Now that the House Ethics Committee probe into Matt Gaetz has been made public, MSNBC is breaking down the former Florida congressman’s potential political future … if he even has one.
While host Christina Ruffini and her guests didn’t directly question why Gaetz is not currently facing legal ramifications for purportedly paying thousands of dollars for drugs and sex — including his statutory rape of a 17-year-old girl in 2017, as the findings stated — they did describe the report as “scathing” for the man who was nearly President-elect Donald Trump’s Attorney General.
“It’s obviously been long-anticipated,” Ruffini said of the Monday report. “Is it about what we expected — is it better, is it worse — and what does this mean for Goetz’s potential political future, if he even has one?”
“It’s worse because it’s real,” The Grio White House correspondent April Ryan replied. “When you think it vs. when you know it, that’s the whole piece. For those who support transparency in government, this is a win for them. But it’s definitely not a win for Matt Gaetz, who Donald Trump did not vet for the office to be in a Cabinet position as the head of the Department of Justice … this is scathing for Matt Gaetz.”
Meanwhile, former Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, who overlapped with Gaetz during her time as a representative, also pointed out the apolitical nature of the report being released to the public, even after Gaetz resigned.
“We hold members of Congress to the highest standards of conduct. Unlike other committees, this one is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. So the fact that this committee voted to make the report public means there were Republicans who voted with Democrats to issue this report, so this was quite a bipartisan effort to ensure that there was transparency,” she said. “I think the American people deserve to know that no one in elected office is above the law or beyond accountability.”
Ruffini then highlighted some of the figures that went into the Ethics Committee’s investigation: 29 subpoenas, nearly 14,000 documents and over two dozen witnesses.
Fellow former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who once chaired the House Ethics Committee, then offered his opinion on the report, tying it back to a similar 1990 case where late Ohio Rep. Buz Lukens was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old.
“The ethics committee staff is nonpartisan, they’re very professional … they released this because there has been a precedent for releasing reports after members of Congress have resigned, particularly in matters of sexual misconduct, which was obviously the case here,” Dent noted.
“This is really damning. What I want to know, was the committee going to recommend an expulsion because there’s sex, drugs, money? The committee is saying he supposedly may have violated Florida state law, so I’m wondering if the committee actually referred this matter to to the Florida Attorney General, which they can do,” he continued. “Matt Gaetz has suggested, or implied, that he might be sworn in in January. I don’t think that’s going to happen now, because should he get sworn in, I suspect there would be an immediate motion to expel him.”
In addition to the allegations of drug use, prostitution and statutory rape, Ruffini further noted that Gaetz allegedly took gifts and lodging for a 2018 trip to the Bahamas well above the permissible monetary value, per the ethics report.
Check out the entire MSNBC segment with NBC News correspondent Ryan Nobles from Capitol Hill, above.
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