The House Ethics Committee won’t be meeting after all on Friday as pressure builds to release the findings of its report on Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Anticipation was high for the closed-door meeting after Donald Trump announced he was picking the Florida member of Congress to be attorney general.

But the meeting was abruptly canceled Thursday, according to a person familiar with the schedule granted anonymity to discuss non-public information.

It is unclear why the committee canceled a meeting that was scheduled before Gaetz resigned from Congress this week, three people familiar told POLITICO earlier. An Ethics Committee spokesperson declined to comment on Thursday night about the cancellation.

The committee, which operates privately, doesn’t disclose its agenda. The private powwow would have let them discuss what to do with the probe now that Gaetz is technically outside of its jurisdiction.

The news comes after lawmakers – including senators who take part in hearings on his eventual nomination and some House Republicans— said they want to see the findings of the report.

Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters this week that the panel would end its investigation into Gaetz once he was no longer a House member. But Guest sidestepped when asked if he would release the report.

Dean John Sauer, the lawyer whose arguments led to a Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that waylaid Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential election, is Trump’s pick to be solicitor general in his second term.

The solicitor general represents the federal government at the high court.

“John is a deeply accomplished, masterful appellate attorney,” Trump said in a statement Thursday. The president-elect credited Sauer for “winning a historic victory on presidential immunity which was key to defeating the unconstitutional campaign of lawfare against me and the entire MAGA movement.”

Sauer also argued for Trump in a New York appeals court in September, seeking to overturn a $454 million judgment New York Attorney General Letitia James obtained against Trump in a case alleging pervasive fraud in his business empire. That appeal appeared to enjoy some traction with the appeals judges, although they have yet to rule on it.

Sauer spent six years as the solicitor general of Missouri, acting as the top appellate lawyer for that state. He got his undergraduate degree from Duke University, a master’s in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, and his law degree from Harvard Law School. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.

If confirmed by the Senate, Sauer would represent the United States in key arguments at the Supreme Court and lead a staff of elite lawyers at the Justice Department that handles all high-court litigation involving the federal government and makes decisions about when to file appeals of lower-court decisions.

Before he can become Donald Trump’s attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) will need to face off with some potentially less-than-friendly faces to receive confirmation: Republican senators he’s previously antagonized.

With a 53-seat majority, the Senate GOP can only lose up to three votes and still clear a nominee if Democrats unanimously oppose them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), for one, said Wednesday that Gaetz has “his work cut out for him to get a good, strong vote,” adding that “it’ll make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing.”

Gaetz has a history of speaking his mind when it comes to letting Senate Republicans know when he disagrees with them. Last year, he told Steve Bannon “the road to hell is paved by Republican sellout members of the United States Senate.”

Here’s a look at his previous clashes:

Mitch McConnell
: Gaetz hit the GOP Senate leader on social media Sunday for “depriving” Trump of recess appointments to his Cabinet during his first administration, calling it an “open act of hostility.”

John Cornyn
: In the same post in which he attacked McConnell, Gaetz asked the Texas senator who had been angling for majority leader if he would “continue the McConnell posture” toward recess appointments if he got the role. 

Markwayne Mullin
: Gaetz accused Mullin last year of “cashing in on public office” from stock purchases in a social media post. Mullin later hit back that Gaetz, whose father is a Florida state senator and multi-millionaire businessperson, was “living off of [his] daddy’s money.” But the Oklahoma senator said Thursday that though he and Gaetz have “had our differences,” he believes Trump has “done a really good job assembling the Cabinet together.” He added, “I’m going to treat Matt just I am every other nomination, they’ve got to go through the process” and “earn every vote.”

Thom Tillis: In an episode of his podcast FIREBRAND in February, Gaetz came after Tillis for his support for the $95 billion foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, calling the North Carolina senator “foolish.”
More broadly, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in 2022, Gaetz said any Republican senator who would support red flag laws, which allow judges to remove a firearm from a person they deem dangerous, would “betray” their voters and is “a traitor to the Constitution.” The GOP senators who voted for the bipartisan bill to address gun violence and will remain in the Senate to vote for Gaetz’s confirmation are
Shelley Moore Capito
,
Bill Cassidy
,
Susan Collins
, Cornyn,
Joni Ernst
,
Lindsey Graham
, McConnell,
Lisa Murkowski
, Tillis and
Todd Young
.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped the lawyers who represented him in the New York hush money criminal trial for the No. 2 and No. 3 spots at the Department of Justice.

Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor who defended Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial, which ended in Trump’s conviction on 34 counts, and his two federal criminal cases, will be deputy attorney general, the second-highest ranking post at DOJ and the person who runs its day-to-day operations, if confirmed. Emil Bove, who also represented the president-elect in the hush money trial and his two federal criminal cases, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general.

Blanche is known as a mild-mannered and by-the-books lawyer, in sharp contrast with Trump’s attorney general nominee, the firebrand former Rep. Matt Gaetz.

“Todd is an excellent attorney who will be a crucial leader in the Justice Department, fixing what has been a broken System of Justice for too long,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump described Bove, another former federal prosecutor, as “a tough and strong attorney.”

Blanche and Bove are both alumni of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, where Blanche was co-chief of the violent crimes unit and of the office’s White Plains division. Bove was co-chief of the office’s national security unit.

Blanche propelled himself to the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office in the country by attending night classes at Brooklyn Law School while working during the day as a paralegal.

In 2023, Blanche stunned many at the white-shoe law firm where he was a partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, and within the broader legal community when he abruptly quit his position at one of the oldest and most prestigious firms in the country to represent Trump. Blanche then formed his own law firm and hired Bove.

Despite his representation of Trump, Blanche remains well-liked by his former colleagues in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. Many of them had hoped that Trump might select Blanche to head that office, believing he would be the best-qualified and least overtly political of Trump’s options.

Members of a secretive panel overseeing a long-running investigation into Matt Gaetz are set to privately meet on Friday, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The House Ethics Committee meeting was scheduled before Gaetz (R-Fla.) resigned from Congress this week, the people said. The committee doesn’t disclose its agenda — but the highly anticipated closed-door powwow would let them discuss what to do with the probe now that Gaetz is technically outside of their jurisdiction.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced that Gaetz had resigned Wednesday night, hours after President-elect Trump nominated the Florida firebrand to become attorney general. Johnson attributed the resignation to Gaetz wanting to allow his seat to be filled quickly, but House Republicans have speculated that he did so in order to avoid an Ethics Committee report that they believe was poised to be released in a matter of days.

The panel has been investigating several allegations, including that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Multiple members of the notoriously tight-lipped panel, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, declined to comment to POLITICO on the investigation or the report. And leadership on both sides largely refused to weigh in on whether the committee should release the report.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries punted a question from POLITICO about the report to its top Democrat, Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild.

“That’s a question that would be best directed to Susan Wild, the top Democrat on the Ethics committee,” he said.

And Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) also dodged similar questions about the report’s release: “I’m not aware of any report. I know there are a lot of people talking about what may have happened, but the Ethics Committee doesn’t share with the rest of us what they’re working on.”

But some lawmakers, including those responsible for ultimately voting on Gaetz’s forthcoming nomination as attorney general, are making it clear that they want to see the findings.

“I want to see everything,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, which will first consider and hold confirmation hearings on Gaetz’s nomination.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a letter to the House Ethics Committee on Thursday asking them to hand over documents related to the investigation, including the report.

Some House Republicans agree they want to see the report if Gaetz is going to continue pursuing the attorney general position. Though they don’t hold any power over his confirmation or over the Ethics Committee, Gaetz had a lot of enemies among his former House colleagues.

Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) told reporters after Gaetz’s nomination that there were “better choices” than Gaetz and if he pursues the nomination that the report “needs to come out.”

But the chair of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Guest (R-Miss.), told reporters Wednesday before Gaetz’s resignation had been announced that the probe would end if Gaetz was no longer a member of the House.

“Once the investigation is complete, the Ethics Committee will meet as a committee. We will then return our findings. If Matt Gaetz is still a member of Congress, then that will occur. If Matt has resigned, then this ethics investigation, like many others in the past, will end again,” Guest said.

