House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told the House Ethics Committee not to release its report regarding accusations made against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who resigned from Congress after being nominated for Attorney General by President-elect Donald Trump.
Johnson and Gaetz’s MAGA colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), agrees with the Speaker’s decision to squash the report and — in her combative personal style — takes it a step further.
Greene wrote: “For my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, If we are going to release ethics reports and rip apart our own that Trump has appointed, then put it ALL out there for the American people to see.”
For my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate,
If we are going to release ethics reports and rip apart our own that Trump has appointed, then put it ALL out there for the American people to see.
Yes..
all the ethics reports and claims including the one I filed
all…
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) November 19, 2024
She added, “Yes.. all the ethics reports and claims including the one I filed all your sexual harassment and assault claims that were secretly settled paying off victims with tax payer money the entire Jeffrey Epstein files, tapes, recordings, witness interviews but not just those, there’s more, Epstein wasn’t/isn’t the only asset If we’re going to dance, let’s all dance in the sunlight. I’ll make sure we do.”
Note: Since the creation of the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, a special fund within the US Treasury used taxpayers’ money to pay out sexual harassment settlements on behalf of individual lawmakers. In 2018, legislation was passed to require lawmakers to be held personally liable for such settlements.
Regarding the Epstein List, Donald Trump, who was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury in 2023, said if re-elected he had “no problem” declassifying the Epstein files.
But as seen below, while campaigning for president on a Fox & Friends interview with his future Secretary Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, Trump hedged and said, “I guess I would… You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phony stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phony stuff in that whole world.”