There’s been speculation for some time that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed the Kevin McCarthy motion to vacate — and got seven of his colleagues to join him in ousting the former speaker — as part of a personal vendetta.
While Gaetz was never shy about his distaste for McCarthy’s leadership, Gaetz reportedly was angry with McCarthy for not putting a stop to the House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Gaetz had sex with a minor in 2017. And, as The Daily Beast reported at the beginning of the year, he privately told colleagues he blamed McCarthy when it was revived over the summer.
Gaetz has repeatedly publicly denied any reporting around his motive for the motion to vacate, but he showed his ass a bit this fall when, upon revelations that McCarthy elbow jabbed Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), he immediately filed an ethics panel complaint against the former speaker over the errant elbow move.
And during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, McCarthy was asked about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) motion to vacate Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). McCarthy spilled what has been widely speculated for months.
“The one advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is: Do not be fearful of a motion to vacate,” McCarthy said. “I do not think they could do it again. That was surely based on Matt Gaetz trying to stop an ethics complaint.”
“It was purely Matt coming to me trying, trying me to do something illegal to stop the Ethics Committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became a speaker,” he continued.
NBC News followed up on the McCarthy remarks by calling Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who told the news outlet that he knew about Gaetz’s side of the story, which involved McCarthy seemingly asking Gaetz during the speakership race if he wanted McCarthy to help him make the whole Ethics panel thing “go away.”
“The only thing Matt said was, ‘Kevin said, “Do you need the ethics violation to go away?”’” Norman told NBC.
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