House Ethics Committee Sets Stage to Defy Johnson, Release Gaetz Report

House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) signaled his committee is likely to ignore Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) recommendation to withhold releasing its investigation of Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

Matt Gaetz, who stepped down after President-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination for Attorney General, is no longer a member of the House and therefore no longer under the committee’s purview. Johnson has openly opposed the release of the report and urged the committee to withhold it, a sentiment he relayed personally to Guest over the weekend, the chairman told Politico.

“I appreciate Mike reaching out,” Guest told Politico. “I don’t see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide.”

The committee meets Wednesday, where it is expected to discuss whether or not to release its report on Gaetz.

The Ethics Committee — which, lacking a legislative jurisdiction, provides its members no capability to extract campaign funds from the donor class — is not highly sought after by members of Congress and is generally seen as a chore. Its members usually serve by request of their party’s respective leader and are usually appointed for their loyalty to leadership — often in exchange for other favors quietly bestowed by leadership.

The fiery Gaetz has been a thorn in leadership’s side since arriving in Washington, consistently targeting entrenched interests and corruption in Washington. Most notably, Gaetz led the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Gaetz has denied wrongdoing and argues the Ethics investigation is retaliation for robbing McCarthy of his gavel.

At a CPAC event earlier in 2024, Gaetz blasted congressional stock trading practices, singling out Guest for his trading record.

“For the same reason you don’t let the umpire bet on the game, members of congress should not be allowed to trade individual stocks,” he said. “How about the Ethics Committee take up those reforms?”

Gaetz, pointing out that Guest voted for the establishment of the January 6 Commission to target Trump, then specifically addressed the Ethics Committee chairman.

“He has become a brilliant stock trader while in office, and I admire the obvious genius,” Gaetz said of Guest. “He knew exactly the right time to buy online gambling stocks. His purchase in Evolution Gaming Securities netted him a hefty 36 percent gain — not too shabby. Now, I’m not saying this is insider trading, but this monetary affair is perhaps the most suspicious I’ve seen since Fani Willis and Nathan Wade,” a reference to the Fulton County District Attorney and her reported paramour and top prosecutor in her case against Trump.

Wade was forced by a judge to resign from the case after his alleged affair with Willis, which predated his appointment to the case, came to light.

Gaetz, who, while in Congress, might have been the only Republican member to swear off accepting campaign contributions from PACs, emphasized the importance of rooting out public corruption while in Congress — a focus Trump says he wants Gaetz to carry with him to the DOJ.

As Attorney General, Gaetz would oversee federal investigations into members of Congress for insider trading or other corruption — including Guest.

Gaetz has also criticized Guest for a 2021 incident in which test alerted the Ethics Committee that he had failed to disclose a family stock. Guest paid a $200 fine for disclosing the stock eight months late.

As Guest warms towards releasing the report, Trump has made it clear he is prioritizing Gaetz’s confirmation, personally pressuring senators to confirm Gaetz, Axios reported Monday.

“He clearly wants Matt Gaetz,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who received a call from Trump, told the outlet. “He believes Matt Gaetz is the one person who will have the fearlessness and ferociousness, really, to do what needs doing at the Department of Justice.”

While Guest has defied Trump previously, most notably by voting for the January 6 Commission, Guest’s open defiance of the Speaker of the House is unusual for a chairman. (Guest said Monday he has not heard from a member of the Trump administration, and Trump has not specifically addressed whether the report should be released.) Yet all the Republican members of the committee were seated before Johnson’s speakership began — notably, each while McCarthy, who was ousted by Gaetz, led House Republicans.

The committee is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats and requires only a majority vote to release the report. With Democrats almost certain to vote to release a report that would embarrass Trump’s priority nominee (Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) the committee’s top Democrat, has said she favors doing so), only one Republican vote would be needed.

Republicans on the committee in addition to Guest are Reps. David Joyce (R-OH), John Rutherford (R-FL), Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), and Michelle Fischbach (R-MN).

Releasing the report would not be the first time the Republican-chaired committee handicapped the GOP this Congress.

In 2023, the committee broke decades of precedent by releasing its investigation into Republican Rep. George Santos (R-NY) despite the congressman not yet having his day in court for his alleged crimes. The report led to Santos’s expulsion from Congress after prior attempts had failed.

When the House last expelled a member, Rep. Jim Traficant (D-OH) in 2002, it did so only after Traficant was found guilty in court. The Ethics Committee then did not even begin an investigation until Traficant’s court case had concluded.

