The White House News

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Sunday that his “bias would be to vote for the people that President Trump wants” for the upcoming administration.

“My bias would be to vote for the people that President Trump wants to serve [by in his] administration,” Johnson told NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt on “The Hill Sunday.” “Again, as a U.S. senator, I’m probably the minority view here; I don’t particularly like being the human resource department of administration.”

“Again, the top picks, lifetime appointments, I have no problem with that, but you start getting down to … the lesser agencies here, or positions, it’s really ridiculous what we do,” Johnson continued, adding that he’d “much rather spend time on oversight and investigations.”

President-elect Trump has selected a few controversial people for roles in his incoming administration, including right-wing firebrand and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general. While Gaetz had been a strong supporter of the president-elect during his time in Congress, he also had some rough relationships within his party, notably having an ongoing public feud with ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Gaetz will most likely have to earn votes in the upper chamber to claim the role of attorney general, which Republicans will have control of next year, but GOP senators have expressed reservations about casting their votes for him. 

The Florida Republican, who resigned from the House immediately after the announcement, has recently been the subject of a probe by the House Ethics Committee looking into whether he had taken part in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, alongside other allegations. He has denied allegations of wrongdoing, but Gaetz’s resignation essentially kills the probe by taking himself out of the panel’s jurisdiction.

Johnson said Sunday that he had not “seen the efforts report on Matt Gaetz,” but he also said that Trump’s pick for attorney general is “an incredibly effective advocate for the president.”

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Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said Sunday that targeting others besides convicted criminals for deportation means “government has failed us.”

“You know, if we’re going after the guy that’s picking tomatoes or the nurse at the local hospital and we’re not going after the convicted criminal, then our government has failed us,” Gonzales told ABC News’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”

President-elect Trump, a member of Gonzales’s party, pushed a mass deportation plan throughout his bid for the presidency this year. He promoted a “Day 1 agenda” mostly centered on border and immigration crackdowns. At many rallies, the president-elect said, “On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.”

“You know, our country was built on those fleeing persecution, and it would be, it would be just absolutely terrible if we don’t protect those that are doing it the right way,” Gonzales said. “Legal immigration should never be mixed with these hardened criminals.”

Last week, in response to a question from journalist Cecilia Vega on CBS’s “60 Minutes” about the possibility of going forward with “mass deportation without separating families,” Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar” in his upcoming administration said “there is” and that “Families can be deported together.”

Homan later said in an interview this month that “U.S. citizens” and “legal immigrants are perfectly safe, for God’s sakes.”

Trump has said that mass deportations will be aimed at people in the U.S. illegally, chiefly those with a criminal record.

“If the message is ‘We’re here to deport your abuelita,’ that’s not gonna work well,” Gonzales said Sunday, using the Spanish word for grandmother.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.

Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on Sunday that he considers former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), President-elect Trump’s choice for attorney general, “disqualified” for the top law enforcement job in the country.

“I think he’s not only unqualified. He is really disqualified,” Schiff said in CNN’s “State of the Union” interview with Jake Tapper.

“Are we really going to have an attorney general who has credible allegations he was involved in child sex trafficking, potential illicit drug use, obstruction of an investigation, who has no experience serving in the Justice Department, only being investigated by it?” Schiff continued.

Schiff suggested that Trump is trying to test how far the Congress will go as the former president prepares for a second term with Republican control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

“But Jake, I think the whole point with these nominees, several of them, is their unqualification, is there affirmative disqualification,” Schiff said. “That’s Trump’s point because what he wants to do with these nominees is establish that the Congress of the United States will not stand up to him with anything.”

“If they will confirm Matt Gaetz, they will do anything he wants,” Schiff said.

The Ethics panel has for years been investigating Gaetz, exploring whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other allegations. He has vigorously denied allegations of wrongdoing, and the Department of Justice, which previously investigated whether he had sex with a 17-year-old, declined to charge him with a crime.

However, that Ethics Committee investigation came to an abrupt end Wednesday when Gaetz resigned from the House shortly after Trump nominated him to serve as attorney general. The Ethics panel does not have jurisdiction over former members of Congress.

