Johnson says ethics report on Gaetz hasn’t come up in conversations with Trump

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that he and President-elect Donald Trump have not discussed the House ethics committee report about former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, whom the once and future president has picked to be his attorney general.

When asked Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” by host Jake Tapper whether Mr. Trump told him to “squash” the report, Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said he hadn’t.

“No, he did not,” Mr. Johnson said. “The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report, not once, and I’ve been with him quite a bit this week between Washington and Mar-a-Lago, and last night at Madison Square Garden” for a UFC fight card.

Mr. Tapper pointed out that Mr. Johnson had said the speaker is not and cannot be involved with the ethics panel probe but then later in the week said the report should not be released.

Mr. Johnson said there was no contradiction between the two stances.

“What I said is entirely consistent. The speaker of the House is not involved in Ethics Committee work, can’t be, shouldn’t be, because the speaker can’t put a thumb on the scale or have anything to do with that. So I have no idea what the contents of this report would be,” he said.

“What I have said with regard to the report is that it should not come out. And why? Because Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. He is no longer a member. There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain that the House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to non-members of Congress,” he said.

Mr. Johnson went on to warn of “a Pandora’s box” of the panel “using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens.”

Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Gaetz to be his attorney general last week.

He resigned from Congress the very day of the nomination, although there is no guarantee that the Senate will confirm him and indeed the pick was greeted with a fair amount of skepticism and incredulity even among Republicans.

There was even some speculation that Mr. Gaetz resigned as a way to stop the report from coming out.

When asked whether he thought the American people deserved to see the panel’s findings, Mr. Johnson said he doesn’t think it’s “appropriate” to release it.

“My understanding is that the report is not finished. It’s in a rough draft form, was not yet ready to be released and since Matt Gaetz left the Congress, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do so,” he said.

“The speaker does not have the authority to stop the release of a report by the ethics committee,” he said. “But I have just simply said what I believe is an obvious point, that we don’t want to go down that road.”