McCarthy claimed that Gaetz's motion to oust him from the speakership was motivated by a personal matter.

On Sunday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy accused Representative Matt Gaetz of trying to get him “to do something illegal,” which he further claimed led to the motion to oust him from his speakership role last year.

McCarthy, a California Republican, served as speaker of the House from January to October of 2023, presiding over a razor-thin GOP majority and a caucus bitterly divided between more moderate members and those further to the right. Following a deal with Democratic members to get a temporary government funding bill passed, Gaetz, a Florida Republican, filed a motion to oust McCarthy from the speakership, leading to the first ouster of a sitting speaker by a floor vote during a session of Congress.

A similar motion to oust the current GOP speaker, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, was just filed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, though she has characterized it as more of a warning after the passage of a $1.2 trillion government funding bill that she did not support.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
    67·
    8 months ago

    The motion against him from Gaetz, however, he blamed on a personal matter and accused Gaetz of trying to get him to illegally shut down an ethics committee investigation.

    It was shutting down the ethics investigation into Gaetz, as we all knew at the time. Just didn’t know that would be illegal.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      8 months ago

      The ethics matter McCarthy referred to pertains to an investigation into Gaetz dating back to 2021, which alleged that, according to The New York Times, “he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, among other allegation.”

      So Gaetz asked McCarthy to shut down the ethics investigation into all this, which totally sounds like something that an innocent, honest, upstanding person would do. /s