The missing piece in the Matt Gaetz report saga
The Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee released its report about the Matt Gaetz scandal today, and the findings are pretty much what we already read in the media. The report says there is strong evidence that Gaetz did everything from paying an underage girl for sex (which he still denies), to getting high on ecstasy. But there’s a missing piece to all this.
No, it’s not the question of why he wasn’t prosecuted. That one is pretty straightforward. According to various media leaks, while the DOJ did line up multiple cooperating witnesses against Gaetz, there were problems with the witnesses and the DOJ didn’t think it would get a conviction at trial. Remember, being “obviously guilty” in the court of public opinion is very different from convincing a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
No, the real mystery here is why, after the House Ethics Committee voted not to release the report in the wake of Gaetz’s resignation, the committee then changed its mind and released it. It’s not as if the Republicans who control the committee suddenly grew a conscience; that’s not a thing. So what did prompt one or more Republicans on the committee to change their minds?
Was this as simple as someone like Kevin McCarthy calling in a favor as part of his ongoing personal feud with Gaetz? If so, then this probably ends here. But was this instead a matter of House Republicans taking out the legs of a Trump ally in the hope of getting Trump to call off Elon Musk’s incessant meddling in Congress? If so, does this mean Gaetz and team Trump will attempt to retaliate against House Republicans?
We’ll see where this goes. But you do have to wonder if this means that the power struggle between the Trump regime and the Republicans in Congress, which keeps getting a bit uglier by the day, just got a lot uglier.
