Former Speaker of the House Keven McCarthy is not keeping silent on the leader of the Chaos Caucus anymore.
McCarthy — known as Speaker McCarthy and Representative McCarthy, until he butted heads with Florida Man, Representative Matt Gaetz — refused to cover for Gaetz while they were in office together, and he isn’t covering for him now, as he spills on the reason that the two clashed.
McCarthy has previously suggested that Gaetz’s real reason for attacking him wasn’t because of political disagreements or any real belief that he was siding with Democrats by passing bipartisan legislation, but because he is worried about what a (still-ongoing) investigation by the House Ethics Committee will find.
The investigation had been closed, but was reopened last year, to dig into whether Gaetz had illegally transported a minor across state lines for sex. Now, McCarthy is making sure the public knows that Gaetz wants the investigation shut down, and he even suggested that his former colleague was guilty, before drawing back and saying he doesn’t know if it’s true. McCarthy said:
“Let me give you the truth about that. I am not Speaker, because one person, a Member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a seventeen-year-old. An ethics complaint that started before I ever became Speaker, and that’s illegal and I’m not going to get into the middle, did he do it or not. I don’t know, but ethics is looking at it. There’s other people in jail because of it. He wanted me to influence it.”
McCarthy was speaking at Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, being interviewed by executive director Mo Elleithee, who had asked about him “making concessions” in bipartisan legislation.
McCarthy also defended the legislation that Gaetz claimed spurred the decision to have him removed as Speaker, a continuing resolution to keep the government functioning. He said that given the opportunity, he’d make the same decision again, choosing to fund the government, and ensure pay for troops and other government employees.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Gaetz is still dragging out behind closed doors, years after the allegations first surfaced, and almost 3 years now after his alleged co-conspirator, Joel Greenberg, pled guilty.
In January, Greenberg’s attorney, Fritz Scheller, provided documentation to the Ethics Committee, related to Greenberg’s assertions that he witnessed Gaetz engaging in sex acts with the underaged child, according to the New York Times.
However, there’s no word on whether Gaetz has made similar requests to the current Speaker of the House, or exactly what’s going on with the investigation currently.
Watch McCarthy dump on Gaetz below. The full interview is here.
Kevin McCarthy still not handling things well pic.twitter.com/RhEKz5xhwu
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) April 10, 2024
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