House Ethics panel has 'no agreement' on releasing Matt Gaetz report after meeting

WASHINGTON — Members of the House Ethics Committee met behind closed doors Wednesday but did not reach an agreement on whether to publicly release a report detailing their sweeping investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Several Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have said they want to review the House report on the years-long investigation into Gaetz, R-Fla., before a Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Gaetz next year. The ethics panel had examined allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, gave special favors to people with whom he had personal relationships and obstructed the House probe.

Gaetz has denied the allegations.

The bipartisan Ethics Committee — led by Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., and Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa. — met in private for a little over two hours Wednesday. Most members left without speaking to reporters, but Guest said that there was "no agreement" about releasing the report, while declining to provide further details. He also said that the panel will convene for more "regularly scheduled meetings" before the end of the year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a close Trump ally, has argued against releasing the report, pointing out that the Ethics Committee has jurisdiction only over sitting members, and Gaetz resigned from office last week after Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department.

“I’ve made very clear that it’s an important guardrail for our institution that we not use the House Ethics Committee to investigate and report on persons who are not members of this body,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “Matt Gaetz is not a member of the body anymore.”

Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois said earlier Wednesday he would move to force a vote on the House floor to make the document public if the Ethics Committee did not agree to do so itself. The House would be required to act on Casten's request within two legislative days, and a majority of the House would need to vote in favor to force the release of the report.

Heading into the meeting, Guest told reporters the Gaetz report was not complete, though he didn’t make clear how much work there was left to do.

Asked how the committee could release a report that is not finished, Guest replied: “That is something that we will be talking about today, and that’s another reason I have some reservations about releasing any unfinished work product.”

He said that the report "has not gone through the review process."

The Ethics Committee has investigated Gaetz on and off over the past three years. The panel has interviewed two women who testified that Gaetz paid them for sex at a small party in Florida, where prostitution is illegal, an attorney for the women, Joel Leppard, told NBC News this week. One of the women also testified that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a friend who was 17 years old at the time, said Leppard, though she does not believe Gaetz knew the friend's age at the time.

Leppard added that his clients want the House report to be made public. “They want the American people to know the truth and that they are speaking the truth,” he said.

The Trump transition team has called the allegations against Gaetz “baseless,” pointing out that the Justice Department had closed out its related yearslong investigation without charging Gaetz with a crime.

Casten called the allegations against Gaetz "serious," saying that any information the Ethics panel has gathered in its investigation "must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent."

“If the Ethics Committee chooses to withhold this information, later today I will introduce a privileged resolution to require a vote by the full House of Representatives on the release of the Gaetz report,” Casten added.

It wasn't immediately clear how the Ethics Committee's lack of resolution on Wednesday would affect Casten's plans.

If Casten's resolution is introduced and ruled privileged, the Republican majority will have to take it up, but they could vote to table, or kill, it rather than hold a direct vote on releasing the report. House Democrats tried to do the same thing in September 1996, pressing the Ethics Committee to release a report from an outside counsel about its investigation of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. But the House rejected the resolution in a vote on the floor.

Despite the House drama, Trump's team is pushing full steam ahead with Gaetz's nomination. The president-elect said Tuesday he is not reconsidering naming Gaetz to be his attorney general, despite reservations from Republican senators who will oversee Gaetz's confirmation once he is officially nominated. Trump has been "heavily working the phones" to build support for Gaetz, a transition official said.

And Vice President-elect JD Vance was in the Capitol Wednesday shepherding Gaetz to meetings with GOP senators, including senior Judiciary member Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other members of the committee, like Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Gaetz appears to have won at least one yes vote as his meetings on the Hill continue: Blackburn posted on X shortly after her time with Gaetz that she had a “great” meeting and that she looks “forward to a speedy confirmation for our next Attorney General.”

The House Ethics Committee has several options at its private meeting. It can vote to publicly release the report or vote not to release it, take an exit ramp by forwarding it to the Senate, wait or choose to take no action at all.

A committee spokesman had no comment about the meeting.

Wild, the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said this week that the House report should “absolutely” be released to the public and that it should be sent to the Senate at the very least. She argued that there is precedent for the panel to publish reports after members of Congress have resigned.

It happened in the case of Rep. Bill Boner, D-Tenn., who resigned Oct. 5, 1987, to become mayor of Nashville. The Ethics Committee released an initial staff report the following December examining allegations that Boner misused campaign funds, failed to disclose gifts and accepted bribes. The report did not make any recommendations to the full committee.

“In the committee’s view, the general policy against issuing reports in cases such as here involved is outweighed by the responsibility of the Committee to fully inform the public regarding the status and results of its efforts up to the date of Representative Boner’s departure from Congress,” the Ethics Committee said at the time.

Three years later, the committee released a short staff report immediately after Rep. Buz Lukens, R-Ohio, resigned as he faced allegations by a congressional employee that he had made unwanted and offensive sexual advances.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com