Republicans on the US House Ethics Committee voted on Wednesday against releasing a report on their long-running investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, the top Democrat on the panel said.
Democratic Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania said the ethics panel, which is evenly split between the two parties, voted at a lengthy closed-door meeting, and no Republican joined Democrats who wanted to release the report.
Mr Gaetz had launched an effort to personally secure his embattled nomination, meeting behind closed doors on Wednesday with Republican senators who have heard questions about the sexual misconduct and other allegations against him.
Earlier, one Republican senator decried the scrutiny as a “lynch mob” forming against Mr Gaetz, who if confirmed would become the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“I’m not going to legitimise the process to destroy the man because people don’t like his politics,” said Senator Lindsey Graham as he left the private senators’ meeting.
“He deserves a chance to make his argument why he should be attorney general,” Mr Graham said. “No rubber stamp, no lynch mob.”
Mr Trump himself told senators that he hoped “to get Matt across the finish line”, said Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, who was with the president-elect and others for a SpaceX rocket launch on Wednesday with billionaire Elon Musk in Texas.
Lawyers involved in a civil case brought by a Gaetz associate were notified this week that an unauthorised person accessed a file shared between lawyers that included unredacted depositions from a woman who has said Mr Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17, and a second woman who says she saw the encounter, according to lawyer Joel Leppard.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democrats sent a letter on Wednesday asking FBI director Christopher Wray to provide to the panel “the complete evidentiary file”, including the forms memorialising interviews “in the closed investigation of former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s alleged sex trafficking of minors”.
Mr Gaetz has said the department’s investigation into sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls had ended with no federal charges against him.
