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Gaetz-gate: Navigating the President-elect's most baffling Cabinet pick
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., may be done with Congress. But Congress is not done with him. And as President-elect Trump’s pick to serve as Attorney General, Gaetz is apparently not done with Congress, either.
Gaetz negotiated with Mr. Trump to become Attorney General on a flight to Florida – just hours after the incoming President spoke to House Republicans in Washington last week. Mr. Trump then made Gaetz his pick and the Florida Republican resigned.
What wasn’t known at the time was that the House Ethics Committee was on the precipice of releasing a report investigating allegations of “sexual misconduct” and “illicit drug use” by Gaetz. Gaetz stopped cooperating with the House investigation over the summer. The FBI probed Gaetz for years – but dropped its inquiry in February.
The Ethics Committee dashed a planned meeting where it likely would have published information about its inquest regarding Gaetz on Friday. But since Gaetz is no longer a Member of Congress, the committee supposedly is powerless to act.
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO POTENTIALLY RELEASING THE ETHICS COMMITTEE REPORT ON GAETZ
With Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., named President-elect Trump’s unlikely pick for Attorney General, a glaring question looms ahead: what will become of the Ethics Committee’s report on alleged improprieties by the congressman? (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., said the following on Wednesday when asked about the Gaetz probe – but before the Florida Republican resigned.
“Once the investigation is complete, then a report will be issued – assuming that at that time, that Mr. Gaetz is still a Member of Congress. If Mr. Gaetz were to resign because he is taking a position with the administration as the Attorney General then the Ethics Committee loses jurisdiction at that point. Once we lose jurisdiction, there would not be a report that would be issued. That’s not unique to this case,” said Guest.
Other Ethics Committee members tried to sidestep discussion of Gaetz.
“I’m not making any comments on that. I’m on the Ethics Committee so I’m staying clear of that,” said Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla.
“Can you still release the report?” asked Rachel Scott of ABC.
“Nope. Sure can’t,” replied Rutherford, turning toward Scott.
A NARROW MARGIN: TRUMP TAPS HOUSE REPUBLICANS FOR HIS SECOND ADMINISTRATION
That is generally how the House Ethics Committee rolls when it comes to outstanding investigations involving former Members.
But it is not a hard and fast rule.
Fox has found that the Ethics Committee released the information on its probe into potential influence peddling by the late Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., after his death in 2010.
The House Ethics Committee has reportedly released its findings on former Reps. John Murtha, D-Penn., and Bill Boner, D-Tenn., after their departures from office. (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images | CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
The Ethics Committee also released a 699-page report on former Rep. Bill Boner, D-Tenn., after he left office in 1987. The committee found that Boner used campaign funds to travel to Hong Kong and may have used his office to influence a defense contractor.
The Ethics Committee investigated former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., after he was caught sending inappropriate messages to House pages in 2006. Foley abruptly resigned from the House. But the ethics panel hauled in a host of bipartisan Congressional leaders for closed door depositions to determine what they may have known about Foley’s activities.
That said, there is a way on the floor to dislodge an Ethics Committee report.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE GAETZ HOUSE ETHICS REPORT?
There is a mechanism called “question of privileges of the House.” A lawmaker could take the floor under this procedure, making the argument that keeping the Gaetz ethics report under wraps impugns the dignity and integrity of the House. The House would be required to vote on such a motion. If successful on the floor, the ethics panel could be compelled to release the report.
Yours truly asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., if Democrats might try to dislodge the Gaetz report from the Ethics Committee.
Pergram: “Could you envision a scenario where Democrats try to somehow dislodge this ethics report through a parliamentary maneuver?”
I asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., if his party planned on finding a way to dislodge the Gaetz report from the Ethics Committee. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Jeffries: “The Ethics Committee is an incredibly bipartisan committee. It’s the only committee in the Congress that is evenly divided. And it has a long history of having principled individuals on it. And I defer at this moment to whatever course they decide to take. And I hope they take a course that is bipartisan.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee will study the credentials of Gaetz, run background checks and ultimately hold a confirmation hearing before voting the nomination to the floor for a vote. It could also block the nomination as well.
Senate Majority Whip and Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., formally asked the House Ethics Committee to send over the report as it reviews the fitness of Gaetz for the job.
MATT GAETZ’S NOMINATION ROCKS CAPITOL HILL
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” said Durbin. “This information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States and our Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent.”
Democrats weren’t the only ones trying to pry loose the report.
“I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including, whatever the House Ethics Committee generated,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, seems keen to unearth the Gaetz report’s findings, saying there should “not be any limitation” on what the Senate Judiciary Committee can investigate. (Reuters)
Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., serves on the Ethics Committee. He hinted that the panel should consider dispatching the report to the Senate.
“I think the Senate certainly had a right to request it. I can’t talk about our internal deliberations. But the information that they’ve requested, I think it’s totally reasonable,” said Ivey. “In fact, I think it’s essential for them to get that kind of information before they make a decision.”
On Friday, Johnson noted that he “doesn’t control the Ethics Committee.”
