GOP Sen. Mullin calls on House to release Gaetz ethics report

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said Sunday that the Senate “absolutely” should have access to the House Ethics Committee report from its probe into misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who resigned from Congress last week after President-elect Trump tapped him for the attorney general role.

Mullin said the findings from the Ethics probe should factor into senators’ decisions as they proceed through Gaetz’s confirmation process.

“Absolutely,” Mullin said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” when asked whether the House Ethics Committee should release the report on Gaetz. “I believe the Senate should have access to that.”

“Now, should that be released to the public or not?” Mullin continued. “I guess that will be part of the negotiations, but that should be definitely part of our decisionmaking.”

Mullin, in the interview, was asked about past comments he made criticizing Gaetz, including when Mullin said, in a past clip, “We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with,” adding, “this is the type of individual Matt Gaetz is.”

Mullin acknowledged the difficult relationship he’s had with Gaetz in the past, but he said Gaetz, as any other nominee, should get a “fair shot.”

“There's no question that Matt Gaetz and I have had our differences, and that's — that's no secret. Moving forward, I do, I do respect President Trump's right to appoint these individuals, but underneath Article 2, Section 2, Congress has to advise and consent, and Matt Gaetz is going to go through the same scrutiny as every other individual, and I'm going to give him a fair shot, just like every individual.”

“I got to set my personal situation with Matt to the side and look at the facts. If he's qualified, he's qualified,” Mullin said, adding that he did not even know Gaetz was an attorney until he researched him last week.

Mullin said he trusts Trump to “pick some really, really good people,” noting his ability to do so has aided him in business and politics.

“So, I have no doubt that President Trump believes that Matt Gaetz is the right person to do the right job, but at the same time, the background of Matt Gaetz does matter, and what — the decisions that the Senate makes has to be within our boundaries of the constitutional authority that we have. And we will do our due diligence there.”

The Ethics panel has for years been investigating Gaetz, exploring whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other allegations. He has vigorously denied allegations of wrongdoing, and the Department of Justice, which previously investigated whether he had sex with a 17-year-old, declined to charge him with a crime.

That Ethics Committee investigation, however, came to an abrupt end Wednesday, when Gaetz resigned from the House shortly after Trump nominated him to serve as attorney general. The Ethics panel does not have jurisdiction over former members of Congress.

It remains unknown what path the panel will follow with its Gaetz report. Some Republican senators have pushed for the Senate Judiciary Committee to be granted access to the report and the probe’s findings as they go through the vetting process.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), however, has said it’s not within the Ethics Committee’s power to release the report because Gaetz is a former member, not a current one.