Something to hide

The Republicans on the House Ethics Committee are still refusing to release the report on Matt Gaetz:

The House Ethics Committee on Wednesday did not agree to release the long-anticipated report into Matt Gaetz, and the top Democrat on the panel said members had agreed to meet again on the matter next month.

“There was not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters after the meeting ended. Soon after, Ranking Member Susan Wild (D-Pa.) confirmed that the panel did not agree on releasing the report, but said “we did agree that we would reconvene as a committee on Dec. 5 to further consider this matter.”

Republicans in recent days have insisted the report isn’t finished yet. But two people familiar with the process, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the report is done.

Wild was clearly incensed with how Guest had characterized the private panel meeting. She told reporters that he “betrayed the process by disclosing our deliberations within moments after walking out of the committee.”

Other members of the panel declined to comment immediately after the meeting.

Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last week, hours after President-elect Donald Trump tapped him to be attorney general. The Florida firebrand told GOP leadership the abrupt resignation was meant to allow them to fill his seat more quickly, but several Republicans theorized it was actually to avoid the coming release of the Ethics Committee report. Typically, once a member resigns they are no longer considered under the panel’s jurisdiction, though the Ethics Committee has released reports on former members at least twice before.

It remains clear what the Democrats on the committee should be doing here.

The even bigger scandal remains what a catastrophe Gaetz would be as Attorney General, and for Senate Republicans these would all be features not bugs:

But Gaetz was not charged—prosecutors eventually dropped the case after concluding that they did not have strong enough evidence to secure a conviction. The House of Representatives, though, is likely continuing the probe into Gaetz’s behavior: As of Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee was still reviewing allegations of sexual misconduct against the congressman. Last year, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin alleged that Gaetz would show videos of “girls that he had slept with” to colleagues on the House floor, and “brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.” And just over a month ago, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told a reporter that he had not recently spoken with Gaetz because “I don’t hang around with pedophiles.”

As targets of criminal investigations, Gaetz and Trump share an impassioned hatred for the Department of Justice. Their bond goes deeper: Gaetz, who represents the Florida panhandle, won his first race for the House in 2016 as a Trump-style firebrand who loathed the establishment. He spent his first four years defending Trump and condemning special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the president. In 2020, Gaetz refused to accept President Joe Biden’s victory and cast his vote in the House to overturn the results of the election. He has relentlessly condemned Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, as well as special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with election subversion and theft of classified documents. Gaetz regularly appears on TV accusing Garland and Smith of engaging in a witch hunt against Trump and attempting to interfere with his reelection. With Wednesday’s announcement, it seems the congressman’s aggressive defense of the former president has paid off.

In his Truth Social post revealing the news, Trump promised that Gaetz would end “the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System.” Ever the projector, Trump more likely intends for Gaetz to simply weaponize the justice system against his perceived enemies—as the former president promised throughout his campaign. The congressman has already been trying to identify all members of the DOJ involved with Smith’s prosecution so they can be interrogated and punished. He would, as attorney general, almost certainly try to fire many of the agency’s 115,000 employees—career civil servants who pride themselves on integrity and independence—so he can replace them with staunch partisans. Trump’s allies have already begun promoting the idea of mass termination of career staff at the DOJ. Gaetz would gladly carry out such a purge.

To what end? There’s no question that Gaetz shares Trump’s desire for revenge against everyone who helped prosecute the former president under Biden. Trump has also proposed charging New York prosecutors who brought charges against him under state law, along with judges, police officers, members of Congress, election workers, journalists—in short, everyone who stymied his 2020 power grab or sought accountability afterward. We should absolutely expect a spree of political prosecutions under an Attorney General Gaetz. With the vast machinery of the Justice Department at his disposal, Gaetz could create a living hell for everyone against whom Trump holds a grudge, subjecting them to arrest and pretrial detention, even if the bogus charges later fizzle out in the court.

Merrick Garland’s foot-dragging leading to the likelihood of an Attorney General who exemplifies what he was terrified of being accused of is an excellent illustration of where America’s institutionalist legal elite is these days.