The loss of Santos’s reliable conservative vote cost Republicans. Most notably, the House embarrassingly failed by a single vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Meanwhile, this Congress, the Republican-chaired committee chose not to take action against Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), despite the congressman pleading guilty after pulling a fire alarm in a House office building that disrupted a House vote — allegedly to prevent House Republicans from passing a spending bill while Senate Democrats readied a package of their own, a potential felony.

Guest has served as the top Republican on the committee since August 2022, taking over for former Rep. Jackie Walorski after her death, and has chaired the committee since January 2023.

He is eligible to continue leading the committee next Congress. The powerful Republican Steering Committee, of which the Speaker holds the most votes in addition to significant influence, is scheduled to meet in early December to select the chairman and members of the Ethics Committee, among other committees.

Johnson explained after Gaetz stepped down that he did so due to a Florida state law that gives an “8-week period to select and fill a vacant seat.”

“If you start the clock now, if you do the math, we may be able to fill that seat as early as Jan. 3 when we take the new oath of office for the new Congress,” he said of Gaetz’s reasoning.

With some races remaining to be called, Republicans are projected to have a small majority and will need every vote to advance Trump’s legislative agenda.

Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.

Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
December 7, 2024
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From Marcus Aurelius To Omar Little: A Man’s Code Is Vital

Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

With Thanksgiving weekend still fresh in our memory, my gratitude centers not on the usual holiday platitudes, but on something that has become increasingly precious in our artificial age: authentic relationships – both family and lifelong friends – that deepen rather than fracture under pressure. What binds these relationships, I’ve come to realize, isn’t shared opinions or circumstances, but a shared code – an unwavering commitment to principles that transcends the shifting sands of politics and social pressure. I’m particularly grateful for my inner circle – friends I’ve known since elementary school and family members whose bonds have only strengthened through the crucible of recent years.

Like many others who spoke out against Covid tyranny, I watched what I thought were solid relationships dissolve in real time. As the owner of a local brewery and coach of my kids’ sports teams, I had been deeply embedded in my community – a “man about town” whose friendship and counsel others actively sought. Yet suddenly, the same people who had eagerly engaged with me would scurry when they saw me coming down the street. Professional networks and neighborhood connections evaporated at the mere questioning of prevailing narratives. They reacted this way because I broke orthodoxy, choosing to stand for liberal values – the very principles they claimed to champion – by rejecting arbitrary mandates and restrictions.

In this moment of testing, the difference between those who lived by a consistent code and those who simply followed social currents became starkly clear. Yet in retrospect, this winnowing feels more like clarification than loss. As surface-level relationships fell away, my core relationships – decades-long friendships and family bonds – not only endured but deepened. These trials revealed which bonds were authentic and which were merely situational.

The friendships that remained, anchored in genuine principles rather than social convenience, proved themselves infinitely more valuable than the broader network of fair-weather friends I lost.

What strikes me most about these enduring friendships is how they’ve defied the typical narrative of relationships destroyed by political divisions. As Marcus Aurelius observed, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Despite taking opposite sides of the dialectic on political and cultural issues over the decades, we found ourselves united in opposition to the constitutional transgressions and rising tyranny of the past few years – the lockdowns, mandates, and systematic erosion of basic rights. This unity emerged not from political alignment but from a shared code: a commitment to first principles that transcends partisan divisions.

In these contemplative moments, I’ve found myself returning to Aurelius’s Meditations – a book I hadn’t opened since college until Joe Rogan and Marc Andreessen’s excellent conversation inspired me to revisit it. Aurelius understood that a personal code – a set of unwavering principles – was essential for navigating a world of chaos and uncertainty. The connection feels particularly apt – like my own friend group, Rogan’s platform exemplifies a code of authentic discourse in our age.

Critics, particularly on the political left, often talk about needing their “own Joe Rogan,” missing entirely what makes his show work: its genuine authenticity. Despite being historically left-leaning himself, Rogan’s willingness to engage in real-time thinking with guests across the ideological spectrum and across a broad variety of topics, his commitment to open inquiry and truth-seeking, has paradoxically led to his estrangement from traditional liberal circles – much like many of us who’ve found ourselves branded as apostates for maintaining consistent principles.

This commitment to a code of authentic discourse explains why organizations like Brownstone Institute – despite being routinely smeared as “far right” – have become a crucial platform for independent scholars, policy experts, and truth-seekers. I witnessed this firsthand at a recent Brownstone event, where, unlike most institutions that enforce ideological conformity, diverse thinkers engaged in genuine exploration of ideas without fear of orthodoxy enforcement. When attendees were asked if they considered themselves political liberals ten years ago, nearly 80% raised their hands.

