U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., listens to testimony throughout a House Judiciary Committee listening to, in Washington, Dec. 8, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The House Ethics Committee on Monday revealed it discovered “substantial proof” that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had intercourse with a 17-year-old woman in 2017, and that he “recurrently” paid girls for intercourse whereas he was in Congress.
The panel, in a final report on its yearslong investigation into Gaetz, additionally discovered that he used unlawful medication, together with cocaine and ecstasy, on a number of events between 2017 and 2019.
Gaetz additionally accepted presents, together with a 2018 journey to the Bahamas, “in extra of permissible quantities,” the bipartisan committee concluded.
“Representative Gaetz has acted in a fashion that displays discreditably upon the House,” the 42-page report mentioned.
The committee mentioned it discovered “substantial proof that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal legal guidelines, and different requirements of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible presents, the supply of particular favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
But it didn’t discover ample proof that Gaetz violated a federal sex-trafficking regulation, regardless that he “did trigger the transportation of girls throughout state traces for functions of economic intercourse.” The panel mentioned it discovered no proof that these girls had been beneath 18 when the journey came about, and it couldn’t conclude that the “industrial intercourse acts had been induced by power, fraud, or coercion.”
Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.
An lawyer for Gaetz didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for touch upon the report. As the report was launched, Gaetz in a collection of X posts denied that he had engaged in prostitution or intercourse trafficking.
“There is a cause they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and never in a courtroom of any type the place I may current proof and problem witnesses,” Gaetz wrote in a single publish.
Hours earlier than the long-awaited report got here out, Gaetz requested a federal decide to concern a temporary restraining order that may block its launch.
Trump’s first AG choose
The ethics panel’s report, the ultimate product of an investigation that started in 2021, was on the heart of a latest firestorm of controversy surrounding the previous lawmaker from Florida.
Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President-elect Donald Trump picked him to be U.S. lawyer basic. Trump’s choice to steer the Department of Justice instantly drew howls from critics, who had been fast to notice that Gaetz would, if confirmed, be accountable for the company that had beforehand investigated him on sex-trafficking allegations.
The Justice Department ended that probe with out submitting felony expenses. But the Ethics Committee, which had paused its personal efforts whereas the DOJ’s model performed out, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.
When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans together with Ethics Chairman Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., mentioned that he was not within the committee’s jurisdiction, casting doubt on whether or not its report would come out publicly.
News shops reported on the time that Gaetz’s departure got here simply two days earlier than the Ethics panel was set to vote to launch the report. The panel, which is evenly cut up between Democrats and Republicans, deadlocked on whether or not to share the report regardless of Gaetz not being a congressman.
But in a secret vote on Dec. 10, the committee determined that the report ought to come out.
Gaetz withdrew his bid for lawyer basic after simply eight days as Trump’s choose, saying he was “unfairly turning into a distraction” to the Republican president-elect’s transition efforts.
His determination, which adopted studies that quite a few Republican senators wouldn’t help Gaetz’s affirmation, was the primary main setback for Trump’s efforts to workers his Cabinet.
As extra of Trump’s picks put together to face senators’ scrutiny within the coming weeks, the contents of the Gaetz report may erode senators’ belief within the Trump transition group’s vetting course of.
‘Interactions with the Minor’
A chart from the House Ethics Committee’s Dec. 23, 2024, report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz, summarizing funds he allegedly made to girls and to former affiliate Joel Greenberg through peer-to-peer fee platforms or checks.
Source: House of Representatives
Between 2017 and 2020, Gaetz paid girls tens of 1000’s of {dollars} “that the Committee decided had been possible in reference to sexual exercise and/or drug use,” the report mentioned.
That sum features a July 15, 2017 celebration, at which “the report overwhelmingly means that Representative Gaetz had intercourse with a number of girls … together with the then-17-year-old,” in response to the report.
Gaetz, who was 35 on the time, and the underage woman had intercourse twice at that celebration, together with no less than as soon as in entrance of others, the report discovered. The woman, known as “Victim A,” mentioned she remembered Gaetz gave her $400 that night for what she understood was fee for intercourse.
“At the time, she had simply accomplished her junior yr of highschool,” the report said.
Gaetz’s prior assertion that he has not had intercourse with a 17-year-old “since I used to be 17” was unfaithful, the committee concluded.
His “statutory rape of Victim A was a violation of Florida regulation, the Code of Official Conduct, and the Code of Ethics for Government Service,” the report mentioned.
The committee mentioned it discovered proof that Gaetz didn’t be taught the sufferer’s age till a month after they’d intercourse. But “statutory rape is a strict legal responsibility crime,” the report mentioned, noting that Gaetz met up with the woman once more for industrial intercourse lower than six months later, after she turned 18.
Joel Greenberg
The Gaetz investigation included 29 subpoenas, almost 14,000 paperwork, greater than two dozen witnesses, six Freedom of Information Act requests and 9 different requests for info, the report mentioned.
The committee additionally obtained written communications from Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, and Gaetz affiliate who in 2021 pleaded guilty to federal crimes together with intercourse trafficking of a minor woman. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022.
Gaetz and Greenberg — who met and have become buddies shortly after Gaetz was sworn into Congress in January 2017 — incessantly attended events with younger girls who had been contacted by Greenberg through a “sugar relationship” web site, the report mentioned.
Greenberg mentioned that he and Gaetz, who didn’t have his personal account on the positioning, would cut up the prices of “medication, lodge[s], and ladies.”
The committee acknowledged that Greenberg had “credibility points,” however mentioned that none of its findings relied completely on info he supplied.
