The House Ethics Committee's Report on Matt Gaetz
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The House Ethics Committee releases its report in the investigation of alleged misconduct by former Congressman Matt Gaetz, finding, quote, substantial evidence, unquote, of drug use, prostitution and statutory rape. Meantime, Donald Trump wades into the debate over daylight savings time.

Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We are joined today by my colleagues, columnist Kim Strassel and editorial board member Mene Uke Barua. About a month after Matt Gaetz formally withdrew from his nomination as Donald Trump's next Attorney General of the United States,

The House Ethics Committee has released its long-running investigation into alleged misconduct by the former congressman. And Kim, this 37-page report from the Ethics Committee is a pretty ugly document. It goes through allegations of

that Gates and one of his associates would find women on this sugar dating website and initiate contact with them, hold parties with them where there was drug use and then payments for sexual conduct, sexual activity. It says that Mr. Gates did not appear to have negotiated specific agreements

payment amounts, but then goes on to say the women had a general expectation that they would typically receive some amount of money after each sexual encounter. The committee obtained text messages with lines like Matt also mentioned he is going to be a bit generous, unquote, before one of these liaisons. Kim, what do you make of this report and the credibility of these allegations?

So the allegations come down to three buckets as I read the report. One is that he regularly paid for sex. That particular allegation includes the detail that supposedly in one instance with a 17-year-old and the committee went out of its way to note that he

under Florida law, this would amount to statutory rape, which makes it a crime for someone over a certain age to have sexual intercourse with someone who is 16 or 17 years old. The report notes that under that law, it is no defense to say that you do not know how old the person was. By

By the way, we should note that Mr. Gates has denied any criminal wrongdoing as part of this. And on a Twitter post today, he actually went out of his way to say that he he'd never had sexual relationships with anyone under the age of 18. So he's not just disputing the characterization of some of these allegations, but he's actually disputing some of the facts himself.

for what that is worth. That is his defense, and he has not backed down on that. That's one bucket. Another bucket is that he obtained or used impermissible gifts under House rules, including a trip and lodging to the Bahamas. And finally, that he used or possessed certain illicit drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy.

It is a very ugly report. It certainly casts a new light on why Mr. Gates presumably resigned from Congress so abruptly upon being named Trump's pick for attorney general. Obviously, that did not last long. And again, we need to be clear that he is continuing to dispute this. He actually filed

filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday morning to try to stop the release of the report. He's also suing for defamation. So he continues to dispute this. But I would note that these were 10 members of the Ethics Committee, five from each party. They worked on this probe for about three years. And

And while there were some disputes over whether or not to publicly release it, given that he has left Congress, there doesn't look to be much of a dispute among those committee members about the contents of the report.

Here's a bit more of what Matt Gaetz said on Twitter. This is from last week. He said,

He added that it's embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank, and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now. He also suggested that the Department of Justice had investigated him and he was not charged with anything, which in his characterization means that he was falsely

fully exonerated. A couple things that I would add to what Kim said. One is that with respect to this 17-year-old, this is an allegation that he had sex with a minor at a house party in 2017. The committee says that this allegation was corroborated by multiple individuals, including the woman herself.

who testified that that evening she was given $400 in cash from Representative Gates, which she understood to be payment for sex. The report also has this line, she did not inform Representative Gates that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask. The committee also says that it has evidence that Gates did not know her age until at least a month after that encounter.

However, on the point about exoneration, Monet, I also think that this is notable from the committee because the committee is saying that in its view, there were state laws that were clearly breached here, but this conduct may not have fallen precisely under the federal statute against sex trafficking. And then this, again, is from the committee report.

It says, although Representative Gates did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel, nor did the committee find sufficient evidence to conclude that the commercial sex acts were induced by force, fraud, or coercion. And so that might...

help explain why the federal investigation by the Justice Department did not bring any charges against Representative Gates. At least that's the committee's apparent view of the matter. Right. I think that the big question for a lot of the public is going to be why the Justice Department decided not to move forward with its own investigation. That, of course, is going to be something that we'll hear most likely from Matt Gaetz repeatedly in the aftermath of the release of this report.

because he wants to claim that all of the evidence being presented by the House committee is politicized and that the people with the responsibility for determining whether any crime was committed had already looked into it and decided that it wasn't worth pursuing.

