The Ethics panel cited an external review that declared Gaetz’s behavior was “unprofessional, reckless, insensitive, and demonstrated poor judgment.”
“Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot,” Gaetz tweeted at the man Trump called his “fixer,” the day before his testimony.
Cohen went ahead and testified without incident regarding his own personal life, beginning a federal prison sentence a few weeks later following an August 2018 guilty plea. He was convicted of tax evasion, making false statements, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress in 2018. He admitted to making hush-money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who alleged having affairs with Trump several years ago. The president has denied their claims.
Admonishment is not considered formal punishment by the entire House, more like a way to put a lawmaker on notice for their poor actions, and the committee also dismissed the more serious allegation that Gaetz had effectively committed witness tampering in his comments directed at Cohen.
In June 2019 the full ethics committee created an evenly divided four-lawmaker investigative subcommittee to conduct a formal inquiry into Gaetz’s actions, a step that, according to Friday’s report, was sparked by the lawmaker’s initial refusal to testify before the full panel.
The investigative panel, in addition to interviewing Gaetz, relied heavily on a report by the Florida Bar, which similarly found that he did not break witness tampering laws but had acted “not consistent with the high standards” of being a lawyer.
Within hours of issuing the tweet threat, Gaetz deleted it and issued a public and private apology to Cohen.
In testimony before the investigative subcommittee, he reiterated that his actions were wrong.
“It was not consistent with my own standards, and that really is where the inquiry stops for me. I am not comfortable with the language I used, with the reference that I deployed in this tweet, and that’s why, by virtue of inconsistency with my own standards, I deleted it and apologized publicly and privately,” he told the subcommittee.
Gaetz, 38, has fashioned himself as an attention-seeking defender of Trump, choosing an approach in ways that infuriates most Democrats.
And he is a prolific contributor to social media, particularly Twitter, which turned his ethics case into a modern review of what can and cannot be said on the platform by a member of Congress.
“The committee is not the social media police,” the ethics panel wrote in its report, noting that handled well the new platforms can be “a boon to greater transparency between members and their constituents.”
“However, the requirement that members conduct themselves at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House extends to their electronic communications. Members are, accordingly, cautioned to exercise sound judgment when using social media,” the committee concluded.
