House panel to probe Rice's ethics complaint about Gaetz

WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee said Friday it will investigate a Florida congressman based on a complaint by Rep. Kathleen Rice that he tried to threaten or influence the congressional testimony of Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.

Rice, a Garden City Democrat, took the uncommon step of filing the complaint against Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz for tweeting the night before Cohen appeared before the House Oversight Committee that compromising information about him might be made public.

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 — 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 on Feb. 26.

The Ethics Committee said in its announcement Friday that Gaetz declined an interview request about his tweet and allowed a June 24 deadline for his testimony to pass, prompting the establishment of a subcommittee to investigate the complaint.

“If members of Congress want to spend their time psychoanalyzing my tweets, it’s certainly their prerogative. I won’t be joining them in the endeavor,” Gaetz said in a statement.

The committee said in its announcement that it received a complaint from a member of Congress it did not name. But Rice, who declined to comment Friday, has said she sent it.

Rice confronted Gaetz, a staunch ally of Trump, on the House floor about the tweet when it first appeared, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Rice told him it appeared to be witness tampering and urged him to delete it, but Gaetz dismissed her, and although it is unusual for one member of Congress to file an ethics complaint against another member of Congress, Rice did just that the same night after he brushed her off.

She sent a second formal letter March 12 after she gathered more information.

Cohen, who had pleaded guilty to several offenses including lying to Congress at the time of his appearance before the Oversight Committee, provided damaging testimony about Trump based on his decade as a fixer and attorney for Trump before he became president.

Gaetz also faces a Florida Bar Association investigation into whether his tweet broke the state Supreme Court’s rules for lawyers.

The day after he posted his tweet, Gaetz responded to the blowback and a lecturing tweet from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by apologizing to her and deleting the offending tweet. But Rice was not satisfied.

“After the House Committee on Ethics thoroughly investigates this matter,” Rice wrote in her complaint letter, “I urge you to make any and all appropriate referrals to DOJ.”