Asked Thursday if he would release the report, Guest sidestepped the question and pointed to his Wednesday remarks.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Jay Clayton, a longtime corporate lawyer and former Wall Street regulator, to be the U.S. attorney overseeing Manhattan.

Clayton served as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term but has no experience as a criminal prosecutor. If confirmed by the Senate, Clayton would head the nation’s most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office: the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the largest financial institutions and brings many high-profile white-collar and public-corruption cases.

During his first term, Trump attempted to install Clayton as the U.S. attorney for SDNY in an effort to oust Geoffrey Berman, who held the post from 2018 to 2020. But Trump’s effort was met with fierce resistance in the office, including by Berman himself, who refused to leave until he was allowed to hand the reins to his deputy.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan office balked at Clayton’s lack of experience in criminal law and worried he would simply do Trump’s bidding.

In 2020, Berman told the House Judiciary Committee: “I told the attorney general that I knew and liked Jay Clayton, but he was an unqualified choice for U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York because he was never an AUSA and had no criminal experience.” An AUSA is an assistant U.S. attorney.

Clayton, 58, was a Wall Street lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, representing major financial institutions, before being named to the SEC in 2017. He was confirmed to the SEC on a 61-37 vote, winning over nine Democrats. But he was sharply criticized by progressives for his ties to Wall Street.

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is calling for volunteers to send in their résumés — via X direct message.

DOGE, which uses the same acronym as its X handle, wants to recruit “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” according to its post on X.

Musk then added, with a post from his personal X account, that this work will be unpaid.

“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk wrote. “What a great deal!” The post also included a laughing emoji.

Neither post detailed what specific jobs this new agency, which will actually operate more like former President Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission, is hiring for.

This recruitment pitch is similar to what Musk reportedly told employees of X soon after he bought the company, then called Twitter. In 2022, Musk sent an email to the staff asking them to commit to being “hardcore” and work “long hours at high intensity” or leave the company with a severance package. Musk estimated that about 80 percent of staff left the company in early 2023.

Donald Trump announced that DOGE will be run by both Musk, the tech entrepreneur whose space technology company, Space X, is also a government contractor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former GOP primary candidate and pharmaceutical entrepreneur. Both men were active surrogates for Trump during his general election campaign.

The mission of this new department is to cut government spending costs by eliminating fraud and waste as part of a larger effort to disrupt Washington’s status quo. It is not clear yet how this will differ from or potentially work with from an existing agency that audits the government, the Government Accountability Office.

Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka are in the running to be President-elect Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, according to three people familiar with the competition who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

With either selection Trump would elevate a firebrand loyalist who served in the incoming commander-in-chief’s first administration to one of the White House’s top roles.

Trump has already selected Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida to serve as his national security adviser. Neither role requires Senate confirmation, but Anton and Gorka would both be controversial picks that are likely to stir anger in Washington. It would be a sign of the second Trump administration pushing a combative tone on foreign policy.

One of the people familiar with the transition said that Anton was the more likely of the two men to win the job.

Anton, who worked as a speechwriter for high-profile clients like Rupert Murdoch, Rudy Giuliani and Condoleezza Rice before joining the Trump administration in 2017 as deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications, has pushed anti-Islamic views, criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and peddled conspiracy theories, penning an essay before the 2020 election suggesting that billionaire George Soros and the Democratic Party were planning a coup.

Gorka, an ally of Steve Bannon who was also named a deputy assistant to Trump in early 2017, has called violence a “fundamental” part of the Islamic faith and once worked as an advisor to Viktor Orban. He was criticized within the administration for showing up at random meetings and raising unrelated points, POLITICO has reported. Gorka’s academic credentials have raised eyebrows among scholars.

The Trump-Vance transition and Anton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gorka declined to comment but encouraged this reporter to “take a long jump off a short pier.”

The lawyer representing a woman former Rep. Matt Gaetz allegedly had sex with when she was a minor called on the House Ethics Committee to “immediately” release its report into his alleged conduct.

