Illinois Democrat moves to force full House vote to release Gaetz ethics report

As Republicans on the House Ethics Committee are blocking the release of the panel’s report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a House Democrat is spearheading an end-around strategy in a bid to make the findings public.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) on Wednesday moved to force a vote on his resolution that calls on the Ethics panel to release its report into Gaetz. Casten called the measure to the floor as a privileged resolution, forcing leadership to act on the measure within two legislative days. The House is scheduled to break for Thanksgiving recess on Thursday.

Leadership could stage a vote on the resolution or move to table it. It remains unclear how they plan to handle the measure.

“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House Ethics Committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Casten said in a statement. “This information must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent.”

The move by Casten, a three-term lawmaker, came hours after the House Ethics Committee wrapped up a meeting without releasing its report into Gaetz. The panel took multiple votes, a source familiar with the situation told The Hill, including one to release the report as-is, which failed along party lines.

The Committee met amid mounting pressure to publish its body of work regarding Gaetz, whom President-elect Trump nominated to be attorney general. Gaetz resigned from Congress shortly after his nomination.

The push to release the report, however, has been opposed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who wants the panel’s work to remain private.

The debate has electrified Capitol Hill since Trump nominated Gaetz to lead the Justice Department in the second Trump administration.

The report holds the Ethics Committee’s findings after a years-long investigation into allegations that Gaetz used illicit drugs and had sexual relations with a minor while he was a sitting member of Congress — charges he has vehemently denied.

While Gaetz resigned from Congress last week — which ended the investigative part of the Ethics Committee’s duties — his nomination to be U.S. attorney general in the second Trump administration has created enormous interest in the panel’s findings. Even a number of Senate Republicans say the contents of the report are relevant to Gaetz’s nomination process in the upper chamber.

But Johnson and other Republicans have rejected that argument, saying the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction over the Gaetz case ended with Gaetz’s resignation from the House, and releasing the report after-the-fact would set a bad precedent for a panel known for its bipartisan cooperation.

On Wednesday, the members of the Ethics panel met behind closed doors for roughly two hours to discuss the question of whether to release the report. That meeting ended in a vote that split the parties right down the middle: All Republicans voted to keep the report under wraps, while all the Democrats voted for its release, according to Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the senior Democrat on the panel.

“There was no consensus,” Wild said afterwards.

Casten’s procedural gambit is a long shot. With Republicans controlling the House, GOP lawmakers have the power to table the resolution — if Johnson can keep his slim majority together.

But Gaetz has made many enemies on both sides of the aisle over his eight years on Capitol Hill, including a number of GOP lawmakers who are still furious that he led the effort to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from power last year. The lingering resentment raises questions about whether any of McCarthy’s remaining allies would risk Trump’s ire to cross the aisle and join Democrats in voting to release the report.

There is precedent for such a vote. In 1996, the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) introduced a resolution to force a vote on the release of an Ethics report surrounding allegations that former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) committed financial crimes for political gain.

Republicans, who controlled the House at the time, tabled the resolution.

This story was updated at 6:14 p.m.