House Republicans Block Release of Ethics Report on Gaetz

House Republicans voted on Wednesday to block the release of an Ethics Committee report about sexual misconduct and illicit drug use allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, setting up a possible constitutional clash between the House and the Senate.

Senators in both parties have clamored to see the bipartisan conclusions of the panel’s yearslong investigation into Mr. Gaetz’s conduct as part of their vetting of presidential nominees, who normally require Senate confirmation.

But since Mr. Trump named Mr. Gaetz last week as his choice to head the Justice Department, House Republicans have been reluctant to make the report public. And following an hourslong meeting on Capitol Hill of the secretive ethics panel on Wednesday, Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat, said the panel had voted along party lines to not make its findings public.

In a statement on behalf of the five Democrats on the evenly divided panel, Ms. Wild said that “in order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side.” She noted that the panel often takes bipartisan votes. But, she said, “that did not happen in today’s vote.”

In fact, the five Republicans on the committee all voted together against releasing the report, and all Democrats voted to release it, according to a person familiar with the meeting who insisted on anonymity to discuss the confidential session.

Representative Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee, declined to comment on the session, saying only: “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.”