And I do think that there is substantive debate regarding the specifics of that federal statute. As you mentioned, it's possible that he might not have fallen afoul of that specific law, and therefore it made sense for the Justice Department to hesitate. But I think in terms of his culpability for the action, people will say in the court of public opinion, certainly that he's guilty not only of statutory rape, most likely as we understand it by the evidence that he disputes,

but also that it was him and his associates who invited these women to come to these parties. And so that does, I think, reach what is commonly understood to be the standard of trafficking generally, even if it's not necessarily the letter of the federal law that he would be held accountable to.

And I do think in terms of his explanation for having dated lots of women and sometimes compensated them, that doesn't really mesh with the details as the report presented them either, in the sense that they weren't describing these as relationships over some longer period of time where he was buying trips or

giving gifts or anything of that kind. What was presented here was using a service online where these women were invited to specific events and then cash was exchanged afterward and not a continuing relationship. And so I think that he's trying to blur the lines on some of the evidence that was presented in the report, but

if the information being presented is accurate, it does seem as if he's culpable for something much more serious than the types of casual dating relationships he's describing. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

Welcome back. Kim, what's your view of the decision by the Ethics Committee to release this report? There's been weeks of speculation about that. Matt Gaetz, shortly after Trump said that he was going to be appointed, named, nominated for attorney general, resigned from Congress. That was viewed by many people as an attempt to forestall the release of this report.

and that if a member of Congress resigns, then the Ethics Committee closes that matter quietly. And there is some debate about this in the report. So the report itself says

says that the committee released it, does not do so lightly. The mysterious workings of the ethics committee, it says that a majority of the members voted to release these findings to the public, but it doesn't say what the majority is. It doesn't give the vote count. It doesn't give the names of the members on each side. And this is what is taken up substantially by this one-page dissenting statement at the end of the report as written by Republican Michael Guest.

Two points about this. First, it says, while we do not challenge the committee's findings, which I think is important, we take great exception that the majority deviated from the committee's well-established standards, voted to release a report on an individual no longer under the committee's jurisdiction, goes on to argue that that's a dangerous departure with potentially catastrophic consequences.

And Kim, I guess what's your take on that? Because on one hand, if a member of Congress resigns, you can understand why the Ethics Committee would have an interest in just closing down that inquiry without a public statement. On the other hand, this was a situation where Gates resigned, it seems, in order specifically to avoid accountability for this while trying to get a promotion, though he's, of course, since dropped his bid for AG.

Look, I do agree with one aspect of this dissent, which was written by Michael Guest, who's a former federal prosecutor and was very concerned about the precedent. And that's my concern, too, which is just that I think it's a very sound policy that the House, if somebody withdraws or resigns from Congress...

The argument has always been that they no longer have jurisdiction over that anymore, that if there are crimes that are being pursued, they should be pursued by law enforcement, that the House's interest in this is.

which is the ethical upstanding nature of its own members, is at an end because that member is gone. And why this concerns me is that we've had so much precedent breaking in Washington in recent years. And you do not need a lot of imagination to imagine

this being used as a precedent in future by either party to seek to embarrass one side or the other. And that gets to, as well, the Ethics Committee is one of the rare committees in the House and in the Senate that has a certain amount of bipartisanship, collegiality, and respect by other members of

Part of that is because it's a let's not throw stones at glass houses. That committee is very careful not to become weaponized. It's also set up and structured in such a way to make it difficult for that to happen. But you would not like to see that end. We already have too much partisanship in Washington. So I do see that. On the other hand, this is not the first time the committee has released a record over congresspeople who have resigned. It did it back in 2006.

following some very serious allegations. And so there is some precedent for it. It's very rare, and maybe they can try to present this time as rare. And as you note, this wasn't a congressperson leaving to go off and become a car dealer or a dentist again in regular life. They were seeking higher office. Now, the one thing that I think complicates that is Gates has been withdrawn from that position.

So, you know, on the whole, I think this was a complex decision. What we do know, though, is that there was a majority who voted for it. We don't know how everyone voted, but that's the way that committee works, which means that there had to have been at least one Republican who voted along to make it public.

