It was early last year when Rep. Matt Gaetz learned that the Justice Department, which had been investigating him in a sex trafficking investigation, would not bring criminal charges against the Florida Republican. That was, of course, the good news for the far-right GOP congressman. The bad news for Gaetz, however, was that he still had to contend with an investigation from the House Ethics Committee.
As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted soon after, Gaetz responded to the developments by lashing out at the committee’s chair, Republican Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi. It’s difficult to speculate as to what, if anything, the panel will conclude, but for Gaetz’s critics on Capitol Hill — of which there are many — the Ethics Committee’s examination is of great interest.