December 23, 2024
Today the House Ethics Committee released its report on its investigation of widely reported allegations that while in office, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate videos on the House floor, misused state records, diverted campaign funds for his own use, and accepted a bribe or an impermissible gift.
The report says that the committee found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had, in fact, “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl”; “used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions”; “accepted gifts…in excess of permissible amounts”; arranged official help for one of his sexual partners, whom he falsely identified to the State Department as a constituent, in getting a passport; tried to obstruct the committee’s investigation; and “acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.”
The committee concluded that “there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
It “did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute. Although Representative Gaetz did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the Committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel.”
Gaetz is a staunch ally of President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to put Gaetz in charge of the Justice Department. That appointment would have him responsible for law enforcement across the United States. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried hard to keep the report hidden once Trump had tapped Gaetz for attorney general, saying he “strongly request[ed] that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”
The Ethics Committee at first deadlocked over releasing it, but Andrew Solender of Axios reported today that two Republicans on the committee, Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), switched their votes to join the Democrats supporting the release of the report.
Ethics Committee chair Michael Guest (R-MS) and Representatives Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) and John Rutherford (R-FL) all opposed releasing the report, saying that they lost jurisdiction after Gaetz resigned, which he did when Trump announced his intention of putting him in the office of attorney general. In their comments in the report, they said they “do not challenge the Committee’s findings” but object to their disclosure.
Republican Party leaders were willing to put a man their own committee says likely violated state and federal laws into the position of the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. That scenario reflects the extraordinary danger of a country in which one party’s supporters see themselves as the country’s only legitimate governing party.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon’s team worried that the Republican Party would hemorrhage voters in the upcoming midterm elections. That spring, Nixon announced that rather than ending the Vietnam War, he had sent ground troops into Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia. In the protests that followed, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd at Kent State University, killing four protesters. Nixon’s clumsy suggestion that the protesters were responsible for the shooting began to turn middle-class white Americans, his key demographic, against him.
So Nixon’s advisors turned to a strategy they called “positive polarization.” They believed that dividing the country was a positive development because it stoked the anger they needed to get their voters to turn out. They deliberately turned against what they called “the media, the left, [and] the liberal academic community,” drawing voters to Nixon by accusing their opponents of being lazy, dangerous, and anti-American.
This polarization became a key technique of the Republican Party in the Reagan years, when talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh began to fill the airwaves with attacks on “feminazis,” liberals, and Black Americans who they claimed were trying to impose socialism on America. By 1990, a Republican group associated with then-representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) compiled a list of words for Republican candidates to use when talking about Democrats. They included “decay,” “sick,” “greed,” “corruption, “radical,” and “traitor.” In contrast, candidates were encouraged to refer to Republicans using words like “opportunity,” “courage,” “principle(d),” “caring,” and “peace.”
Over the past thirty years, Republicans appear to have come to believe that nothing is more important than making sure Republicans control the government. Less competition has given rise to states like Florida that are essentially controlled by the Republicans. This, in turn, means there is very little oversight of the party’s lawmakers, making obviously problematic candidates able to survive far longer than they would if there were opposition to highlight poor behavior.
It also means that party members appear willing to overlook deeply problematic behavior in their own lawmakers, who come to feel immune, while attacking Democrats for what Republicans claim is the same behavior. Notably, in February of this year, in a closed hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Gaetz badgered President Biden’s son Hunter over his drug use. Hunter Biden responded that he had been “absolutely transparent” about his drug use and asked: “What does that have to do with whether or not you're going to go forward with an impeachment of my father other than to simply try to embarrass me?”
The answer is that while the drug use of private citizen Hunter Biden did not affect the U.S. government, the drug use of congressmember Matt Gaetz did. In a healthy political system, political opposition would have called out his behavior long before he was tapped to become one of the most important figures in the government.
Crucially, in such a system, state law enforcement would have pursued Gaetz, and his own party would have dropped him like a hot potato long before it had to face commentary like that of progressive journalist Brian Tyler Cohen, who today wrote: “Congratulations to Mike Johnson for trying to pressure the House Ethics Committee into burying a report that found the then-nominee for attorney general had engaged in sexual activity with a minor. Party of Family Values, am I right?”
The Republicans’ determination to hold on to the government at all costs showed in a different story that broke this weekend. Representative Kay Granger (R-TX) has been absent from Congress since midsummer. On Sunday, Carlos Turcios of the Dallas Express reported that he found the 81-year-old representative in a memory care and assisted living home. In the months since she went missing, her staff continued to submit material to the Congressional Record, making it look like she was still active.
