Matt Gaetz Ethics Report Is as Damning as It Gets

Former Representative Matt Gaetz is filing a restraining order against the entire House Ethics Committee to stop them from showing the world their findings, which reportedly includes evidence that he paid an underaged girl for sex.

Gaetz accuses the committee of an “unconstitutional” attempt “to exercise jurisdiction over a private citizen through the threatened release of an investigative report containing potentially defamatory allegations, in violation of the Committee’s own rules.”

This all comes after CNN reported last week that the committee secretly voted to release its report into former Representative Matt Gaetz. The report is years long, and based on allegations that Gaetz had paid a teenage girl and multiple women thousands of dollars for sex and drugs since 2017.

Gaetz’s restraining order request states that the report would be unjustly tarnishing his reputation, arguing that it is “concerning matters of sexual propriety and other acts of alleged moral turpitude constitutes irreparable harm that cannot be adequately remedied through monetary damages.”

The clerk’s office has already told Gaetz his lawsuit must be refiled, as Gaetz’s attorneys made paperwork errors that must be corrected before it goes any further.

Gaetz has fervently denied any and all allegations.

“In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated—even some I never dated but who asked. I dated several of these women for years. I NEVER had sexual contact with someone under 18. Any claim that I have would be destroyed in court—which is why no such claim was ever made in court,” Gaetz wrote last week. “It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump dismissed the “President Musk” jokes Sunday, and it was less than convincing.

During his address at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona, the president-elect pushed back on claims that Musk planned to supplant him as president.

“No, he’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “And I’m safe, you know why? He can’t be, he wasn’t born in this country.”

But Trump carefully elided the actual criticism of Musk’s growing political influence. People aren’t worried that Musk is plotting to steal the presidency—they’re worried he already has.

Last week, Musk issued his own set of marching orders to Congress, ordering Republicans to oppose a massive spending bill to avert a government shutdown, or face being primaried by a Musk-backed candidate. Meanwhile, Trump stayed more or less silent, and Democratic leaders began to criticize the president-elect for allowing Musk to lead his party.

When Trump eventually did weigh in, also issuing a request to lift the debt ceiling, his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt issued a chilly statement to make sure everyone knew there was only one man in charge.

“As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop,” said Leavitt.

Only when both Musk and Trump approved of the spending bill was it able to move forward. While the changes Musk sought were made, Trump’s request got left on the cutting room floor.

Musk’s recent behavior indicates not only a growing influence on Trump, but on the Republican Party at large, as Republicans immediately fell in line. Already, many have begun pledging themselves to assist the unelected bureaucrat with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a scheme to eradicate federal programs and workers and replace them with pricey corporate contracts and vendors.

The House of Representatives finally voted to avert a government shutdown Friday evening, just hours before government funding was set to expire, thanks to Democratic help and Republicans’ decision to exclude Donald Trump’s demand to extend the debt ceiling.

The bill to continue funding for the government passed with 366 votes in favor and 34 votes against, with every single “no” vote coming from a Republican.

This most recent vote comes one day after a whopping 38 Republicans joined 197 Democrats in voting against an abbreviated continuing resolution, endorsed by both Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

That bill had nixed several key provisions from the original, including ones to fund research into pediatric cancer, premature labor, and Down syndrome; to treat sickle-cell anemia and early cancer detection; and criminalize deepfake pornography.

The original 1,547-page bipartisan bill was scrapped Wednesday, after Musk railed against it on social media and Trump demanded that Republicans find a way to lift the debt ceiling, sending an embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling to come up with a new version of the legislation.

The massive bill underwent several stages on Friday, having been split up into three component parts for lawmakers to vote on separately: a three-month continuing resolution, a bill funding disaster relief, and a bill to grant $10 billion in relief for farmers and extend the farmer’s bill, while Trump’s request to raise the debt ceiling was nowhere to be found.

In the end, lawmakers voted on one single package, which would fund the government through March 14, provide roughly $100 billion for disaster aid, and extend the federal programs supporting farmers, providing $30 billion in economic relief.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a simple fix for the current government shutdown battle.

“How about the House add campaign finance reform to the CR so Republicans and Democrats alike can stop being so scared about what a billionaire man-child thinks before they vote on anything around here,” AOC wrote on X Friday.

The “billionaire man-child” in question is Elon Musk, who has been threatening to primary any representatives who don’t back his preferred version of the spending bill. Musk helped tank the bipartisan spending bill on Wednesday through a barrage of posts on X, and on Thursday, a Trump-backed bill failed to win over enough Republicans. On Friday afternoon, Musk again began hinting at his opposition to the revised Republican plan.

Musk’s outside role in these negotiations has called into question who’s really calling the shots in the Republican Party.

“The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” Representative Brendan Boyle wrote on X. “I don’t know why Trump doesn’t just hand him the Oval Office,” said Representative Greg Cesar.

