US speaker opposes calls to release ethics report on Trump’s attorney general pick

US House speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday insisted that the chamber’s ethics committee should not release a report on alleged sexual improprieties by Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, even as Democrats castigated Gaetz as unqualified and “a troll”.

“It should not come out,” Johnson told CNN. “And why? Because Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. He is no longer a member. There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule.”

Gaetz is a deeply polarising Florida Republican who has been accused of – and adamantly denied – having years earlier paid for sex with a then 17-year-old girl.

He was also being investigated for alleged illicit drug use, converting campaign funds for personal use, sharing inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, and other alleged misconduct.

Almost immediately after president-elect Trump’s stunning nomination of Gaetz to head the powerful Justice Department – a move Democrats saw as brazenly provocative – the Floridian resigned his House seat. This effectively ended the ethics investigation against him.