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Tag: house ethics committee
Matt Gaetz

'Matt Showed This To Me': Gaetz Allegedly Displayed Nude Pics Of Young Women

Even though the US Department of Justice declined to pursue criminal charges against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) last year, the House Ethics Committee is still investigating him. And a new profile suggests that investigation may soon intensify.

Earlier this week, The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey reported that, according to several of her sources, the Florida Republican sent explicit photos and videos of women to some of his colleagues in Congress. One video was allegedly of a young woman hula hooping while naked.

"Matt sent this to me, and you’re missing out," one unnamed Gaetz aide said, telling Godfrey that he watched the video from the back of a fan along with another member of Congress.

According to Godfrey, Gaetz has a longtime habit of "bragging about his sexual conquests" that supposedly includes showing nude photos of women to his friends. One of Gaetz's longtime friends, Erin Scot, recalled a time when she met up with Gaetz at a wedding in 2009 — prior to him launching his political career — and wanted to show him a photo of her girlfriend (Scot came out as lesbian to Gaetz when they were young, and she noted that she felt comfortable with him when he appeared unfazed at the news).

"[Scot] says that later, at the bar, Gaetz passed around an image of his own: a cellphone photo of a recent hookup, staring up topless from his bed," Godfrey wrote.

The far-right congressman allegedly took his public boasting about his hookups to a higher level after being elected to the Florida legislature in 2010. Godfrey wrote that Gaetz and several Republican lawmakers are reported to have devised a "points" system in which participants scored one point for sleeping with a lobbyist, three points for hooking up with a lawmaker and six points for a married legislator. The Washington Post reported in 2021 that Gaetz voted against a Florida bill to criminalize "revenge porn," which involves the sharing of explicit photos without the consent of the subject.

"Gaetz and his friends all played the game, at least three people confirmed to me, although none could tell me exactly where Gaetz stood on the scoreboard. (Gaetz has denied creating, having knowledge of, or participating in the game.)," Godfrey reported.

A source Godfrey described as a "former Republican lawmaker" corroborated other claims about Gaetz's propensity to share unsolicited details about his sex life. That source said Gaetz "used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend.

"He’d show me a video, and I’d say, 'That’s great, Matt.’ Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?" The source said.

And while Gaetz was once a close adviser to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, reportedly being the reason former President Donald Trump endorsed DeSantis' candidacy for his first term in 2018, he has since fallen out of favor with the Sunshine State's governor. Political consultant Peter Schorch told Godfrey that Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis "hated all the sex stories that came out" about Gaetz and that the congressman was to be considered "persona non grata."

The House Ethics Committee's probe into Gaetz is ongoing, and will ultimately product a report that could recommend an official censure motion or even expulsion, as it did with former Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Gaetz continues to deny all of the allegations the committee is investigating.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

GOP Calls Santos Lies An 'Internal' Issue But Democrats File Ethics Complaint

GOP Calls Santos Lies An 'Internal' Issue But Democrats File Ethics Complaint

Two Democratic Members of Congress on Tuesday walked over to the House office of Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to notify their fellow New Yorker they have filed an official complaint against him with the House Ethics Committee, alleging violations of the Ethics in Government Act.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) in a letter to the bipartisan Ethics Committee say Santos violated federal law “by failing to file timely, accurate, and complete financial disclosure reports as required by law. The Act was designed to ‘preserve and promote the integrity of public officials and institutions.'”

“Over the past several weeks, extensive public reporting – as well as Santos’s own admissions – have shown that Mr. Santos misled voters in his District about his ethnicity, his religion, his education, and his employment and professional history, among other things,” they add.

Alleging Santos’ financial disclosures are “sparse and perplexing,” the two Democrats say, “it is apparent that he did not file timely disclosure reports for his most recent campaign.”

“Moreover,” they add, “his own public statements have contradicted some information included in the 2022 financial disclosure and confirmed that the 2022 financial disclosure failed to disclose other required information.”

The ethics complaint comes just hours after House Republican Majority Leaders refused to state if they would take any official action against Santos, who some hoped would not be seated given his massive alleged lies.

Monday night, when asked how he planned to handle the Santos disaster, Speaker McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju, “You know how I handle internal stuff, I handle it internally. I’m sure, at times, I’ll come tell you.”

CBS News’ Kathryn Watson reports that “Scalise says the Santos matter is being handled ‘internally’ and they’re going to sit down and talk to him.”

“Well you saw him seated last week,” Scalise told Watson, she tweeted. “There were no challenges to that. This is something that’s being handled internally. Obviously there were concerns about what we had heard. & so we’re gonna have to sit down and talk to him about it. & that’s something we’re gonna deal with…”

The allegations against Santos are wide and some may be criminal.

