House speaker wants to protect Gaetz as rest of GOP trashes him

Speaker Mike Johnson is still trying to protect attorney general nominee and now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz from public scrutiny, reiterating his demand that a report from the House Ethics Committee into allegations that Gaetz had sex with minors be kept sealed. 

The damning report into Gaetz’s behavior was set to be released last week. However, Gaetz abruptly resigned hours after Donald Trump nominated him to be the country’s top law enforcement officer. It was almost certainly an effort to keep the Ethics report from being released, as the committee no longer has jurisdiction over members of Congress once they are out of the chamber.

“There’s a very important reason for the tradition and the rule that we always, have almost always followed. And that is that we don’t issue investigations and Ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress,” Johnson said in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m afraid that that would open a Pandora’s box because the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee is limited to those who are serving in the institution.”

But not all Republicans agree with Johnson.