Also ignorant so take it with a grain of salt but my sense would be that this comes into an intersection between presumption of innocence and public interest.
Under the presumption of innocence, publishing information that might be unflattering (but not provably criminal) is effectively defamatory and shouldn’t (generally) be done.
But, likewise, he is an important national figure and - to some extent - his electorate deserves to know who the person is that they’re voting for,
My expectation would be that the newspapers will sue for FOIA rights, convince a judge to issue an order for the government to release anything that’s not overly covered by privacy rights, and the newspapers will get some largely-redacted notes from the investigation that don’t say much. They’ll write that it hints that “he did it”, regardless of how much is actually in the docs to support that while also largely ignoring what actually is in the documents, and what that implies about what’s in the redacted segments.
Given the concessions that McCarthy made to become Speaker, I’d venture to guess that he was very particular in his choices when he appointed people to the Ethics Committee.
“Those allegations were not true, have never been true, and the people who spread those lies have been exposed, indicted, and imprisoned,” Gaetz said in response to CNN Wednesday.
Who was exposed, did go to prison and did spread lies information to authorities about Gates, but unlike Gates was trying to imply, the first two were not related to the third.
A semi-conservative lawyer I know told me just this morning that he thinks it’s a trap. Trump, he says, is working behind the scenes with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who hates Gaetz’s guts. Gaetz has resigned from the House before the ethics report was released, so he’s now out of office. Trump and McCarthy know the Senate will never approve his nomination as AG (especially if Trump says through back channels that he wants it killed).
Intriguing, but I’m not quite that conspiracy-minded.
I don’t believe that’s how it works. Per this article:
[House Speaker Mike] Johnson said the resignation took him by “surprise” but that the Florida congressman did so to “start the clock” on the process for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to call a special election to fill the vacancy.
“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,” Johnson added.
Gaetz’s resignation will narrow the slim majority that Republicans will have in the new Congress in January, but he represents a reliably Republican district in the Florida Panhandle.
Sounds like he’s all the way out… although I suppose he could run in the special election meant to replace him. But he’d have to be re-elected all over again.
Yep, and this is good news- let us say the current guess is that the GOp will have a 4 vote majority in the House- this makes it 3. Then trump has nominated or signaled two other GOP house members for cabinet positions- that makes it 1 vote.
