The House Ethics Committee deadlocked on Wednesday on whether to release a report about sexual misconduct and illicit drug use allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, setting up a possible constitutional clash between the House and the Senate.
Senators in both parties have clamored to see the bipartisan conclusions of the panel’s yearslong investigation into Mr. Gaetz’s conduct as part of their vetting of presidential nominees, who normally require Senate confirmation.
But since Mr. Trump named Mr. Gaetz last week as his choice to head the Justice Department, House Republicans have been reluctant to make the report public. And following an hourslong meeting of the secretive ethics panel on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Representative Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee, emerged to say only: “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.”
He declined to comment further, as did other members of the panel, which includes five Republicans and five Democrats.
Speaker Mike Johnson pressured the committee last week not to release its findings on Mr. Gaetz, arguing that it would constitute a “terrible breach of protocol” to do so after a member had resigned, putting him beyond the panel’s jurisdiction. He also privately urged Mr. Guest not to make the findings public.
Mr. Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last week when Mr. Trump announced plans to tap him, days before the Ethics Committee had been set to take a vote on the report. That meeting was then abruptly scrapped.
In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike have demanded to see the report as part of the confirmation process. Some Republican lawmakers, like Senator John Cornyn of Texas, have suggested that the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Justice Department nominees, could subpoena the House committee if it did not willingly hand over the file.
On Wednesday, Mr. Gaetz was on Capitol Hill accompanied by Vice President-elect JD Vance as he met with Republican senators. Many senators in both parties have expressed concern over the choice of Mr. Gaetz to lead the Justice Department.
In addition to his ethical and legal challenges, Mr. Gaetz has a long record of gleefully disparaging some Republican senators whose votes he now needs to be confirmed. For instance, he has referred to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, as “dangerous” and coined the nickname “McFailure” for him. But on Wednesday, he was working to shore up support with Republican skeptics, including Mr. Cornyn and Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
Since the spring of 2021, the ethics panel had been investigating Mr. Gaetz over an array of allegations, including that he had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted gifts that violated House rules.
The secretive congressional investigation, conducted by a panel of five Republicans and five Democrats, paused while the Justice Department carried out a related investigation of Mr. Gaetz’s conduct, including allegations involving sex trafficking and sex with a minor. In February, the Justice Department decided not to bring charges against Mr. Gaetz after concluding it could not make a strong enough case in court. Once the Justice Department inquiry ended, the Ethics Committee resumed its work.
The panel interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. The committee said in June that it was continuing to investigate the allegations that Mr. Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.
On Wednesday, Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote to Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, requesting “the complete evidentiary file” on Mr. Gaetz, including from a Justice Department investigation and the Ethics Committee inquiry, a letter reported earlier by Politico.
Mr. Gaetz has denounced the ethics inquiry as a “political payback exercise” and suggested it was arranged by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, his bitter rival whose ouster he orchestrated last year.
In a public letter from September, Mr. Gaetz called the Ethics Committee’s work “uncomfortably nosy” and complained that it involved questions about details of his sexual activity.
“The lawful, consensual sexual activities of adults are not the business of Congress,” he wrote.
He noted he had already been investigated by the Justice Department, which opted not to pursue the case.
“The very people who have lied to the Ethics Committee were also lying to them,” he said.
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