This does, I think, also vindicate the skepticism of Republican senators after Matt Gaetz was nominated for AEG. Some of them went on the record. You can only imagine that more of them were expressing that skepticism privately, maybe to the Trump camp, maybe to each other. But this is the Senate's advise and consent role, Manet. And

One prospect that we could have had had Gates not dropped his bid for the AG's post would be to get this kind of report days before some sort of televised Senate confirmation hearings where Matt Gates is going to be taking questions from the Senate. Maybe some of these women who testified before the Ethics Committee would be called before the TV cameras to tell their sides of these stories. And the fact that it became clear so early

And so obviously that Matt Gaetz was going to have trouble getting over this confirmation hurdle and decided to withdraw from that process. It seems to me has saved not only the country some trouble and very problematic nominee, but also saved President Trump some political trouble. And so that is the kind of awkward position that some of these Republican senators find themselves in, is that sometimes the best service

to the president, the incoming president-elect of their own party might be saying no to some of these personnel decisions if they're not in the country's interest and not in the president-elect's interest.

Absolutely. I think that if Gates's nomination had proceeded to the point of hearings, it would have been an absolute disaster for him as this information was aired publicly on television for the entire nation to see. It would have been a disaster for the Trump administration having to defend this and having to defend their decision to appoint this person who people have known for years as

had these allegations attached to him. And it would have been a disaster for the congressional Republicans who had to make a decision on his nomination. I think that there was no chance that this information wasn't going to get out in some form. Certainly, the fact that the Ethics Committee voted to release the report despite his withdrawing means that they would have done it if he had continued to be nominated.

And even in this odd event that they hadn't, the information would have got out. You saw a lot of

Republican senators demanding to see the contents of the report, and it certainly would have been leaked. I do think that the decision of Matt Gaetz to withdraw was probably prompted only because a lot of Republican senators held firm and told him in private meetings, there's not a chance based on what we know about your record that I'm going to vote for you. And so I think that they did a great service to the country, whoever those senators were, who said that they're

was no chance that they would vote to confirm him. He saw the writing on the wall, decided to withdraw. President Trump himself probably also saw that writing on the wall and decided not to make a big push for it, not to threaten Republican senators with primaries if they didn't go along with voting for Gates. And they dodged what would have been a really, really chaotic event by not having him move forward. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break.

Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. Let's turn to another campaign promise now by President Trump. This one on daylight savings time. Earlier this month on Truth Social, President Trump said this, the Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn't. Daylight saving time is inconvenient and very costly to our nation. But notable that this is another topic that divides at least some Republicans from

Senator Tom Cotton saying this, Congress once made daylight saving time permanent. It was so unpopular that Congress repealed it less than a year later. That is a reference to something that happened in the 1970s. But now let me go back to you on this since I know you've looked at this daylight savings time issue. Is Trump serious about this and what is it specifically that he wants?

Well, is Trump serious about this is always a tough question to answer because ideas come into his head seemingly on whims. And sometimes he'll surprise you by pushing them forward. But other times they seem to evaporate as soon as they arrive.

And so he did go out of his way to post something about this on social media, as you mentioned. And I'm sure that he believes that it would be worth changing. And he probably wants to feel out and see how many people are also interested in the possibility of reforming it.

I think that it's very much in the spirit of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the idea that we're going to do a top-down reevaluation of all the laws and all the regulations in this country. We're not going to leave any stone unturned. And he knows that daylight saving time and particularly switching the clock is not popular. And so he often will take the opportunity to change something that he thinks is going to get him sort of cheap benefits.

support from the American people. That's an 80% issue. I have nothing to lose here. And so it's something that he theoretically could move on. I think the question is, are there a lot of people who do benefit from the current system who haven't spoken up yet? And so as the process moves along and as people on Capitol Hill started to debate it, I do think that there would be potentially a lot of opposition from certain corners of

And then Trump probably would get cold feet if he hadn't forgotten about it already. But I do wonder what the actual public divide on this would be if you could give people the option in front of them of permanent daylight savings time, permanent standard time, or the switching that we're engaged in right now. I mean, I'm a night owl, Kim, and so I would love permanent savings.