These are individuals who, like my friends and me, still embrace core liberal values – free speech, open inquiry, rational debate – yet find themselves branded as right-wing or conspiracy theorists merely for questioning prevailing narratives.

What unites this diverse community is their shared recognition that the reality being presented to us is largely manufactured, as explored in “The Information Factory,” and their commitment to maintaining authentic discourse in an age of enforced consensus.

In The Wire, Omar Little, a complex character who lived by his own moral code while operating outside conventional society, famously declared, “A man got to have a code.” Though a stick-up man targeting drug dealers, Omar’s rigid adherence to his principles – never harming civilians, never lying, never breaking his word – made him more honorable than many supposedly “legitimate” characters. His unwavering dedication to these principles – even as a gangster operating outside society’s laws – resonates deeply with my experience.

Like Rogan’s commitment to open dialogue, like Brownstone’s dedication to free inquiry, like RFK Jr.’s determination to expose how pharmaceutical and agricultural interests have corrupted our public institutions: these exemplars of authentic truth-seeking mirror what I’ve found in my own circle. My friends and I may have different political views, but we share a code: a commitment to truth over comfort, to principle over party, to authentic discourse over social approval. This shared foundation has proven more valuable than any superficial agreement could be.

In these times of manufactured consensus and social control, the importance of this authentic foundation becomes even clearer. The 2012 Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which made it legal to propagandize American citizens, merely formalized what many had long suspected. It represented the ultimate betrayal of the government’s code with its citizens – the explicit permission to manipulate rather than inform. As anyone not under the spell has come to realize – we’ve all been thoroughly “Smith-Mundt’ed.” This legal framework helps explain much of what we’ve witnessed in recent years, particularly during the pandemic – when those who proclaimed themselves champions of social justice supported policies that created new forms of segregation and devastated the very communities they claimed to protect.

This disconnect becomes even more apparent in the realm of charitable giving and social causes, where “virtue laundering” has become endemic. The absence of a genuine moral code is nowhere more evident than in our largest charitable institutions. While many charitable organizations do crucial work at the local level, there’s an unmistakable trend among large NGOs toward what a friend aptly calls the “philanthropath class.”

Consider the Clinton Foundation’s activities in Haiti, where millions in earthquake relief funds resulted in industrial parks that displaced farmers and housing projects that never materialized. Or examine the BLM Global Network Foundation, which purchased luxury properties while local chapters reported receiving minimal support. Even major environmental NGOs often partner with the world’s biggest polluters, creating an illusion of progress while fundamental problems persist.

This pattern reveals a deeper truth about the professional charitable class – many of these institutions have become purely extractive, profiting from and even amplifying the very issues they purport to solve. At the top, a professional philanthropic class collects fancy titles in their bios and flashes photos from charity galas while avoiding any genuine engagement with the problems they claim to address. Social media has democratized this performance, allowing everyone to participate in virtue theater – from black squares and Ukrainian flag avatars to awareness ribbons and cause-supporting emojis – creating an illusion of activism without the substance of real action or understanding. It’s a system entirely devoid of the moral code that once guided charitable work – the direct connection between benefactor and beneficiary, the genuine commitment to positive change rather than personal aggrandizement.

The power of a genuine code becomes most evident in contrast with these hollow institutions. While organizations and social networks fracture under pressure, I’m fortunate that my closest friendships and family bonds have only grown stronger. We’ve had fierce debates over the years, but our shared commitment to fundamental principles – to having a code – has allowed us to navigate even the most turbulent waters together. When the pandemic response threatened basic constitutional rights, when social pressure demanded conformity over conscience, these relationships proved their worth not despite our differences, but because of them.

As we navigate these complex times, the path forward emerges with striking clarity. From Marcus Aurelius to Omar Little, the lesson remains the same: a man gotta have a code. The crisis of authenticity in our discourse, the chasm between proclaimed and lived values, and the failure of global virtue-signaling all point to the same solution: a return to genuine relationships and local engagement. Our strongest bonds – those real relationships that have weathered recent storms – remind us that true virtue manifests in daily choices and personal costs, not in digital badges or distant donations.

This Thanksgiving, I found myself grateful not for the easy comforts of conformity but for those in my life who demonstrate real virtue – the kind that comes with personal cost and requires genuine conviction. The answer lies not in grand gestures or viral posts, but in the quiet dignity of living according to our principles, engaging with our immediate communities, and maintaining the courage to think independently. As both the emperor-philosopher and the fictional street warrior understood, what matters isn’t the grandeur of our station but the integrity of our code.

Returning one final time to Meditations, I’m reminded of Aurelius’s timeless challenge: “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/07/2024 – 23:20