The Independent - Why the Matt Gaetz report blew up the Ethics Committee

Republicans have found themselves stuck pretty badly between a rock and a hard place, reports Eric Garcia from Congress

Wednesday 20 November 2024
22:22 GMT

Leave it to Matt Gaetz to start a fight in the House of Representatives even after he’s left.

On Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee met for more than an hour in the Longworth House Office Building to determine whether to release its report about the former Florida congressman and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general.

Initially, members of both parties filed out of the committee close-lipped, as is usual in such scenarios. But as Committee Chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi headed out the building surrounded by reporters, he said, “There has been no agreement on the release of the report.”

That was enough to set off Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the committee, who moments later emerged to torch Guest.

“We had agreed that we were not going to discuss what had transpired at the meeting,” she told reporters. “The chairman has since betrayed the process by disclosing our deliberations within moments after walking out of the committee.”

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