daylight savings time. That would mean more light at the end of the day and less light at the beginning of the day. But I grant that there are also a lot of people who are getting up and getting to the office by seven o'clock or eight o'clock. That's what works for their schedules. And the difficulty is that this is a zero sum game. There is only so much daylight to go around. And so the question is just whether there is a majority for allocating more of it to the morning or more of it

to the evening. And the argument that you often hear about that 1970s experiment is there were a lot of people in the north of the country in states like Michigan who were sending their kids out to wait for the school bus and the sun wasn't coming up until 8.45 or nine o'clock in the morning. And they really disliked that. And so that's the problem is what people want is more light and there's only so much light to go around. I think if you actually drilled down and spoke to people and divided this question out,

you'd find that what most people don't like is simply switching the clocks twice a year. And I get that that's a hassle. Although I would also notice become much easier to do that in a day of digitization where a lot of our phones and a lot of our appliances and cars and things automatically shift time for us.

To the extent that there has been a movement to make this happen, it has been by proponents who've been wanting to get rid of standard time. And in particular, this drive was whipped on by Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, notably of Florida. Because, I mean, by the way, Florida already gets tons of sunlight, so I really don't know what they're all whining about.

Except for that there's a clear commercial reason behind it, which is that if you had later sunsets in the wintertime, which is what would happen if you got rid of standard time, you'd have a lot more opportunity for people to stay out at bars later and go to restaurants later. So a lot more leisure activity would arguably be beneficial for businesses in southern states in particular.

And that bill, when Rubio put it forward, sailed through the Senate. It did very well. Then it hit the House. And as you said, it came up against a wall of opposition, not just from people who were concerned about those very late, dark hours in

more northern climes when it comes to children. But you have to think about the other industries, farmers, construction workers, people who start their days early already and are looking at working hours longer in the dark or not being able to engage in work because it's too dark, for instance, if you are a farmer. And so it hit some real opposition in the House and came back.

I think it is notable what Tom Cotton said. We did try this once back in 1973. Prior to doing it, everyone said, yeah, bring it on. Let's just change it, get rid of this whole thing. After the experiment, support for that had dropped precipitously, well below a majority of Americans. They did not

like it when they actually engaged in it. So you can put me in the camp of those who it's sort of six of one half dozen of an other. And I kind of like the system we have at the moment. I think that like many things in America balances a lot of interests.

M&A, what's your bet on this? I take all of Kim's points under consideration, though bad ideas that we tried in the 1970s is a theme sometimes in Washington. Nothing stops bad ideas from coming back. So is your bet that the Republicans under Donald Trump are going to make a push for this? Do you think we will see a bill maybe added to some kind of must-pass spending package or whatnot to make a change to the way we do our clock switching in the United States?

Sure. Well, I think that we are in a moment of Florida ascendancy. Of course, President Trump is crafting his new agenda from Mar-a-Lago. He has Marco Rubio about to be nominated as Secretary of State and Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman, is going to be his national security advisor.

I do think that they have a lot of constituents. As Kim mentioned, there are business interests in their state who would love to have an additional hour of sunlight at low cost. And I think that they'll make a push for it.

But I do think that as soon as this is reintroduced in the Congress, you're going to see some of these northern lawmakers come out of the woodwork in opposition. You're going to see parent groups raising the same objections that scuttled it in the 1970s. And you're going to see farmers and other folks who depend on those early sunlight hours voicing their opposition. And they'll probably have enough momentum on their side to be able to put it down.

But I do think it's worth mentioning that there have been a few big failed experiments that Congress has embarked on in the history of this country. And it's not that common that things go so poorly that they're willing to actually reverse course. Prohibition is probably the biggest example of that. It lasted about 10 years and Americans decided we've had enough of that. And there was enough opposition to say, let's go ahead and roll it back.

The 55 mile per hour national speed limit, I think, is something that a lot of folks have preferred to forget even happened because it was so maddening in those 1970s years that Congress had no choice but to roll it back. And year round daylight time is the third big example.

It went so poorly when we implemented it that opposition became so extreme, as Kim mentioned, in a short period of time that they rolled it back. And so I think belonging to that class of mistakes that were so bad that Congress mustered the will to actually correct them instead of just letting them roll on. This is probably something that we shouldn't try to repeat again. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com.

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