Today, the House Ethics Committee deadlocked on the question of whether to release its report

on the alleged misconduct of Trump's pick for Attorney General Matt Gates.

The vote reportedly broke down along party lines with all five Democrats voting to release the

report and all five Republicans voting against it.

The committee is now set to meet again on December 5th to discuss next steps,

but this is all happening as new details about Matt Gates's conduct have started to trickle out

in the press. ABC News has now reportedly obtained records given to the Ethics Committee,

which show Gates paid more than $10,000 to two young women who later testified to the committee.

An attorney for those two women tells NBC News that those records appear to be exhibits his clients

went through with the committee to identify which payments from Gates had been for sex.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has obtained a fairly detailed

diagram from federal investigators that reportedly shows the tangled web of payments between

Gates and various individuals, including those two women who testified to the House Ethics Committee.

Now, Matt Gates denies those allegations, and NBC News has not independently obtained those records.

It's very unclear what the Ethics Committee is going to end up doing here.

But it certainly seems like the pressure that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are putting on House Republicans is working.

House Republicans seem pretty committed to protecting Matt Gates. And the question now is,

will Senate Republicans do the same? As a reminder, it would take four Republican senators to sink

Gates' nomination, assuming all the Senate Democrats vote against him. To that end, there are a few key senators worth

focusing on. First, there is Tom Tillis. He's a Republican of North Carolina. Senator Tillis

sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is going to be the first body to take up the

Gates nomination in the next Congress. And Senator Tillis is up for re-election in

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