“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” attorney John Clune wrote Thursday on X. “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”

Gaetz, a conservative firebrand whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped Wednesday to serve as attorney general — and who pushed the effort to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — resigned abruptly from the House Wednesday, days before the chamber’s ethics panel was reportedly set to release a report of its investigation.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations. A spokesperson for Gaetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The former congressman was also the subject of a separate federal sex trafficking investigation by the Department of Justice — which he could soon lead — but was ultimately not prosecuted. That probe, started in 2020 during the Trump administration, was focused on whether Gaetz paid women for sex and traveled overseas to attend parties with teenagers under the age of 18.

In May, he was subpoenaed to sit for a deposition in a civil lawsuit brought against the woman with whom he allegedly had sex — who is represented by Clune — by a friend of Gaetz, ABC News reported.

House Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters Wednesday before Gaetz’s resignation that the probe would end if Gaetz was no longer a member of the House — and reiterated that position on Thursday.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said they hope to review the report ahead of Gaetz’s Senate confirmation. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) demanded in a statement that the House Ethics Committee share its findings with the Senate Judiciary Community, saying “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”

And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told ABC News on Thursday he “absolutely” wants to see the report, adding: “I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee generates.”

MAGA won big. Now MAHA is ready to take on Washington.

President-elect Donald Trump promised Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a chance to implement his Make America Healthy Again vision and Kennedy is in the mix to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

That could turn the government’s role in public health upside down. Kennedy blames Americans’ poor health in part on a corrupt alliance among the food and drug industries and the regulators supposed to watch over them. He wants to replace the bureaucrats and overhaul the systems for overseeing pesticides, food additives and vaccines.

That could mean rules and product bans that threaten the profits of the food and pharma sectors GOP lawmakers have long deferred to — and who employ many of their constituents. MAHA expects them to put up a fight, but Trump during his campaign and the GOP lawmakers most willing to talk this week said they’re taking Kennedy’s asks seriously and are open to pursuing his policy goals through legislation or by confirming him to a top administration post.

“Bobby Kennedy can do more working with President Trump to advance America’s health than anybody really in history,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said. “If President Trump wants him, I think he could [be confirmed to the Cabinet]. Why not?”

Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Rand Paul of Kentucky seconded Johnson’s point.

Tuberville said it was “great” Kennedy is involved and said he was open to confirming him to a top job. Paul called the longtime environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and scion of one of America’s most famous Democratic families “an important voice … for reassessing the crony capitalism that has big corporations, particularly Big Pharma, having an undue influence in regulation and approval of their drugs.”

Even Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, noted “several issues” where he and Kennedy, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination before dropping out to endorse Trump, would agree, including: “tobacco and organic agriculture.”

Wyden declined to say more about how he’d respond if Trump gave Kennedy an administration role.

It might just be that Kennedy’s critics are holding back, expecting Trump won’t go there. But holding back they are.

Lobbyists for food and pharmaceutical interests have declined to publicly criticize Kennedy or openly push for the incoming administration to change course, even as they say they are reaching out to the Trump transition team and lawmakers for reassurance.

And many GOP lawmakers — including some who represent farm country, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — declined to comment as they were returning to Washington after a break for the election. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told POLITICO Thursday it was premature to say if she’d vote to confirm Kennedy given he hasn’t been nominated to a post yet.

Public health and medical experts have sounded the alarm on Kennedy’s ideas, particularly his claim that vaccines cause autism, as dangerous.

Kennedy declined to comment on the MAHA movement’s involvement in the incoming administration or criticisms from industry groups and health experts.

MAHA devotees aren’t declaring victory, predicting a fight with lobbyists for pharma and food companies and their allies on Capitol Hill.

Jeff Hutt, spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again PAC and former national field director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, will brief health policy staffers on Capitol Hill next week, following a similar briefing in September from Kennedy ally Calley Means, a former food-industry lobbyist who has become a prominent voice in the debate about Trump’s health policy platform.

“Established Republicans are going to have to be the most brave for this to be successful,” Hutt said.

For now, MAHA’s acolytes are waiting to see whether Trump is brave enough to follow through on his promise to Kennedy.