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE MEANING OF A REPUBLICAN SENATE – AND WHAT’S AHEAD FOR THE HOUSE
But Johnson went further than he had before about his views on releasing the report.
“We should stick to the tradition of not releasing a report on a former Member of the House because it would open a dangerous Pandora’s box,” said Johnson.
Johnson reaffirmed that during an appearance on Fox News Sunday when asked about releasing the report.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cautioned against releasing the Ethics Committee’s findings, citing precedent and the potential opening of a “dangerous Pandora’s Box.” (Getty Images)
“I think this would be a breach of protocol that could be dangerous for us going forward in the future,” said the Speaker.
It’s possible the Senate Judiciary Committee could subpoena the report from the Ethics Committee. And as suggested earlier, there is a way to dislodge the report from the panel via a vote on the House floor. Such a scenario would put a lot of Republicans in a tough spot. They may fear that voting to release the report could put them on the wrong side of incoming President Trump. That’s to say nothing of the prospective Attorney General.
But Gaetz isn’t liked by his former House colleagues. In fact, some Republicans may have more disdain for the former Florida Congressman than Democrats. That’s partly because it was Gaetz who single-handedly triggered a vote last year to remove former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. That maneuver pitched the House into three weeks of chaos.
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Gaetz is no longer a Member of the House. But that doesn’t matter. The fight over the ethics report is just getting started. And that’s spurring just as much pandemonium as if Gaetz were still a Member.
The fans see the games, the crowds, the food and the beer. But behind every World Cup watch party is a team working long before kickoff and well after the final whistle. We go behind the scenes at a beer hall in Brooklyn to see what it takes to serve a room full of soccer fans on game day.
Members of the group Patriot Front ride the subway as a commuter looks on, in Washington, D.C., on July 4.
Cheney Orr/Reuters
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Cheney Orr/Reuters
The sight of hundreds of masked men roaming the streets of Washington, D.C., on July Fourth weekend, wearing khakis, blue shirts and uniform patches, was chilling to some of the city’s residents.
For many Americans, it was the first they heard about Patriot Front, a white nationalist organization that was born out of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. A now-viral Reuters photo prompted reflections on the experience of a lone African American woman who was photographed in a Metro subway car, surrounded by white supremacists.
The planned demonstration of force was timed to bring a fringe group of extremists into public view as the nation marked 250 years of its independence. Indeed, the stunt succeeded in earning the group media coverage across mainstream outlets, amplifying its brand and potential to reach new recruits. On this occasion, the members refrained from engaging in violence and property damage, projecting an image of law-abiding, orderly activism.
But those who are closely familiar with Patriot Front’s history and operations warn: Don’t believe what you see.
“That is not who they are in private,” said Len Kamdang, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Although they were on their best behavior [last] weekend, this is a dangerous group that commits acts of violence all over the country.”
Patriot Front’s history of violence and property damage
Kamdang’s organization sued members of Patriot Front for vandalizing a public mural dedicated to the tennis legend and Black activist Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in 2021. Ashe, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985, was born in Richmond and his legacy is a continuing source of pride to members of that community.
“A couple of Patriot Front members showed up under cover of night and vandalized the mural,” Kamdang said. “They painted white stencils all over. … They literally tried to whitewash him and they put their symbols of hate all over — their stencils, their slogans. And all the while they were caught on video. And that video leaked using some of the most horrible language that you can imagine.”
In many jurisdictions, law enforcement can seek additional hate crime charges or sentencing enhancements in cases where illegal acts appear to have been motivated by racial bias. But in this case, Kamdang said, Patriot Front members faced no criminal charges and their identities were only revealed when online activists later infiltrated the group and leaked internal records.
In another civil case, Patriot Front was ordered to pay almost $2.76 million to an African American musician whom they assaulted in Boston in 2022, at another July flash rally they staged. Despite a police detective concluding that the attack “appeared to be more likely than not motivated in whole or in part by Anti-Black bias,” nobody was criminally prosecuted.
Neo-Nazi ideology in patriotic colors
In 2020, Kristofer Goldsmith said that a fellow veteran invited him to partner up on infiltrating Patriot Front. Goldsmith, who later established the Task Force Butler Institute to recruit Army veterans to counter fascist groups through open source online research, was not closely familiar with the group at the time.
“Frankly, when my friend used the term ‘neo-Nazi,’ I thought he was using hyperbole,” Goldsmith said. “It wasn’t until I saw them doing things like debating the merits of national socialism versus fascism versus monarchy that I truly understood that neo-Nazi was not hyperbole, that these people actually praise Hitler. … These people have dedicated their lives to promoting white nationalist, fascist and genocidal ideology.”
Patriot Front’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, was formerly a leader of a group called Vanguard America, which was prominent in planning and a presence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally. That gathering, the largest public white nationalist event in generations, turned fatal when one extremist drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Ultimately, Goldsmith said that rally further smeared public perception of the white nationalist movement as violent and un-American — lessons that Rousseau took to heart.
“Rousseau needed to rebrand Vanguard America,” Goldsmith said. “So he basically stole all of its assets, its digital assets … and made it into Patriot Front and literally painted everything in red, white and blue so that it would be more attractive.”
