House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, refused on Sunday to speak on the controversy surrounding some of President-elect Donald Trump‘s Cabinet nominations, insisting he won’t “put the cart before the horse.”
Trump announced a slew of nominations last week for many Cabinet positions, including his secretaries of state, energy, interior, veteran affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among others. However, some of those picks have already prompted significant bipartisan backlash and controversy.
Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary nominee, is already facing an uphill battle for confirmation as many view him as an unqualified candidate due to limited experience in command positions. His task has turned herculean after news broke that he was not only the subject of a 2017 sexual assault investigation in California but that he paid a settlement to the accuser to make the issue go away.
Last week, Hegseth’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore told Newsweek that no criminal charges were filed against his client after he was “fully investigated” and “was cleared,” adding that “this unfortunate episode should have zero impact on the confirmation process.”
Parlatore added that Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations and maintains the encounter was consensual.
But that pales in comparison to the controversy surrounding former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney general. Gaetz resigned from Congress as soon as Trump announced him as the nominee, effectively trying to scupper the release of a House ethics report that investigated allegations of illicit drug use and sexual misconduct, including allegedly having sex with an underage girl. Gaetz strongly denied the allegations.
In 2022, more than two years after the inquiry was launched, prosecutors recommended that the Department of Justice not level charges against Gaetz, citing concerns about the credibility of two witnesses. Five months later, the department closed the investigation.
Johnson initially said he would not speak on the ethics report, saying on Wednesday that “the Speaker of the House is not involved in that, can’t be involved in that,” but just two days later, he reversed course and advised the House Ethics Committee against releasing the report.
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Appearing on CNN‘s State of the Union on Sunday, host Jake Tapper confronted Johnson on his about-face and the moral character of Trump’s nominees, trying to appeal to the House speaker’s faith, but Johnson, a Trump ally, appeared to dodge the question entirely by repeating the oft-touted line from Republicans over the past week that these picks are meant to “shake up the status quo.”
“This is what I’ll say about the nominees that the president has put forward, is that they are persons who will shake up the status quo, and I think what the American people have believed, and what they’ve delivered with the mandate in this election is demand that we shake up the status quo,” the House speaker said.
Newsweek reached out to Johnson’s office by email on Sunday morning for comment.
Meanwhile, Johnson also briefly acknowledged that the morality of nominees is “an important issue for anyone in leadership,” but he continued to press that the current state of Washington, D.C., is “not working for the American people” and focusing on the fact that these nominees can be “disruptors.”
“Any president has the right to name their own cabinet, to nominate persons that they think will fulfill their agenda, and the people that are on this list will do that,” Johnson said. “They will go into the agencies that they’re being asked to lead, and they will reform them.”
“These agencies need reform, and I think the vast majority of the American people understand that you can’t have status quo appointments in a moment like this,” he said, adding that he was “excited about the days ahead” and touting the “demographic shift” within the Republican Party.
Specifically addressing the Gaetz ethics report, Johnson dismissed the fact that Congress has released reports on former members multiple times in the past simply because he wasn’t the House speaker at those times.
“I wasn’t the speaker at that time. I’m the speaker now,” he said. “The speaker does not have the authority to stop the release of a report by the ethics committee, but I’ve just simply said what I believe is an obvious point—that we don’t want to go down that road.”
The House speaker added: “I don’t think you want the House Ethics Committee investigating Jake Tapper or any other private citizen. You’re not a member of the institution. There’s a reason that it is limited in its scope and jurisdiction.”
Johnson said that the report was in a “rough draft form” and therefore was “not yet ready to be released,” adding to his argument that it would not be appropriate to release.