Roger Stone said Friday he wants to fix America’s broken justice system, conveniently forgetting the time he got bailed out of criminal charges by his buddy Donald Trump.

During Stone’s address at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, the longtime GOP operative and self-proclaimed “agent provocateur” explained what he believed Trump’s allies hope to gain from a second stint in the White House.

“What we seek is a rebalance of the scales of justice, so this country can return to one standard of justice, not the two-tiered justice system,” Stone said in a video posted on X by CBS News’s senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs.

It’s sort of unclear to which two-tiered justice system Stone was referring—could it possibly have been the one that secured him a presidential pardon after he was indicted for lying to Congress about Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election, witness tampering, and obstruction? The very same system that rescued him, the president-elect’s longtime friend and ally, from a 40-month prison sentence? Surely not that one, right?

There are certainly serious problems with the country’s justice system worthy of the attention of the president of the United States—but Stone’s not talking about those. No, he’s most likely talking about the system that pardoned Hunter Biden for gun charges and tax evasion, or the system that pursued charges against the rioters at the January 6 insurrection, whose violence Stone cheered on.

Ultimately, MAGA is not seeking to “rebalance the scales”; it’s seeking to throw the scale out and do whatever the hell Trump wants. But if Stone is seriously interested in being prosecuted for tax evasion, the Justice Department can definitely make that happen.

Elon Musk is hoping to dispel the widely circulating notion that he, not President-elect Trump, is really calling the shots.

On Thursday, X user Lulu Cheng Meservey called such speculations indicative of a wider “strategy” to sow discord between Musk and Trump. “By jabbing Trump about not being the alpha, the idea is to provoke him to sideline Elon and to fray the relationship,” Meservey wrote.

Musk agreed, writing in a quote-tweet Friday, “The political & legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between [Trump] and me. They will fail.”

The “President Musk” rhetoric began after the billionaire, whose financial support for Trump and other Republican candidates made him 2024’s biggest political donor, helped tank a bipartisan spending bill. Musk unleashed a fusillade of criticism on his social media platform, X, as well as a threat to fund primary challenges against representatives who voted to pass the deal.

Later that day, President-elect Trump came out against the deal, and after a failed vote on a revised bill Thursday, House Republicans are scrambling to put together an eleventh-hour plan to avoid a government shutdown.

Musk has since tried to shift blame and downplay his role in the outcome. He’s also apparently hoping to shut down Democrats’ suggestions that his outsize role in the legislative process indicates that he’s the one truly pulling the strings in the incoming Trump administration.

Many Democrats leapt on the events of the week to say just that: “The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” tweeted Representative Brendan Boyle. “I don’t know why Trump doesn’t just hand him the Oval Office,” said Representative Greg Cesar. “It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump,” posted Pramila Jayapal, saying Trump followed the lead of “Shadow President Elon Musk.” (Jayapal’s were the comments that specifically drew Meservey’s, and in turn Musk’s, ire.)

Whatever the state of Musk and Trump’s relationship after the world’s wealthiest man flexed his political muscles this week, the notion that Musk is delivering marching orders seems to have struck a nerve with team Trump. On Thursday, a Trump spokesperson insisted that the president-elect, and no one else, was in charge, saying, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”

House Republicans seem poised to give Donald Trump the finger for the second time in less than 24 hours.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced a new continuing resolution plan on Friday that does not include what the president-elect has been pining for for days: an extension to the debt ceiling.

“We have a unified Republican conference. There’s a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward,” Johnson told a room full of reporters. “I will not telegraph to you the specific details of that yet.… I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shutdown.”

Johnson’s new plan, which he has not yet discussed with Trump, will instead be one vote that includes a spending package, disaster aid, farm aid, and the farm bill extension—no debt ceiling changes included. The plan C comes after 38 House Republicans on Thursday evening voted against a Trump-backed plan that would extend the debt ceiling by two years.

Johnson’s move is sure to draw the ire of both Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who has been threatening to primary any Republican who does not agree to a continuing resolution on Trump’s terms (or his).

Elon Musk is now threatening to get rid of Democratic lawmakers, but he has no idea who he’s dealing with … no, seriously he has no idea who he’s complaining about.

Musk responded Friday to a video of Representative Richie Neal, the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where the Massachusetts Democrat slammed the unelected bureaucrat for trying to kill the bipartisan spending bill needed to keep the government running.

“A tweet changed all of it?” Neal scoffed, referring to Musk’s deluge of posts on X Wednesday and Thursday instructing Republicans to oppose the bill, threatening to oust the ones who didn’t, and cheering on the increasingly inevitable government shutdown.

“Can you imagine what the next two years will be like if every time that Congress works its will, and then there’s a tweet, or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?” Neal asked.

