OK, we now have the official House Ethics Committee finding that Matt Gaetz , who quit Congress last month, violated multiple state laws to sexual and drug misconduct, including with a minor, while in office.
To me, the report raises the obvious questions not only about Gaetz serving as a vocal, often poisonous member of Congress, but about the judgment of Donald Trump in having tapped him to be the U.S. Attorney General. Gaetz withdrew his name before the Senate could refuse to confirm his appointment.
It’s apparent that in nominating Gaetz, Trump didn’t even bother to look at the kind of evidence that was before the ethics committee or before Justice Department officials who decided they could not successfully bring federal charges. It’s all politics, in this view, not a judgment or public acceptance of illegal or immoral behaviors.
The bipartisan ethics panel found there was substantial evidence that the guy who Trump would make the top federal law enforcement official ” violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress” by seeking to hide his behavior. The investigation did not find “sufficient evidence” to show that Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws.
The report said that Gaetz “continuously sought to deflect, deter, or mislead the Committee in order to prevent his actions from being exposed.” Gaetz “has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House,” the report stated, though no criminal charges have resulted. Obviously, he quit before any action to push him out of Congress. The report alleges that despite Gaetz’s denials, he made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women “likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use” from 2017 to 2020, including with a 17-year-old.
Gaetz is now set to join the conservative One America News Network as an anchor in January but has been reported interested in running for governor or Senate in Florida or taking another non-confirmable appointment with Trump.
The Cabinet and Sex
There have been an explosion of private sexual misconduct charges involving Trump’s appointees, including, of course, against the president-elect himself.
Trump was found liable of sexual abuse in what a judge said amounted to rape against E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay millions in civil defamation suit judgments in a New York court. For years, Trump has consistently denied sexual improprieties, even after multiple convictions in another New York court for trying to hide payoffs to adult movie star Stormy Daniels from election officials. For Trump, denial is more important than moral character.
Pete Hegseth, nominee for Defense Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary nominee, Elon Musk, the pick to head a budget-cutting effort, Herschel Walker, the former Georgia football star named to be ambassador to Bahamas, all have been targeted in sexual misconduct complaints. The company owned by Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary-designate, has run afoul of sexual abuse complaints involving teens. There are other sexual abuse cases involving those close to Trump, including Corey Lewandowski, who is currently working with the Homeland Security transition team.
Whatever concerns have emerged in the Senate confirmation processes, none of the behaviors have been adjudged by Team Trump to be disqualifying. Indeed Trump and many vocal supporters, including broadcasters Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, pushed a “restoring masculinity” theme during the election campaign that came across to many as misogynistic.
Trump and his circle don’t even acknowledge that there is an issue here, and certainly say it has nothing to do with the appointees’ collective ability to pursue Trump policy or retribution goals.
Hegseth, who settled an out-of-court sex complaint, has disdained policies that put women in the military in combat roles, but has remained silent about systemic reports of sexual misconduct complaints. Rather than comment on appointees and sexual abuse complaints, Trump this week summarily again asserted that having transgender troops are a problem that he would solve by dismissing them.
In some kind of upside-down morality play this week, it was a sexual affair between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her chief prosecutor Nathan Wade that became meat for Trump prosecutors to drive a court challenge in Georgia towards derailing Jan. 6 criminal charges against Trump. There was no abuse involved, just an on-again, off-again love interest that created what an appeals court of Republican-appointed judges said last week created a conflict of interest for the prosecution team.
Even in a sex-obsessed culture as ours, it is mind-twisting to consider the character issues we choose to ignore in selecting our leaders.
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