It is unknown what path the panel will follow with its Gaetz report. Some Republican senators, however, have pushed for the Senate Judiciary panel to be granted access to the report and the probe’s findings as they go through the vetting process.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Sunday he did not talk to President-elect Trump about releasing the House Ethics Committee report of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who resigned shortly after Trump tapped him for the job of attorney general.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” anchor Jake Tapper pressed Johnson on the timing of his statements concerning the ethics report – noting that, last Wednesday, Johnson told reporters that, as Speaker, he “can’t be involved in that,” but on Friday, Johnson said the report should not be released.

“In between those two comments, you did speak with President-elect Trump,” Tapper noted. “Did he encourage you to change your position and to squash the House Ethics Committee report from being released?”

“No, he did not,” Johnson responded in the interview. “The President and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report, not once, and I’ve been with him quite a bit this week – between Washington and Mar-a-Lago and last night at Madison Square Garden.”

Johnson defended his various statements on the issue as “entirely consistent” and repeated his position that Gaetz is no longer a member of the House and, therefore, the ethics committee does not have jurisdiction to investigate.

“But this is what I’ll tell you about that: What I said is entirely consistent. The Speaker of the House is not involved in ethics committee work. Can’t be, shouldn’t be, because the Speaker can’t put a thumb on the scale or have anything to do with that,” Johnson said. “So I have no idea what the contents of this report would be. I didn’t even know about it, Jake, until the middle of this week when it was announced in the press.”

“What I have said, with regard to the report, is that it should not come out. Why? Because Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. He is no longer a member. There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain, that the House Ethics committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to nonmembers of Congress.

“I think that would be a Pandora’s box. I don’t think we want the House Ethics Committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens, and that’s what Matt Gaetz is now. He is no longer a member of Congress, so I think that’s a really important guardrail for the institution, and that’s what I was speaking to in those sound bites.”

When Tapper pushed back asking whether the American people have the right to see the report, which he noted their taxpayer dollars funded, Johnson disputed the suggestion that the report was complete already.

“My understanding is that the report is not finished. It’s in a rough draft form, was not yet ready to be released, and since Matt Gaetz left the Congress, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do so.”

Johnson noted there have been only a small number of exceptions where reports have been released about former members, adding, “I wasn’t the speaker at that time. I’m the speaker now.”

“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,” he said.

Johnson saw Trump on Thursday evening at a Mar-a-Lago gala, where Gaetz was also in attendance. But he declined to say if he has spoken with Trump about his stance on releasing the report.

“I’m not talking to anybody about what I said to Trump,” Johnson said. 

Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on Sunday warned of the “risk of politicizing the military” in an interview on ABC News’s “This Week.”

ABC News’s Martha Raddatz was talking to the Michigan Democrat about President-elect Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, saying he “has also said that ‘Any general that was involved in any of the DEI woke crap has got to go,'” and then asked Slotkin if she thinks the president-elect is set “to fire top generals who he considers ‘woke.'”

Slotkin responded that she believes “they’ve been very clear that they’re putting together some sort of panel that’s gonna look at generals, people who have served their nation their entire lives, over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, in combat, they are now openly talking about dismissing them like some sort of kangaroo court.”

“You can imagine the stress in the Pentagon about that, but also in the future of who we are as a military, right?” Slotkin added. “Our military and the role of the military is in the Constitution for a reason, and I think we’re really at risk of politicizing the military in a way that we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Slotkin’s fellow Democrats have criticized Hegseth as Trump’s selection to lead the Department of Defense. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), who served in the Army, has said that Hegseth is not “a serious person and a serious pick.” Another New York Democrat, Rep. Dan Goldman, has said he was “very disturbed” by Trump’s choice of Hegseth for the top role in the Pentagon.

“I’m shocked, truly, and this is exactly what we worried about when we warned about Donald Trump, which is that he is going to appoint unqualified loyalists to shape this government into his own personal fiefdom,” Goldman said earlier this week.

While serving as a Fox News host and conservative commentator, Hegseth had mapped out policy positions aimed at pushing back on efforts to promote diversity and open opportunities for women and LGBTQ service members.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.