“This institution has a separate responsibility based on the separation of powers,” he warned.

Musk didn’t like this at all, apparently, and replied in his new favorite way: a threat to buy Neal out of his seat.

“Oh … forgot to mention that I’m also going to be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass,” Musk wrote.

But Neal is a fairly moderate Democrat, who has been a representative in Massachusetts—a fairly Democratic state—for more than three decades. In November, he was reelected to his role leading the state’s first district by 62 percent of the vote, handily beating an independent challenger.

That’s not to say Musk couldn’t somehow find a challenger to oppose Neal, but the billionaire technocrat clearly thinks he can throw money at any problem and move the dial. While money and a right-wing propaganda machine may have an outsized influence in Congress, Musk may be starting to realize that he’s just not cut out for this whole politics thing.

The list of people who hate Nancy Mace is growing longer with each passing day.

On Friday, the cantankerous Republican representative’s former consultant took to X to air her out. 

“You can stop texting me. I fired Nancy Mace as [a] client a few months back because I’m a political consultant and not a babysitter, a sex therapist or a doctor who can prescribe fixes for chemical imbalances,” wrote Wesley Donehue, CEO of the political consulting firm Push Digital. “I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bullshit and drama in my life.”

In a follow-up tweet, Donehue clarified that he was reacting to Mace’s own attack on fellow Republicans. His comment seems to align with the jabs Mace and fellow Republican Representative Trey Gowdy have been exchanging. 

“Nancy Mace would not be in the House if it weren’t for Donald Trump, and she can’t vote the way that he asks her to today?” Gowdy told Fox News on Thursday. “I hope he’s got as long a memory for House members as he does senators that even threaten to not support one of his nominees.”  

“I have a message for Trey Gowdy: You let Hillary Clinton off the hook for Benghazi. Sit your ass back down,” Mace posted on X later that night. 

“Which bathroom do we think Trey Gowdy uses? #HoldTheLine,” she said in another, attaching a picture of Gowdy and bizarrely implying he is transgender.
 
Donehue responded to this directly on X. “Imagine wanting to run statewide and thinking this is a good idea. The upstate loves Trey Gowdy. This is what happens when a person cannot control their emotions enough to think strategically.”

Mace has made a fool of herself multiple times since the election: going on a public transphobic tirade to target Sarah McBride, the first and only trans member of Congress, claiming that she was assaulted by a trans activist who says he simply shook her hand, and now the intraparty bullying. Can’t wait to see the next desperate media ploy for attention.

Elon Musk has spent the week derailing a bipartisan funding bill, sending the U.S. government hurtling toward a shutdown. But on Friday, the tech billionaire broadened his scope from domestic to international politics with a ringing endorsement of Alternative for Germany, the country’s far-right political party.

Early Friday morning on his social media platform, X, Musk posted, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

The AfD is an ethnonationalist party that has faced criticism for its ties to neo-Nazis and, per the BBC, considers immigrants “not ‘properly German,’” regardless of citizenship status. The party has gained traction in recent years, with Vox’s Li Zhou writing that AfD support is based on a vision of Germany “that’s white, that relies on fossil fuels, that’s hostile toward more immigrants, and that’s adopted many of the same anti-LGBTQ positions that are common among conservatives in the US.”

Musk’s endorsement, which comes with a February election on the horizon in Germany, has been celebrated by the AfD, its members, and leadership—but slammed by many others. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said of Musk’s post: “We have freedom of opinion—it also goes for multibillionaires, but freedom of opinion also means that you can say things that aren’t right and don’t contain good political advice.”

In the U.S., observers have railed against the endorsement, with conservative commentator Bill Kristol writing, “I think this should be kind of a big deal.… The AfD is Germany’s neo-Nazi party,” and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy tweeting examples of AfD officials’ hateful actions and remarks, writing, “The AfD’s mission is to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi movement.”

Over the past year or so, Musk has gradually aligned himself with the AfD.

In October 2023, he quote-tweeted a post from a far-right German X account that supported the AfD stopping search and rescues of asylum-seekers in the Mediterranean, which the user said facilitated “European suicide.” “Is the German public aware of this?” Musk wrote, but, amid backlash, later posted, “I have not ‘supported’ any political party and don’t know AFD from a hole in the ground.”

In June, Musk expressed curiosity about the party in a reply to Naomi Seibt, a 24-year-old far-right German political activist known as the “anti-Greta.” “Why is there such a negative reaction from some about AfD?” Musk wrote. “They keep saying ‘far right’, but the policies of AfD that I’ve read about don’t sound extremist. Maybe I’m missing something.” Musk’s Friday endorsement came in a response to Seibt on X.

The world’s richest man has occasionally dipped his toes into European politics, with a major through line in his forays being opposition to immigration. Musk himself is an immigrant from South Africa.