Chad Pergram of the Fox News Channel reported that a senior Republican source explained why Granger retained her seat despite her incapacity. Referring to what Pergram called “the paper-thin [Republican] House majority,” the source said: “Frankly, we needed the numbers.”
Granger’s condition has reignited the national conversation about the age and capacity of our lawmakers, an issue very much on the table for the 78-year-old president-elect, whose own behavior has been erratic for a while now.
On Sunday, Trump spoke at Turning Point’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, where, as Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded, he entered as if he were at a professional wrestling event. He proceeded to deliver a speech much like his campaign speeches.
It had an important new element in it, though, that he had pioneered on social media the night before. He claimed that Panama is not treating the U.S. well, and threatened that he will “demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly, and without question.” On Sunday he posted on social media that he wants Greenland too. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, responded that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be. Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede of Greenland said: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”
To my knowledge, Trump never mentioned taking the Panama Canal or Greenland during the campaign, and such dramatic action will likely undermine the principle that countries can’t just take over weaker neighbors. This principle is central to the United Nations, which holds that territorial integrity and sovereignty are “sacrosanct” and that members “shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” David Sanger and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times note that Trump’s aggression “reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.”
In a healthy political system, pronouncements from an elderly president-elect that could upend 80 years of foreign policy would spark significant discussion from all quarters.
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Notes:
https://ethics.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Committee-Report.pdf
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/05/gaetz-ethics-resolution-vote
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/23/matt-gaetz-house-ethics-committee-joyce-garbarino
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/09/us/political-memo-for-gop-arsenal-133-words-to-fire.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-hunter-biden-cross-swords-over-drug-use-deposition-2024-3
https://dallasexpress.com/tarrant/exclusive-where-is-congresswoman-kay-granger/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/us/politics/trump-greenland-panama-canal.html
https://press.un.org/en/2022/sgsm21188.doc.htm
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml
https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/jan10/025.pdf
X:
jamiedupree/status/1870655386875003356
ChadPergram/status/1870897835056771205
atrupar/status/1870882734865883245
Bluesky:
Since when is attacking our neighbors and allies with a tweet acceptable? What is going on? He’s set his sights on Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Panama. Is this even real? What is wrong with Republicans? For a good listen, Rachel Maddow did a podcast about the fall of Spiro Agnew… called Bag Man. That was an earlier iteration of this fiasco. Same playbook.
Merry Christmas Professor and all readers.
Great post as always Professor Richardson, and thanks. Happy Holidays to you and your family.
Deep thought for Christmas Eve : The budding Trump administration is the American version of Rome’s Cloaca Maxima. Or, more precisely, what went into it. So much for Pax Romana. Anyone for Faex Americana ?
Second deep thought for Christmas Eve : Voting for Trump was the political equivalent of going to the store in your pajamas showing that we just don’t care anymore.
I remember when we had congressional hearings because we thought television had become the boob tube, that the Beverly Hillbillies and Arnold the Pig on Green Acres – the richest pig in town - were as low as we could go. But no, we hadn’t yet even started, kept pulling out our hair about what it was doing to us throughout the 70s, then along came the early 80s with CNN and MTV and all cable had to offer, Reagan pulling the plug on the Fairness Doctrine and FCC regulations, and we were off to the race to the bottom, making the movie Network not a fiction at which to shudder, but a reality towards which to race.
“But wait”, as the Ronco ads went, “there’s more! If you order now we’ll also send you” Rupert Murdoch, Steve Jobs, the Internet, the Iphone, and have porn go mainstream because we can’t judge about individual “morality” and there’s no limit to our choices, right?
And so, we were off yet again, digging that deep hole towards a black void that cast us into the bottomless abyss wherein dwells the monstrosities of a Trump, a Musk, a Gaetz, an RFK Jr., and now, apparently, much of the American electorate. The Ninth Circle of the Inferno, we soon discovered, was made neither of fire nor ice, but of opinions brayed from high paid asses who learned to commodify hate and ignorance into a liquor laced with the toxic disdain of certitude and bigotry.
Character? Virtue? Simplicity? Frugality? Honor? Dignity? How quaint! Never mind that they are the virtues necessary to maintain a republic. Bring them up only to be dismissed as variously naïve, judgmental, or as someone whose head is imminently oh so pattable. And forget reading – after all, there are hundreds of channels as well as gaming and social media to click and binge watching, which have made us all so happy, smart, and functional.
Joyeux Noël, and God bless us all everyone . . . because no one else will.