty good step” Monday, while the others said they continue to evaluate Blanche’s nomination.
All four have yet to commit to voting for Blanche, and as long as all Democrats are unified in voting against him, he can only lose two Republican votes given the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has not voted since June due to health reasons.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he wants to get Blanche confirmed before senators leave as soon as the end of this week for an extended recess.
A lawyer for Rep. Max Miller took responsibility Tuesday for inadvertently releasing sensitive photos of the Ohio Republican’s daughter in a trove of material Miller published Sunday in a bid to defend himself against domestic abuse claims.
The attorney, Aaron Minc, took responsibility for the photo being released and called it “completely unintentional and a mistake” after a lawyer for Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused Miller of disseminating the daughter’s name and one image that “could be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material.”
“I am solely responsible for what happened,” Minc said in a statement. “I was the only person responsible for assembling, creating, reviewing, adding, deleting, redacting, or making any changes to the information and files that were in this folder.”
Minc apologized to Miller, Moreno and their families but also decried Moreno for creating “a media spectacle regarding this unfortunate mistake … as a means to try to gain leverage in court and distract from the underlying evidence that exonerates Mr. Miller from the false allegations he is accused of.”
Miller posted the documents online Sunday after delivering a livestreamed defense against the claims leveled by his former wife, Emily Moreno. He has declined all allegations of wrongdoing, which include pouring hot water on his ex-wife, holding a gun to her head and breaking his daughter’s collarbone.
Moreno’s lawyer Subodh Chandra claimed that the documents left the daughter’s name unredacted and contained “private images,” including one where “the daughter’s genitals appear to be visible,” according to a letter to Minc obtained by Blue Light News. Chandra noted that the photo was later removed.
“The post with the link to the folder — published under your name — garnered over 204,000 views from the time it was posted until this afternoon,” Chandra wrote.
The letter from Chandra asks Minc, “Whose idea was it to share this intimate image of the child?” among other questions, giving a Wednesday close-of-business deadline.
The letter marks the latest escalation in the legal battle between Miller and Moreno, who is the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno. After Miller delivered his livestreamed defense Sunday, the GOP senator denounced his former son-in-law, saying he should not serve in the House and needs to seek professional help.
Miller is running for reelection in a competitive Cleveland-area seat. He has until Wednesday to withdraw from the ballot and allow for a crash primary to replace him.
Senate Republicans are facing a put up or shut up moment to move ahead with a party-line bill this week.
Those who want to advance a budget blueprint now will use Tuesday’s GOP closed-door lunch as a last-ditch effort to rally their colleagues behind what’s guaranteed to be a politically heavy lift. But prospects are waning with each passing hour, as lawmakers face a slew of other priorities, including plotting the path for a stopgap funding patch.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday it’s possible members stay through the weekend or return next week to knock out lingering tasks, delaying the start of a five-week recess.
“It looks to me at least like there’s a good possibility that it’ll take us more than Thursday or Friday to get through the things we have to get through,” he told reporters.
Budget Republicans are meeting separately Tuesday morning to talk about advancing a framework in the Senate, but Chair Ron Johnson declined to say Monday whether he would release a budget resolution this week — a necessary step for the chamber to make any movement forward.
Johnson said he’s “working with leadership,” who he acknowledges has been prioritizing government funding.
Meanwhile, Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Monday he didn’t expect any budget resolutions on the floor this week because “I don’t think my leadership wants to do it.”
“As I’ve said before, you got to have the votes to get on it,” Thune said Monday, while stopping short of nixing the possibility of a vote this week.
Thune also may need to deal with GOP hard-liners demanding votes on the SAVE America Act as frustration percolates over whether the budget measure’s election provisions comply with Senate rules for the reconciliation process.
Sen. Roger Marshall joined Sen. Mike Lee Monday in saying the chamber shouldn’t depart without passing the elections bill, and Marshall said he’d be willing to object to adjourning the chamber over it.
What else we’re watching:
— BLANCHE HAS MORE REPUBLICANS TO CONVINCE: Todd Blanche’s prospects for confirmation as attorney general were much improved Monday — but he’s not in the clear yet. The acting attorney general secured votes from the previously reluctant Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis over the weekend, all but certainly giving him the votes he needs to advance out of Judiciary Tuesday morning. But he still needs to get through the full Senate, where he can only lose two Republican votes given likely unified opposition from Senate Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence.
— GOP SENATORS BREAK SILENCE ON MILLER: Multiple Senate Republicans are calling for Rep. Max Miller to step down from office amid domestic abuse allegations. The outcry comes after Sen. Bernie Moreno — father of Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno — said in a statement Sunday Miller should not serve in the House. Miller has denied the allegations. The surge of support from Moreno’s colleagues marks the first significant crack in a wall of GOP silence regarding the claims. Miller has until Wednesday to withdraw from the ballot and allow a crash primary to select a replacement.
Jordain Carney, Chris Marquette, Riley Rogerson and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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