Rep. Matt Gaetz has resigned from Congress only hours after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him for attorney general.
Speaker Mike Johnson explained why Gaetz made the decision:
He issued his resignation letter, effective immediately, from Congress. That caught us by surprise a little bit. But I asked him what the reasoning was, and he said, “Well, you can’t have too many absences.”So under Florida state law, there’s about an eight week period to select and fill in a vacant seat. And so by doing so today, that allows me, I’ve already placed a call to Governor DeSantis in Florida and said, “Let’s start the clock.” He’s in Italy at the moment, and so we’re going to talk first thing in the morning about this.And if we start the clock now, if you do the math, we may be able to fill that seat as early as January 3, when we take the new oath of office for the new Congress.So Matt would have done us a great service by making that decision as he did on the fly. And so we’re grateful for that. So we move forward.
Now, I think we all know the Senate likely won’t confirm Gaetz.
However, as I wrote in my other piece, ethics investigations cease when the person retires, resigns, or loses re-election.
The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Gaetz since 2021. He allegedly engaged in “sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted impermissible gifts under House rules.”
House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest said that the inquiries will end if he’s confirmed as AG or resigns.
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