The group has also shown up at natural disaster sites, namely in Central Texas last summer, ostensibly to assist local residents. Goldsmith said these missions and the group’s outward aesthetic are meant to project an idea of patriotism and service. He said the group maintains a strict code of conduct. Among other things, they do not display swastikas or give Hitler salutes in public.
“The goal of their propaganda, of their public actions like this, is to beat MAGA and conservatives and Republicans into defending them and to saying, ‘I don’t see anything wrong with this group. They clearly love America,’” he said.
Patriot Front described as a “cult” and a “pyramid scheme”
The show of force in D.C. has raised questions about the group’s financing, and whether members’ travel was sponsored by outside individuals or groups. In fact, Goldsmith and Kamdang said that members of Patriot Front appear almost entirely to shoulder the cost of operations and Rousseau’s lifestyle. They said it’s most likely that those who traveled to D.C. had to cover their costs themselves.
“All of them funnel resources to the top,” Kamdang explained about the group’s general financial structure. “In order to be a Patriot Front member, you have to engage in acts of what they call ‘activism.’ And usually what that means is vandalism: putting up banners, spreading the slogans of hate all over the country. And in order to do that, they will have stickers, stencils, branding. All of that has to be approved from the top down, and all of it has to be purchased from the top down. So all the members who do this multiple times a month send cash to Thomas Rousseau for essentially stickers and stencils.”
Goldsmith said that from his time infiltrating the group, the costs could run up to hundreds of dollars a month per member. Kamdang, who said that attorneys are actively seeking to collect judgment in the settlement over the Arthur Ashe mural, noted that Rousseau appears not to hold any additional paying jobs.
“This seems to be what he’s doing full time,” Kamdang said. “So he appears to be being propped up full time by his members.”
Goldsmith likened the financial operation to a pyramid scheme. But he said even more substantial than the financial investment that Patriot Front members are required to make to retain membership is the control they give up over their time and personal choices.
“I describe it as a cult, not to be offensive, but because it is like Rousseau needs to have complete control of all of his members,” Goldsmith said. “[The group] requires its members to give up all of their lives, all of their relationships. All of their priorities in life need to be focused towards growing the organization or continuing the organization [and] enriching its leadership. So, it’s costly.”
NPR reached out to Patriot Front for comment. The group did not respond by deadline.
Goldsmith also noted that Rousseau often gives lengthy speeches that members are expected to listen to, via online platforms.
To Kamdang, the publicity that Patriot Front earned through the group’s D.C. stunt presents a danger: It amplified a presentation of the group that was deliberately crafted to make Patriot Front appear orderly and patriotic.
“I think the reason why it got a lot of attention is because Patriot Front was very careful in their language,” he said. “They try to mask their replacement theory, the white supremacy and in ‘Americana’ terms and patriotism. But that is not who these guys are.”
Now-former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at his primary election night event on June 9 in Blue Hill, Maine. Platner officially dropped out of the race July 10 following rape allegations from a former romantic partner that he denies.
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Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for Senate, is officially out of the race.
The Maine Secretary of State said Platner filed the necessary paperwork to withdraw his candidacy two days after he announced he planned to do so following an accusation of rape by a former romantic partner. Platner denies the allegation.
The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to pick Platner’s replacement.
In his withdrawal notice, Platner said “people are desperate for change” and that’s why they voted “for a new kind of politics” by making him the Democratic nominee. He expressed gratitude for those who supported his campaign and said that he will continue to fight for “the movement we have built together and the future we believe in.”
He ended his notice with a strong statement aligned with the progressive platform.
“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”
Platner announced his plan to withdraw from the race in an 11-minute video he posted to social media on July 8. He said he had no choice but to suspend his campaign, citing it was no longer viable financially.
“We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function,” he said.
Platner added that dropping out was not an admission of guilt. Rather, the decision, he said, is to keep the progressive movement in Maine alive to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Platner blamed the “political establishment” for his downfall and argued the goal was to force him out of the race.
“We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me,” he said.
Many powerful Democrats and progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, urged Platner to step down.
Platner has had to answer to a waterfall of scandals since he launched his Senate bid. Despite those, he ran away with the nomination in the June 9 primary, securing more than 150,000 votes — more than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine’s history.
Platner ran on a progressive platform centered on affordability, universal health care and getting corporate money and influence out of politics. During his campaign, he generated an undeniable amount of enthusiasm, something the Maine Democratic Party will have to harness if it hopes to beat Collins in the general election.
Multiple people have already launched campaigns to replace Platner, including former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former CDC official Nirav Shah, who both ran unsuccessful bids for governor.
Platner called on the replacement process to reflect “the Mainers who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”
“We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way. And we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment,” he added.
The Maine Democratic Party said that it intends to hold a new nominating convention where around 600 delegates will select Platner’s successor. Candidates have until July 15 to declare their intent to seek the nomination and gather signatures from at least 8 of Maine’s 16 counties. Party leadership added they will make the nomination process public and transparent.
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