Seven-term Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Tuesday that releasing a House ethics report on Matt Gaetz would spur "faster consideration" of his nomination for attorney general.
Grassley made the comments to a CNN camera crew on Tuesday, The Hill reported, becoming the latest Senate Republican to call for the House Ethics Committee to release its report on allegations of sex trafficking, statutory rape, and illicit drug use against the former Florida congressman. Gaetz has denied the allegations.
"I would suggest if they want a speedy consideration of this … it would help faster consideration, the extent to which they would make as much available as they can," said Grassley, who will host the confirmation hearings of President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks beginning in January.
Grassley, however, stopped short of demanding the report from the House.
"I think I better not interfere with the House of Representatives, what they decide that their committee will do, because they're going to meet this week to make that decision," Grassley told Radio Iowa on Tuesday. "Obviously, my investigating committee, my vetting committee, is going to want as much information as we can get on these nominees."
The Ethics Committee is meeting Wednesday, at which time it's expected that members will vote whether to release their report. At issue is that once a lawmaker resigns from Congress, as Gaetz did shortly after Trump's announcement, it puts an end to ethics probes that might be ongoing. However, given that Trump nominated Gaetz to be the top lawman in the land, pressure is mounting on the panel to release the report.
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., are among Republicans in the upper chamber to call for its release.
"The background of Matt Gaetz does matter," Mullin said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the committee should not release the report but qualified his remarks by saying he is "not telling the Ethics Committee what to do."
"It is not my place to do so," he added. "I've been very clear. I'm merely responding to the questions that every single media outlet in America is asking me."