The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday after failing to reach an agreement last month on whether to release a report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
But even if history repeats itself, the report could still be made public. Rep. Sean Kasten (D-Ill.) moved Tuesday to force a vote to release the report through a measure known as a “privilege resolution.”
Designating the resolution as “privileged” gives House leaders two legislative days to consider it, with a deadline set for Thursday.
The House Ethics Committee has been investigating allegations against Gates for several years, including sex with minors and illegal drug use.
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Former Congressman Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress last month. (Tama Mario/Getty Images)
Gates has consistently denied wrongdoing, and a parallel federal investigation into the Florida congressman ended without charges.
The House Ethics Committee investigation was abruptly halted last month after Trump resigned from Congress, hours after President-elect Trump nominated him to be attorney general.
Gaetz was removed from consideration amid quiet but steady Republican opposition, but with Gaetz leaving the House, the committee lost jurisdiction over the investigation.
His resignation came just before a committee was scheduled to meet to consider the report's publication.
The meeting ended up taking place about a week later and ended in a tense atmosphere.
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Congressman Michael Guest heads the House Ethics Committee. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-Mississippi) told reporters there was no agreement on the release of the report, while the remaining members of the usually secretive committee remained outside the chamber. He said little to the assembled journalists.
His comments prompted the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Susan Wilde (D-Pennsylvania), to once again criticize Guest for discussing the meeting itself.
“I just finished a two-hour meeting of the Ethics Committee, and I had no intention of commenting. I left this committee without making any comment and went back to my office,” Wilde said. We started talking.
“We had agreed not to discuss what happened at the meeting, but we were disappointed that the chair betrayed the process by making our deliberations public as soon as they left the committee. And he implied that there was an agreement by the committee not to release the report.''
Rep. Sean Kasten (D-Ill.) aims to force a vote in the entire House to release the ethics report. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
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He said the statement was “not true insofar as it suggests that the committee was in agreement or that we were in agreement about it.”
But Gaetz is currently out of the running for attorney general, so there won't be as much pressure on Republicans to agree to release the report.
A significant number of Republicans who signaled they were open to the report argued that it was in the public's best interest to see the report if Gaetz were to lead the Justice Department. The element is no longer functional.
