Five revelations from the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee’s report on Donald Trump ally Matt Gaetz, released Monday, revealed new details about the former congressman’s alleged behavior, at least one new allegation and insights into the panel’s investigation.

From at least 2017 to 2020, the committee concluded that the former Florida congressman regularly paid women to “engage in sexual activities,” had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl, used or possessed illegal drugs, accepted gifts beyond the limits of the House and helped a woman obtain a passport, according to the report.

He explained that the committee “did not find sufficient evidence” that it violated federal sex trafficking laws, which had also been debated in the public square for years.

Gaetz, who resigned from the US House of Representatives in November, days before the report was made public and after Trump announced him as his pick for US attorney general, denied the committee’s findings and accused it of conduct an unfair investigation.

Here are four parts of the long-awaited report that stand out.

House investigators said Gaetz paid more than $90,000 (£71,843) to women for sex and drugs, but created a complicated web of transactions that were difficult to trace, the report said.

“The committee was unable to determine the extent to which Representative Gaetz’s payments to the women were compensation for engaging in sexual activity with him,” according to the report.

He allegedly used his friend Joel Greenberg, who is currently serving 11 years in prison for crimes he said he committed with Gaetz, as a frequent intermediary and logged into Greenberg’s account at SearchingArrangement.com to interact with young women.

Gaetz also paid women directly, sometimes through platforms like Venmo, according to the report. But the committee said he often used someone else’s PayPal account or an account linked to an email address under a false name.

He also concealed the payments, the panel wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a check made out to “cash” with “tuition refund” on the memo line. The woman said she received it after a group meeting, which “could be a form of coercion because she really needed the money.”

Gaetz has posted on social media that he gave money to women he was involved with as gifts, not payment. The committee found that two women, aged 27 and 25, did not consider their relationships transactional.

Another woman who was considered his girlfriend invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when she was asked if they gave her money for sex or drugs, or to pay others.

The committee attempted to prove that Gaetz frequently paid for sex through a text message that described his inability to pay at one point.

His then-girlfriend said in the message that he and Greenberg were “a little tight on their cash flow” and asked a group of women “if it could be more of a customer appreciation week.”

A few months later, according to the committee, she wrote: “By the way, Matt also mentioned that last time he will be a little generous to the ‘customer appreciation’ cause.”

The committee also said Gaetz bought illegal drugs or reimbursed people for them.

It gives examples of his alleged cocaine and ecstasy/MDMA use, but focuses on what appeared to be a strong marijuana habit. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events, and created an email account under a false name to purchase marijuana.

A trip he took to the Bahamas “was paid for by an associate of Rep. Gaetz with connections to the medical marijuana industry, who also allegedly paid for female escorts to accompany them,” according to the report.

One woman felt that drug and alcohol use at parties had affected her ability to “really know what was going on or give full consent.”

“In fact, nearly all of the women the committee spoke to could not remember the details of at least one or more of the events they attended with Representative Gaetz and attributed this to drug or alcohol use,” the report says. .

His then-girlfriend, who was 21 when they met and “was paid tens of thousands of dollars” during their two-year relationship, often participated in encounters with women and acted as a matchmaker, according to the report.

A woman told the committee she was 17 when she had sex with Gaetz twice at a party in 2017, at least once in front of other people, while under the influence of ecstasy. The woman, who had just finished her junior year of high school, then received $400 from him.

He also told the panel that he did not tell Gaetz that he was a minor and that the committee found no evidence that the former congressman knew he was a minor.

In 2021, Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of the girl.

Gaetz also allegedly ordered his chief of staff to expedite a passport application for a woman he was sleeping with who he claimed was a voter in his district. He also allegedly gave her $1,000.

Gaetz violated House rules prohibiting using his position to obtain special favors, according to the committee, which wrote: “The woman was not his constituent and the case was not handled in the same manner as similar passport assistance cases.”

The committee spent much of the report detailing how Gaetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including by failing to present evidence that it said would “exonerate” him.

The report concluded that he “continually sought to misdirect, deter or mislead the Committee to prevent his actions from being exposed.”

Gaetz, who accused the committee of being “weaponized” against him and leaking information to the press, alleged the panel was working on behalf of former Chairman Kevin McCarthy, according to the report. Last year he helped lead an effort to oust then-President McCarthy from office.

While Gaetz claimed he had “voluntarily produced tens of thousands of records,” he gave the committee “only a couple hundred records, more than 90% of which were irrelevant or publicly available,” according to the report.

One sore point was a trip to the Bahamas, where the committee said he withheld information. He ultimately concluded that he violated rules on gifts because the trip was valued too high.

The committee also cited the Justice Department’s investigation into the allegations against Gaetz as a reason for the delays.

Some witnesses asked the committee to use statements they had given to the department, but it declined to share them because charges had not been filed and because it said it might discourage future witnesses in other cases from coming forward.

The report ends with a single-page statement from Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest “on behalf of dissident members of the committee” who are not named.

Those members do not dispute the committee’s conclusions, but they do not agree with releasing the report after Gaetz resigned from the House, which has not happened since 2006, they write.

“It breaks with long-standing Committee practice, exposes the Committee to undue criticism, and will be seen by some as an attempt to weaponize the Committee process.”