ANALYSIS – Did he or didn't he? I never liked how conservative Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida led the push to overthrow our Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
And all it really accomplished was to create total chaos in the House GOP and threaten the razor-thin Republican majority. I always believed Gaetz had personal motives for the coup, and only used “conservative principles” as a cover.
Sadly, too many conservatives are taken in by the phony Gaetz uber-conservative schtick. And recall that Gaetz could only remove McCarthy with the help of the entire Democrat caucus in the House. Very few Republicans supported the move. (RELATED: Trump Considering Kevin McCarthy For Chief Of Staff Role, Fox News Reports)
This is why I tend to believe the latest accusation against Gaetz from former Speaker McCarthy.
As The Guardian reported:
“I'll give you the truth why I'm not speaker,” McCarthy said, at an event at Georgetown University in Washington.
“Because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old, an ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker. And that's illegal and I'm not gonna get in the middle of it.
“Now, did he do it or not? I don't know. But ethics was looking at it. There's other people in jail because of it. And he wanted me to influence it.”
The Guardian added: “The House ethics investigation of allegations against Gaetz opened in 2021, when Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, was speaker.”
It continued:
The House investigation was paused when Gaetz was investigated by the US Department of Justice for sex trafficking, over allegations that he paid for sex and had sex with an underage woman. In December 2022, Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector whose arrest led to the investigation of Gaetz, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for offences including sex trafficking a minor.
But it's not just McCarthy claiming Gaetz's motives were sleazy. Gaetz privately admitted it himself, more than once. (RELATED: A Pleasant Surprise? Congress To End Lying Cheat's Career?)
According to the Daily Beast:
According to private correspondence reviewed by The Daily Beast, Gaetz indicated to a friend that his effort to undercut, isolate, and ultimately remove McCarthy was, indeed, payback for the ethics probe.
The Daily Beast reviewed these communications, but is not allowed to quote from them for fear that Gaetz would be able to identify the recipient. In fact, the source who provided the communications was so nervous about retribution that The Daily Beast isn't allowed to say in what form the correspondence took place. Suffice to say, however, it's clear from the communications that Gaetz's targeting of McCarthy wasn't borne out of his concern for reckless Washington spending.
In the communications, Gaetz singled out McCarthy individually for reviving an Ethics Committee probe against him, and he indicated that his animus toward McCarthy was over that investigation.
The beleaguered Florida congressman's anger over the revived probe was so strong that he rode his resentment all the way to a history-making vote to remove McCarthy, steamrolling the majority of his GOP colleagues concerned that his vanity project would cause serious, long-term damage—and he did so with his signature Gaetz grin.
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