Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) called Thursday for the House Ethics Committee to release the results of its investigation into former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s conduct ahead of Senate considerations of President-elect Donald Trump’s planned nomination of Gaetz as attorney general.
Durbin, the current Senate majority whip and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will assess Gaetz’s nomination, cited Gaetz’s resignation from the House on Wednesday following his selection as a key reason for the disclosure of the House Ethics Committee’s materials.
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Durbin told reporters. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people. Make no mistake, this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next attorney general of the United States, and our constitutional responsibility to advise and consent.”
By leaving Congress, Gaetz halted the committee’s probe into him ahead of a reportedly important meeting that might have set the stage for release of the committee’s report. The bipartisan ethics panel had been investigating Gaetz for alleged sexual misconduct, forbidden drug use, doling out “special privileges” to friends and obstructing efforts to investigate his conduct.
Cornyn, also a high-ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made a similar comment to reporters on Thursday.
“The president’s role is to make the nomination, but we need to have a complete vetting of the nominees, not only so we know that the nominee is qualified, but also to protect the president,” Cornyn said. “It’s not in his best interests to have any surprises.”
Asked whether that included the House Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz, he replied, “I want to see everything.”
Most Senate Republicans have avoided saying outright whether they would support or oppose Gaetz in a floor vote, indicating they’d like for the Senate’s vetting process to play out. But it’s a safe bet plenty of Republicans would support him.
“Matt’s a friend of mine. We came into the House together. He’s very talented, and anyone who’s spent any time with him knows he’s very smart and capable,” Sen.-elect Jim Banks (R-Ind.) told reporters. “I’m going to vote to confirm him, if I get the chance to do so, but he’s going to have to go through a process.”
By the same token, it’s highly likely that all Democrats would oppose Gaetz. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who described Trump’s choice as “God-tier” trolling and even chided his Democratic colleagues for their outrage, made it clear he would never vote for the guy.
“Like, that’s insulting,” Fetterman said. “Like, of course not.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a staunch Trump ally and admirer of Gaetz, indicated he would like to get everything in the open, even as he spoke highly of Gaetz.
“We’ll all look at everything, because we’ll make sure we do the right thing,” Tuberville told reporters when asked about the report.
Gaetz, he added, is a “very good lawyer, well spoken, believes in the Constitution, and I think he’d do a great job.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who expressed immediate concern about Gaetz’s nomination, suggested Gaetz’s personal peccadilloes would come up in confirmation hearings one way or another.
“I don’t know what the House rules are. I really don’t,” Collins told reporters. “But I can’t imagine that the issues that are raised in that ethics report are not going to ... come up either through the [Judiciary] Committee’s extensive investigation or the FBI’s screen for it or questions asked by committee members at Mr. Gaetz’s hearings.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also suggested the FBI’s background check would turn up any relevant information about Gaetz.
“I don’t know where the House ethics rules are, but I do know there’s an FBI background check for all of these nominees,” Hawley said. “Listen, these confirmation processes, they’re thorough. There’s going to be hearings for everybody. So my view is that all of any relevant information on any nominee is going to be available to senators.”