U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to flex his political muscle, but instead got hit in the face, according to a former Republican staffer.
Brendan Buck, a former key adviser to ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), appeared on MSNBC Sunday. Buck, who was counselor to Ryan and press secretary to former speaker John A. Boehner, has previously defended Donald Trump against allegations of parallels to Nazi leaders.
Over the weekend, Buck was asked about the ethics report looking into former GOP lawmaker Matt Gaetz, and why the ethics commission might have changed their voted and decided to release the report.
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One reason, Buck said, is that they could have feared Gaetz would come back for the next congress, despite saying he will not.
Another reason, Buck suggested, is that Johnson actually ruined it for himself.
"When Mike Johnson came out and said I don't think they should release that report, I wondered if that was a mistake," Buck said. "The house ethics committee is one of the few sort of independent bipartisan panels, evenly divided. I imagine there are some members of that committee who said we can't look like we're being told what to do. We don't serve the speaker. If the speaker was trying to push them around, it was very unusual for the speaker to tell the ethics committee publicly what he thinks they could do, that may have backfired."