When asked why they were filing the complaint, Congressman Torres replied, “When you violate House Ethics you should be held accountable.”

Rep. Goldman, who before being elected served as lead majority counsel during the first impeachment of then-president Donald Trump, blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

They “adopted him as one of their own and in fact, George Santos cast the deciding vote for Kevin McCarthy so that he can become Speaker of the House, so they have wrapped their arms around him,” he said.

“We’ve seen no indication that they have done anything to rebuke him or handle it internally,” Goldman added, surprised after reports noted leadership had said it was an internal matter. “This is the first time you’ve been hearing that. So we, Congressman Torres and I, feel it’s incredibly important to make sure that the integrity of the House and the integrity of its members are put front first and foremost.”

Read a portion of the complaint against Santos and videos of Reps. Goldman and Torres delivering the complaint, below or at this link.



Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Matt Gaetz

House Ethics Committee Unanimously Rebukes Rep. Gaetz Over Misconduct

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

The House Committee on Ethics announced in a report released Friday it had voted unanimously to admonish U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, over a tweet he sent which some saw as an attempt to intimidate a witness ahead of his testimony before Congress.

The Ethics Committee reviewed "allegations that Representative Gaetz sought to threaten, intimidate, harass, or otherwise improperly influence the President's former attorney, Michael Cohen, in connection with Mr. Cohen's testimony before a congressional committee."

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Under Ethical Cloud, Nunes Recuses From House Russian Probe

Under Ethical Cloud, Nunes Recuses From House Russian Probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican head of a congressional inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election said he would temporarily step aside from the probe on Thursday because he is under investigation for disclosing classified information.

Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and an ally of Republican President Donald Trump, described charges that he made unauthorized disclosures of classified information as “entirely false and politically motivated.”

The surprise disclosure that Nunes was under investigation added new uncertainty to the wider Russia probe his committee is carrying out. The investigation is one of several in Congress examining whether Russia tried to influence the election in Trump’s favor, mostly by hacking Democratic operatives’ emails and releasing embarrassing information. Russia denies the allegations.

The House Ethics Committee issued a rare statement saying it would investigate allegations Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information “in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct.”

Nunes said in a statement that he had decided to step aside from the Russia investigation to fight the allegations and wanted “to expedite the dismissal of these false claims.”

Representative Mike Conaway, the most senior Republican on the intelligence committee, will be the new leader of the probe.

The top Democrat on the panel, Representative Adam Schiff, said Nunes’ decision to step aside from the probe was made in “the best interests of the committee, and I respect that decision.”

Democrats have criticized Nunes, a member of Trump’s transition team, for his handling of the Russia investigation after he received information at the White House, held a news conference about it and briefed Trump on it, all before sharing it with other members of his committee.

The ethics investigation stems from whether Nunes disclosed classified information while publicly discussing the contents of foreign intelligence reports.

Nunes and his spokesman have insisted that no classified information was revealed, but Democrats and former intelligence lawyers said it was clear he had done so. Nunes himself at one point said during his March 22 news conference that what he was discussing was “all classified information.”

Trump sparked a controversy in early March when he tweeted, without giving evidence, that Obama had wiretapped him while the New York businessman competed with Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Two and a half weeks later, Nunes held a news conference saying an unidentified source had shown him intelligence reports containing “unmasked” names of Trump associates who were incidentally caught up in routine foreign surveillance.

Immediately after Nunes’ news conference, critics argued that he had disclosed classified information in what many saw as an effort to provide cover to Trump’s wiretapping claim and to distract from the wider Russia investigation.

Nunes said the surveillance of Trump associates appeared legal but expressed concern that names of U.S. citizens may have been improperly revealed in the reports and widely disseminated among government officials.

That allegation, in turn, has kicked off an evolving, unsubstantiated controversy about whether the Obama White House tried to spy on the incoming Trump administration.

A House of Representatives’ rule, first reported on by The Daily Beast, requires an ethics probe of “any unauthorized disclosure of intelligence or intelligence-related information.”

U.S. foreign intelligence activities are classified, but the president can authorize the release of information about them. It is not clear whether Trump authorized Nunes to discuss the foreign surveillance.

The ethics probe came just weeks after Nunes and other Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee used a public hearing with FBI Director James Comey to decry leaks of classified intelligence to the media that have fueled concern about Trump’s ties to Russia and led to the ouster of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

(Additional Reporting by Amanda Becker, Susan Heavey David Alexander and David Morgan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)